Toronto is on track to record its worst year for gun deaths in more than a decade.

Not since 2005, dubbed “The Year of the Gun,” have more Toronto residents died by a bullet at such a pace.

This year’s first homicide came on Jan. 4, when 17-year-old Joseph Petit was shot dead minutes after beginning a conversation with two men who showed up at his home in the Victoria and Danforth Aves. area.

His mother, Ana Pavao, found her son lying on the street near their home.

“Had I not been there, my son would have died alone,” his mother told the Star. “I’ve seen things and done things that no mother should have to do.”

“We loved and adore our son,” Pavao said at a news conference on Wednesday, wiping away tears. “If we want to end gun violence, lots of people need to do their part and people need to come forward.”

The city’s most recent murder was the brazen execution-style slaying of a man in his Range Rover near the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton Sts. on Tuesday afternoon.

Back in 2005, the city set a grim record with 52 gun deaths, out of a total of 78 homicides.

This year, there have already been 21 shooting deaths — 22, if you count an infant boy who died this week after being born by emergency C-section following the fatal shooting of his mother, Candice Rochelle Bobb, as she sat in a car in Rexdale three weeks ago.

So far this year, there have also been three murders by beatings, three by stabbing, one by motor vehicle, one by strangulation and the rest by “unknown” causes.

“It’s shocking,” Mayor John Tory told a news conference Wednesday morning. “It’s scary. It’s sustained.”

There were 22 gun deaths in all of 2013, and 27 each in 2011, 2014 and last year. This year, there were 10 homicides in January alone.

There have also been horrific near-fatal incidents this year.

Earlier this month, a 10-year-old boy sitting in the family living room was shot in the shoulder after a bullet was fired into his home in a Toronto Community Housing complex near Pape and Danforth Aves.

Tory blames gangs for much of the carnage.

“We … know that the violence is largely confined to people involved in the gang subculture — people who don’t hesitate to use guns to settle even the most minor of disputes,” Tory said in a letter this week, calling for help from Ralph Goodale, federal minister of Public Safety, and Yasir Naqvi, provincial minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

Tory noted that new technologies, border security and cooperation with American authorities can all play a role in getting guns off the streets.

So can “community engagement programs, so our young people have alternatives to turning to a life of gangs, guns and violence,” Tory wrote in his letter to Goodale and Naqvi.

Tory said he supports a gun amnesty program proposed by Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, even though there’s little evidence that such a program makes a difference.

“I’m not going to rule out any tool that we can use . . . to try and get at this,” Tory said.

Gun amnesty and buyback programs have proven to be ineffective, says Jooyoung Lee, an expert in gun violence and assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.

They usually don’t work because the people who turn in their guns tend to be “low-risk offenders,” he said. “They give up the gun because it’s probably sitting around collecting dust in their basement.”

Since gang violence is linked to poverty, Lee said it would be more productive to invest in affordable housing, education and mentoring programs in troubled communities.

Tory praised police for their efforts but said more help is needed on several levels.

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“This year alone, our officers have taken more than 300 illegal guns off the streets,” Tory wrote. “But we know there are more guns out there and more people willing to use them.”

Police Chief Mark Saunders placed much of the blame on gang culture, telling a news conference Wednesday that “Certain people have certain lifestyles …”

“Toronto is not alone with this particular problem right now,” Saunders said. “There is no one solution or one cause for it.”

Saunders said police already deploy officers into high-risk areas. “It’s not like we aren’t doing anything,” he said.

Back in 2005, gangs were also blamed for much of the gun violence, which included the execution-style murder of Jose Quintanilla, 20, on Sept. 14, 2005.

Quintanilla was heading home in a taxi in northwest Toronto when a van swung in front of the cab in which he was riding.

Men jumped out of the van, swung open a door of the cab, and shot Quintanilla point-blank.

There was also the high-profile murder of 15-year-old Jane Creba, fatally shot in gang cross-fire that erupted on Yonge St. near the Eaton Centre while crowds were out shopping on Boxing Day.

Also that year, a 4-year-old was wounded in crossfire and a man was killed outside the church where a funeral was being held for another shooting victim.

“A high percentage of these victims are gang members,” Staff Insp. Brian Raybould, then incoming head of the Toronto police homicide squad, told the Star in 2005.

The city responded by designating 13 priority neighbourhoods across the city, which received extra money from the city, province and charities such as the United Way for programs intended to provide alternatives to gangs and violence for local youth.

It also created the Toronto Police Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), made up of “rapid response teams” deployed into high gun-crime areas in an effort to combine community policing with a crackdown on violence.

It is too early to draw too many conclusions about the reasons for the recent spate of shootings, says Wendy Cukier, the president of the Coalition for Gun Control, an advocacy group founded after the 1983 Montreal Massacre.

“There are reasons for concern about the relaxation of control over firearms generally, and handguns in particular, over the last 10 years,” she said.

“Toronto is still incredibly safe, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do better.”

More on thestar.com:

No ‘magic wand’ to stop gun violence, Mayor Tory says

Lessons from Chicago, written in blood: Keenan