Pubdate: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 Source: Province, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2007 The Province Contact: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476 Author: Michael Smyth, The Province SENATOR SPRAYING CHEAP SHOTS He's Playing Politics Instead Of Passing Gun Laws Sen. Larry Campbell has an easy, three-point plan for ridding our streets of violent gangsters who spray all-night Chinese restaurants with deadly gunfire: A: Legalize pot. B: Sell it. C: Use the money to hire more cops. Simple solution, right? But there's one simple problem stopping it from getting done. And his name is Stephen Harper. "You have a simple man, the prime minister, running a simple party in a simple way," Campbell, the former Vancouver mayor, told me in one of his classic shoot-from-the-lip interviews. The political crossfire began shortly after two masked gunmen strafed the Fortune Happiness restaurant with a blizzard of bullets, killing two people and wounding six in an apparent gangland hit. The chalk outlines of the bodies had barely been drawn when Conservative boss Harper went political, pointing a finger at the Liberals for holding up two gun-crime bills in the Senate. Bill C-10 would increase mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes, while Bill C-35 would make it tougher for suspects in gun crimes to get bail. Both bills were still awaiting Senate approval when Parliament shut down for the summer. "Let's get on with passing these laws so we can crack down on this phenomenon," Harper said, calling on Liberal Leader Stephane Dion to "get his unelected senators out of the way." "Nonsense," Campbell fires back, saying it was Harper who shut down the parliamentary session before the Senate had a chance to consider the bills. "He talks about unelected senators," Campbell fumed to me on Nightline BC on CKNW. "About a third of Canadians want the Conservatives and two-thirds can't stand them. Where's his moral right to govern?" Despite that, Campbell said he supports Harper's gun-crime bills. Though you'd never know it by the way he trashes them. "They're simple solutions to complex problems," he said. "If I kill or wound someone with a gun, should I go to jail longer because I used a gun? If I used a knife, I don't go to jail for so long? We're talking about instruments of killing here. Why is one worse than another?" Did I mention he supports the bills? Don't ask me to explain why he'd vote for a bill he so clearly dislikes. But here's Campbell's ultimate simple solution to gangland street crime: "If we legalize marijuana and use all the money from that . . . we could free up more police officers to start doing community policing and who could be on the street," he said. "But, my God, that would go against the Christian right-wing views of the government!" The marijuana debate is an important one, but any consensus on legalization and taxable sales of pot is years away. The gang wars, meanwhile, are happening right now and people are getting killed. The bottom line: Canadians want a crackdown on gun crime. The good senator should drop the "simple" political cheap shots and get on with the job. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom