A gun control group is hoping a new 13-foot-tall bullet-shaped exclamation point outside Toronto’s city hall will lend a sense of urgency to the debate about gun violence in Canada.In the wake of increasing gun violence in Toronto and Canada as a whole, the Coalition for Gun Control launched a national campaign Tuesday morning urging Ottawa to ban handguns and military-style assault weapons.Stacey King, whose two children were shot this summer in a Toronto playground, said the time for platitudes has passed.“Thankfully they survived, but our lives have been changed forever,” she said. “Mothers of children that have been shot do not want prayers or flowers. We want gun control.”Read more: John Tory urges Torontonians to lobby federal government for handgun banQuebec gun-control groups question federal commitment to proposed handgun banMother of girls injured in Scarborough playground shooting slams province’s cuts to Toronto afterschool programThe campaign consists of billboards and a social media campaign directing people to the website triggerchange.ca. The site links to a government petition calling for the weapon ban — more than 600 people had signed as of noon Tuesday — and urges Canadians to contact their member of parliament.The exclamation point sculpture was briefly placed next to the Toronto sign at city hall Tuesday morning. “I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years,” said coalition president Wendy Cukier, who started advocating for gun control after the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. “And personally, I feel like in the last decade we’ve been moving backward, not forward.”Gun homicides are up sharply this year in Toronto — 45 so far this year, up from 35 by this date in 2017 — and the city is two killings away from breaking its record for homicides in a single year, set in 1991. The city councils of Toronto and Montreal have urged the federal govern ...
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