As some of you may have heard, another innocent man has been struck down in the streets of Toronto. There has been indiscriminate gunfire in a crowded street for a second time this week. Two family men are dead leaving two widows, and several orphans.

What a bunch of stupid gangsters. Rotten fuggers.

I started trolling through the comments section of the Globe and Mail website and read all of the regular yokels and their knee-jerk solutions to the problem. Lots of people are suggesting that Canada enact a handgun ban. Another bunch are advocating a gun in every home. Plenty more seek a return of the death penalty. A lot of people think mandatory sentencing is a good idea. Some folks have jokingly said banning Toronto, immigration and the Liberal Party of Canada would fix the problem.

It sure seems like an intractable situation, because none of these things seem to be the solution. Handguns will keep trickling across the border whether they’re legal or not. Having a gun in  every home sounds like an even more nightmarish situation. There are far too many cases of innocent people executed for the death penalty to work. We all know about overzealous police and prosecutors putting the wrong man behind bars. Besides, our crime rate is lower than it was when we did have capital punishment. Depriving judges of the latitude they need to sentence according the the circumstances makes a mockery of the bench. I think we can all dispense with the idea of levelling a city of 4 million people. The Liberal Party isn’t to blame either. They’ve changed our country for the better for the most part, and it’s ludicrous to think that they’re the cause of our ills.

The worst part of the situation is that the culprits are an extremely small number of extremely stupid people. Their ethnicity, when it becomes known, will be held against everyone of that stripe, and the mob will begin looking suspiciously at everyone from that community … again. Exactly when people need to band together, we’re going to look over our shoulders and wonder if we’re going to be the next victim. Everyone else will be a suspect, and we’re all isolated as a result.

I’ve been there. About 10 years ago I was beat up and stabbed in front of my own home by a bunch of young drunks who were trying to break into my car. I was stupid enough to run after them, and I got pretty roughed up for my trouble. Not only was I incapacitated for several weeks while my injuries healed, I found that I couldn’t walk down my own street in broad daylight without feeling frightened. It wasn’t fun, and nobody should have to feel like I did. It’s difficult to believe in the innate goodness of people when you know there are thugs in the street with knives and guns. It takes a long time to overcome the feelings of suspicion and fear once they settle in. And those feelings are the last things we should have to contend with.

I hate these gangsters who think they can earn respect with a handgun. They do too much damage to the poor innocents who are killed and bereaved and to society at large.