Gun problems plague cities across Canada

Heather Sokoloff, National Post
published: Thursday, December 29, 2005
Toronto is not the only Canadian metropolis
with a gun problem. Police across the country
are seizing more and more handguns
-- all of them illegal
-- as the problem moves from gangs to what
were once safe city streets.
In the past six months, an Edmonton girl was
shot on her 18th birthday by a low-level criminal
cruising the suburbs with a gun in his car.
Two men walked into a Vancouver restaurant
one afternoon and started shooting, making a
room full of innocent bystanders fear for their
lives.
Police in Regina apprehended a stash of four
automatic machine guns.
Constable Howard Chow of the Vancouver Police
Department remembers five or 10 years ago that
police would be surprised to find the occasional
gun on the person or in the car of a criminal
suspect.
"Now every night it seems there is a gun-related
incident," Const. Chow said. The problem in
Vancouver is so bad police created a new squad
to patrol the downtown entertainment district on
nights and weekends to keep gang members in
check.
link:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=e7c4259b-4676-4583-95c4-db6cdb5e6ca3&k=75719