Toronto’s board of health has added its voice to a chorus of municipal governments, health professionals and advocacy groups calling for a national ban on handguns.

It’s time the Liberal government listened.

As Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, noted this past week, gun crime is a “growing public health concern.”

That’s an understated way of describing what others have called a crisis as Toronto nears the close of a year that has seen a record number of people killed or injured by gunfire.

Sadly, as of Nov. 9, police have recorded 640 shootings in the city. They resulted in 36 deaths and 219 injuries.

And handguns are the weapon of choice in gun crimes.

Nor is Toronto an anomaly. The number of gun homicides has been on the rise nationally; by the end of 2018, they hit 249 (up 60 per cent since 2014).

No wonder. Since the Harper government made it easier in 2012 to amass large stockpiles of guns, the number of privately owned handguns has skyrocketed to close to a million. And police say many of those guns find their way into criminal hands.

Yet the Liberal government, which shied away from a national handgun ban in the lead-up to the October election after months of consultations on the issue, shows no sign of introducing one now.

Instead, a spokesperson for Bill Blair, the minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, says only that “our plan is to work with provinces and municipalities by empowering them to enact additional requirements to restrict the storage and use of handguns within their jurisdictions.”

If that sounds like the government is simply throwing a bone to the 61 per cent of Canadians who support a handgun ban, that’s because it is.

The notion that municipalities can pass and enforce an effective handgun ban is ridiculous for many reasons, as mayors across the country have pointed out.

First, there are no borders around Canadian cities that would allow municipal departments to enforce a local ban.

Second, municipalities need permission from their provincial or territorial governments to implement one.

That’s a big problem for Toronto and other GTA cities such as Markham and Mississauga that support a national handgun ban, since Premier Doug Ford vehemently opposes one. The same problem might well arise in other provinces.

Third, as Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, vice-chair of Toronto’s board of health, points out: “Municipalities will not have the resources, including staff, to be able to effectively enforce any ban on handguns.”

In other words, as Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie points out: “This is a national issue.”

So what’s the holdup?

As Toronto Mayor John Tory has often argued, there’s no good reason for anyone in this country to own a handgun.

And the suggestion that arose at the board of health meeting that a ban would punish legal gun owners, who own most of the country’s registered handguns, is ludicrous.

“I think losing a child is punishment,” Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, told the meeting. “Finding a new hobby is not.”

Nor can the Liberals excuse their lack of action on this front on a tenuous minority government position. Other minority governments have managed to take controversial steps like enacting universal health care or bringing in a new national flag, with the support of opposition parties.

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Sure, the Liberals have already faced threats from the gun lobby that to implement a national ban would be “political suicide.”

But on the other side they have support from municipal leaders, health experts, gun control advocates and — most important of all — a majority of voters.

It’s time for the Liberals to boldly go where they should have gone in their first term. It’s time to ban handguns. With lives at stake, there’s no time to lose.