Murder victim’s mother calls for nationwide handgun ban

The mother of Oliver Martin, who was shot to death along with his best friend Dylan Ellis in a parked SUV four years ago, made an emotional plea Wednesday, calling on the prime minister to enact a nationwide ban on handguns.

“I’m asking our prime minister, who promotes himself as being hard on crime, if he is truly concerned about crime, why was a handgun ban not part of his recent legislations?” Susan Martin said at a news conference at Queen’s Park.

“Canadians do not want or need handguns. A ban has been proposed a number of times,” she added, citing calls from former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant, a 2008 call for a ban by Premier Dalton McGuinty and former Toronto mayor David Miller’s campaign and online petition.

Oliver Martin, 25, and Ellis, 26, were sitting in a Range Rover at Richmond Street West and Walnut Avenue after watching a basketball game at a friend’s home on June 13, 2008, when a gunman approached and opened fire. The killer remains at large.

Martin’s girlfriend was in the backseat when the fatal shots rang out. She wasn’t hit and called 911. The motive for the murders is still unclear.

The grieving mother’s plea came on the fourth anniversary of her son’s murder. Susan Martin was joined by Audette Shephard, whose 19-year-old son Justin was shot to death June 23, 2001. His murder also remains unsolved.

Shephard has since become one of the city’s leading anti-gun advocates after founding United Mothers Opposing Violence Everywhere (UMOVE).

Both women called for the handgun ban, and for the province to retain of records from the now-defunct long-gun registry.

“The threat to public safety, it does not depend on the intent of the user only. But it also depends on the availability of the firearm itself,” Shephard said.

City councillor Adam Vaughan spoke out at the same news conference on his push to “eliminate, as a right, to sell, store, use ammunition in the City of Toronto.” He said he recently met a grandmother in his ward who found bullet fragments in her grandchild’s bicycle tire.

He and Mississauga Coun. Bonnie Crombie also called on the province to retain long-gun registry records, citing statistics that show those types of firearms are often used in cases of domestic violence, suicide and shootings targeting police officers.

Vaughan also spoke out against the gun lobby.

“If people think it’s a right or need they’re wrong,” he said. “It’s an emotional need. It’s not a safety requirement.”

City council approved a motion calling on the province to keep information from the long-gun registry program, which includes records on nearly 300,000 firearms registered in the GTA.

Last month, the province said it wouldn’t start its own gun registry, but did say it will require stores keep records of people who buy firearms, despite objections from the federal government.

The federal government voted to scrap the gun registry in February.

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