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Chris Mohan, one of the innocent victims

Forty-year-old Laurie Tinga was watching TV in her home when a stray bullet from a gun battle in the courtyard of her Port Moody townhouse complex entered her head.

Today Laurie Tinga is confined to a wheelchair, suffering brain damage.

Kirk Holifield was driving back to his Richmond home when gunmen shot him to death last January.

The 35-year-old father of a 10-month old girl was in his Dodge Ram pickup truck and was mistaken for a gangster.

Holifield’s truck was the same model as the one used by a brother of a suspected gangster who had been injured in a wild Richmond shoot-out earlier in the month.

Rachel Davis and Richard Hui were killed outside a Gastown nightclub in 2004 when gangbangers opened fire. They were trying to help a stranger who was beaten.

Last August, gangsters burst into the Fortune Happiness restaurant in the 600 block of East Broadway in Vancouver and gunned down eight people, killing two of them. At least 15 people were eating in the restaurant when the gangland execution took place.

A month later, two people were shot at the upscale Kitsilano restaurant Quattro on Fourth during a birthday party.

The restaurant shootings and about a dozen other similar incidents have made eating out a deadly experience in the Lower Mainland.

This month two more innocent lives were lost in the gangland killings at 1505 Balmoral Towers in the 9800-block of East Whalley Ring Road, Surrey.

Ed Schellenberg, a 55-year-old father of two from Abbotsford and Chris Mohan, a 22-year-old student were killed when four known thugs were gunned down.

Hardly a day goes by in the Lower Mainland these days without headlines blaring  that guns and gangs have violated this so-called most desirable place to live in the world.

Gang warfare is raging here. Innocent lives are being caught in the crossfire and police seem helpless when it comes to making our streets safe.

The enormity of the latest tragic massacre is underlined by the cops’ plea for “members of the organized crime fraternity” to help them solve the case.

British Columbians are fast losing confidence in law enforcement capabilities as gun-toting thugs get more brazen, killing anyone who stands in their way.

Police information says there are 129 gangs active in B.C. with many other small gangs seeking to establish themselves.

Today’s gang violence is the result of yesterday’s complacency when politicians and police insisted on playing down gang activity in BC.

Our benign view of smoking pot is another major contributor to the violence that has taken so many innocent lives and injured others.

If you are buying B.C. Bud you may as well be pulling the trigger because without exception the gang wars are a direct result of the lucrative marijuana trade in B.C.

While British Columbians grieve for the innocent victims, the latest shootings show that our police need better tools and our courts need mandatory minimum sentences.

The federal government is moving in this direction with its new omnibus crime bill called Bill C2.

The new laws, should they pass, will increase mandatory minimum prison terms for gun crimes committed by gang members from four to five years for a first offence and to seven for a second.

Judges will also be restricted from allowing bail to people charged with serious gun crimes.

The government also plans to announce a toughening of the Youth Criminal Justice Act while the new crime legislation will simultaneously reintroduce a number of bills that had been blocked last spring by the three opposition parties.

This new legislation needs to be passed without delay.

We are tired of hearing politicians talk about how they are going to get tough on crime, judges being blamed for lax sentences and police lamenting about lack of resources.

While educational, rehabilitative and preventive programs all have a place in combating crime, there needs to be a heavier emphasis on enforcement and punishment to ensure deterrence.

But the only way to make certain our streets are safe is by keeping these gangbangers off our streets.