I'm tired of the BS so I'm going to be blunt. We don't have a gun problem, we have a "stupid people" problem. The root problem is that we have more and more people let into Canada from countries that already have very bad gun violence issues, & then it becomes our problem. We're letting more and more people into Canada (who often settle in the GTA) who have poor family values and poor values & behaviours in general, so these women and men make stupid decisions which lead to unwanted pregnancies and children (Canadian born) outside wedlock. Many of the fathers aren't even listed on the long-form birth certificate because it was a f**k-and-flee, and these children grow up without fathers.
My friend works in the gov, part of his job is issuing birth certificates. He lives in an area with a lot of Jamaicans and South Asians. He says it's alarming how many Jamaican children have no father listed on their birth certificates. With people from cultures like India, that almost never ever happens, and they very rarely get divorced either. Different values & cultures.
These single mothers aren't well-educated when they come here, and if they're trying to get educated they have to drop out to care for the baby. So the young boy grows up in a poor neighbourhood and mom's working 3 jobs and smoking weed & crack just to cope so she's not emotionally available, and there's no male father figure to guide the young man. So the kid's home life sucks, he's directionless, so as the academic research shows, he joins a gang so he can have some semblance of family social bond in his life, and even have guys older than him to have as male role models. The mom is out to lunch so she has no time to help the kid in school plus she's from a culture that may not emphasize education much, and the school itself is full of other peers in similar situations, so the kid does poorly in school and sees the only way to get rich is to deal drugs, steal cars, sell guns, traffic sex etc. with a gang. The gang offers money and a family and protection in a rough area, so he joins. And if he's not in a gang, then he can be hanging out with shady friends/characters anyways.
So then sometimes bad stuff goes down - a bad drug deal, someone having sex with his girl etc. so the guns, acquired illegally or legally, get used.
The Danforth shooter had a shady brother (and acquaintances) who dealt drugs and had illegal firearms. There's multiple problems here, and gun laws will hardly scratch the surface. So what to do?
1. Don't let uneducated people with poor family values & broken homes who make poor life decisions into this country to procreate and spread their problems and their country's problems into this country. Stop the problem at the source. Provide resources to screen these migrants better.
2. Those that are here or need to be here (refugees etc) need to have better education support in those poor communities for their children, including a lot of sex education and access to birth control, and have male teachers and social workers in these schools so these young men have role models to teach them how to be responsible adults that make good decisions. And teach the ladies to close their legs too for effs sake unless you're on birth control, and don't let the guy spew in you without a condom. Also, after-class school programs to help with homework when parents don't have the time/energy/ability.
3. More free after-school recreational programs for these kids so they have a safe & supportive place to go if mom's not home. Even if they're just playing videogames or sports or skateboarding etc just give them a supervised recreational hangout.
3. Increase in GOOD & BETTER-trained policing in their neighbourhoods, with as many people of their ethnic background as possible to provide good role models.
Yes, also make sure the guns laws are strong and the illegal gun smuggling is curtailed. But there's only so much we can do too. If you're going to bring in a sizeable segment of refugees/migrants from places like Somalia, Jamaica, El Salvador, Afghanistan etc. and not screen them properly to weed out the bad ones, expect to get results including gun violence rates like those countries do.