Mayor Miller’s Call For Handgun Ban Rejected By Ottawa While Cops Continue To Probe Chinatown Homicide

Toronto Mayor David Miller has long called for a nationwide ban on handguns, but Saturday it appeared as though Ottawa ears were entirely deaf to the idea.

The latest call for a prohibition came after two innocent bystanders – Hou Chang Mao and John O’Keefe – were killed by stray bullets on the streets of Toronto in the same week and Miller also took a jab at Stephen Harper’s Tories for not hiring 2,500 new police officers as promised.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day begs to differ however, insisting Saturday that gun crimes won’t decrease by going after innocent firearm owners and adding that out of the 108 gun deaths in Canada in 2006, 94 per cent involved unregistered firearms.

Instead, Day proposed a mandatory jail sentence for those who commit gun crimes, adding that’s something the other federal parties continue to oppose.

But Parliament Hill politics do little to quell the concerns of Toronto citizens like Neil Bowdring, who witnessed the Mao murder on Gerrard Street Thursday.

“I saw him laying on the ground inside the store and he wasn’t moving,” Bowdring recalls.

Mao reportedly worked at a supermarket for two years to save enough money to bring his 18-year-old daughter over from China. He accomplished that in the last few months but the sad twist to the story is that he quit this past week but was asked to stay and help out until the end of the weekend.

The incident has brought Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair onside with Mayor Miller on calls for an outright handgun ban. NDP leader Jack Layton also echoed the calls for federal involvement Saturday.

“We want the capacity for city’s like Toronto to declare a gun ban,” he said. “A stray bullet can strike someone anywhere in the city it seems, and that’s what’s got to stop.”

Meanwhile, officers continue to canvass the East Chinatown neighbourhood looking for information following the city’s latest homicide. The only lead so far is two men who fled the scene in a small silver car, who may have been the intended targets.

Community members are working together to start up a trust fund for Mao’s two children to help pay for the funeral and bring his wife here from China. Details will be released by Monday.

If you have any information that can help in the investigation you can contact Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS.