The Liberal government spent months consulting Canadians about a potential handgun ban.

Now, the federal minister in charge, Bill Blair, would have us believe that what people want is for Ottawa to duck the problem entirely by dumping the responsibility on individual cities.

That’s a terrible plan and a recipe to achieve very little, particularly in Toronto.

Standing between Ottawa and Toronto — the city with the biggest and growing handgun problem — is Ontario. And Premier Doug Ford has already said he’s not at all interested in banning handguns in Toronto, or anywhere else for that matter.

So a debate about the problem of handguns, which began after last summer’s deadly Danforth shooting in Toronto and was given its latest revival on Monday with a shooting during the crowded Raptors victory celebration, is going nowhere good.

It’s not the first time. We’ve been debating this for decades and getting nowhere, even as the bodies continue to pile up.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals still intend to campaign for re-election this fall on a promise to ban some military-style assault rifles with a buyback program for owners.

A reduction in those weapons — we’re not talking regular rifles and shotguns here but weapons designed to inflict the maximum number of deaths in the easiest and fastest manner — is needed. Those, after all, are the firearms routinely used in mass shootings.

But Canada should ban private ownership of military-style assault rifles and handguns.

The Liberal plan to take action on one part of the problem while pretending to tackle the other by fobbing it off on cities that don’t have the necessary power isn’t good enough.

And Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is even further off the mark. Indeed, he’s playing right into the hands of the gun lobby, which has for too long held back necessary change, by claiming the Liberals’ half-measure goes too far and attacks those “who own firearms for sport shooting.”

The number of legal handguns and assault rifles has doubled in recent years because Canada (thanks to the Harper Conservatives) made it easier, not harder, to buy and amass large stockpiles of guns.

With its recently passed legislation, C-71, the Trudeau government did tighten around the edges of Canada’s gun laws. It enhanced background checks for gun owners and record-keeping for gun retailers. But it fell well short of what can and should be done.

And the hope that the government was finally prepared to tackle the handgun issue head on — why else conduct a cross-country consultation? — was dashed with Blair’s statements that a ban is not the “most cost-effective measure.”

Well, the cost of buying back legal handguns only goes up the longer we wait. We’re heading towards a million now. How many will there be if we wait another 10 years?

And, yes, as critics are always quick to point out, a ban on legal handguns does not get rid of the illegal ones. But it does reduce the overall number of guns that can fall into the wrong hands by accident, theft or intent, through straw purchases.

A measure doesn’t have to do everything to be worth doing.

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More than once the City of Toronto has debated, voted for and pressed for a handgun ban, all the while knowing it doesn’t have the power to do anything about it.

Implementing a national handgun ban will never be easy, but it’s the right thing to do. The federal government, which actually has the power, should be able to see that.

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