Tourism Boycott Urged; Gun owners strike out at Miller ban

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A group representing gun owners and sport shooters is calling for a tourism boycott
of Toronto over a ban on gun clubs, ranges and firearm-related businesses proposed
by Mayor David Miller.

Tony Bernardo, the director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action, said
his group and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association will urge Canadian gun owners
and their far more numerous American cousins to avoid visiting Toronto this summer.

“Do I think it’s going too far? No, I don’t,” Mr. Bernardo said
yesterday. “We have been vilely slandered by Mayor Miller and for three years
we’ve taken the high road and…put up with it. No more.”

A report to be considered by the city’s powerful executive committee next week
recommends closing two shooting clubs in the city, banning the sale, manufacture
and distribution of firearms in city limits and a zoning bylaw to restrict the use
of firearms anywhere in the city.

The Mayor defended the proposal to close the Scarborough Rifle Club and the CNRA
Handgun Club, a training range for Olympic target shooter Avianna Chao to train
for the upcoming Beijing games by saying the hobby posed a danger to the public.

Mr. Bernardo called that suggestion outrageous. “He’s looking for a scapegoat
to deflect political attention away from a drug and gangs problem,” he said.

“Miller is lying to the people of Toronto because he lacks the courage to deal
with Toronto’s real crime problems. Well, we will not be his scapegoats …
We have the economic power to hurt David Miller and we’re going to do it.”

Mr. Bernardo said his organization has contacted allied shooting and gun owners’
groups in Europe and the U. S. urging them to support a tourist boycott of Toronto.

“There are two million law-abiding gun owners in Canada [and] 80 million more
in the States,” he said. “Toronto’s going to lose thousands of tourists.”

“If business owners in Toronto don’t like that, too bad. They should go
talk to David Miller about it.”

The association has taken out advertisements in U. S. gun magazines promoting their
boycott and has set up a Web sitewww.torontothebad.com urging visitors to “please
join us in a complete boycott of Toronto.” Spokesmen for the mayor were not
available for comment yesterday. Mr. Miller has in the past justified a crackdown
on gun owners by suggesting that legally registered often end up in the hands of
criminals, usually through theft.

Toronto police would not say yesterday whether or not they track the source of firearms
used to commit crimes.

But in a January, 2004, report to the Toronto police services board, the force indicated
that only a small minority of what it called “crime guns” came from legal
sources. Of the 183 firearms it seized in 2003 after they were used in a crime,
only 16 had once been legally registered in Canada, or about 8.7%.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !