The first, obvious point here is that an election is a year off and much can change in that time. It is possible that all Toronto's requests to the federal government will come to nothing.
That would be either (a) a guy who was approached and told that if he didn't play along with the plan, bad things would happen to him, or (b) a guy who saw a chance to make and hide away a lot of money as a nest egg for when he got out of jail in a couple of years.
The most widely reported case involved a guy who moved 47 guns. That's a lot of money.
In fact, what apparently happened was that the administration was loosened up, which created the problem. Previously, there was a much lower threshold to raise a red flag on frequent purchases. This was loosened. You can expect it has been tightened again, months ago, but we will have to wait over a year to actually see what the results were.
There have been over 40 cases, apparently. Since the registry was instrumental in providing the evidence to support the charges, it's hard to see that it was a complete sham. And with a change to the standard for raising a red flag on frequent buys, the straw buy route will become to risky for anyone to try to make money at it.
What Lilley didn't tell you is that when Mark Saunders says 50%, he's not talking Canada-wide and he's not referring to that report from BC. He's referring to data gathered by TPS specifically about guns recovered in Toronto.
Lilley apparently didn't bother to get on the phone and call Saunders and ask the question, which is kind of Journalism 101.
Toronto is in fact asking for a ban on
sales of handguns and "handgun ammunition" in the city (Joe Cressey's motion). At the same time, they are also asking for a ban on handguns, semi-auto rifles, and semi-auto shotguns nationwide (Kristyn Wong-Tam's motion). Either of these, if enacted, would easily stick. I don't expect either to actually happen, though: Cressey's motion would have no practical effect and Wong-Tam has even said to the media it would be symbolic, which is not going to pass muster if it is challenged. And Wong-Tam's would cost over $2 billion.
The city ban could equally be based on provisions in the Criminal Code, so that anyone violating that by-law would be facing the full force of the criminal law. This would depend entirely on how the law was written. I don't have a crystal ball with which to predict the future, but it seems Ezra's and Brian's might be defective.
Finally:
There is no evidence for this. In fact, gun-free zones are made gun-free because they are public spaces. Mass public shootings, by definition, occur in public spaces. Funny how that would create a correlation.
