23 May 2007:
15-year-old Jordan Manners is shot and killed at C.W. Jeffries Collegiate Institute. School and government officials are understandably shocked and call for an investigation into youth gun crime. Jordan’s family demands answers. Two 17-year-olds are later charged in the slaying.

2 June 2007:
15-year-old Chevon Josephs kills himself and two other teenagers while fleeing police in a stolen car. Families and local officials are understandably shocked and call for an investigation into… police chases.

In Toronto these days, you can’t blink without some victim’s family calling for an inquiry into the death of their loved one(s). Teenagers get killed while partying in Mexico and their families expect the same protections they enjoy in their suburban Toronto neighbourhoods. Kids shooting kids in high schools. Kids being killed by a kid with a stolen car while innocently riding home in a cab at 2AM.

Now, I sincerely feel for those poor families; I’ve experienced grief like theirs and it’s soul-corroding. And I’m no expert, but I’m thinkin’ that yet another inquiry won’t reveal anything we don’t already know. I’m also thinkin’ that these needless tragedies could have been averted if we only had some sort of… laws against such antisocial and downright dangerous behaviour.

Here are a few suggestions for lawmakers to consider:

• - make possession of certain firearms illegal
• - make killing people illegal
• - make stealing illegal, including car-stealing
• - make fleeing police illegal
• - make speeding illegal

(Full disclosure: I cribbed two of them from some book I read.)

And once those laws are passed, I heartily urge families and communities — and the religious groups to which they belong – to support these new initiatives, and encourage their children and other young people to not carry prohibited guns or kill others or steal cars or escape police or drive stolen vehicles at insane speeds. Because I’m not sure that those of us who don’t carry prohibited guns and don’t kill people and don’t steal cars and don’t flee police and don’t drive stolen vehicles at insane speeds really need to “look within” to discover the root cause of these problems.

And, with Father’s Day fast approaching, I will readily admit that, in some areas, I am totally turning into my father. Happy Father’s Day, Dad, and thanks for teaching me that being “liberal” doesn’t mean jettisoning the notion of personal responsibility.

15 June 2007:

The sister of Jordan Manners — the 15-year-old student gunned down last month in a Toronto high school — was among the people charged in a massive police crackdown on street gangs in the Driftwood Ave. neighbourhood.
Necole Small, 25, is charged with possession of a prohibited firearm with ammunition, a police source confirmed last night.