Nick Kozak/The Canadian Press via AP

Canada doesn’t have a Second Amendment equivalent. That’s a damn shame, especially for Canadian gun owners who have little in the way of mandated regulatory restraint when it comes to the topic of gun control. The government can do whatever it wants, and while it’s still a human rights violation, there’s little recourse for pro-gun Canadians.

However, Canada also has some of the garden variety stupidity that we see in American cities, for example:

Toronto police say they have collected more than 3,000 firearms from city residents over the course of their three-week gun buyback program.

The more than 2,200 long guns and more than 900 handguns will all be destroyed, police officials announced Thursday.

“I really feel that our homes and neighbourhoods are a little bit safer with 3,100 operational firearms removed from our homes,” said Toronto Police Insp. Chris Boddy.

I figured it was time to write a bit of an open letter.

Dear Inspector Boddy and the Toronto Police Department,

I get that your nation doesn’t protect the gun rights of its citizens like mine does. I understand that you’re a different nation, and while our cultures may share some profound similarities, we also have vast differences. The differing views on guns, for example, might well be a case in point.

However, no cultural differences can explain how you have lied to the people of Toronto so egregiously as to claim that the buyback made anyone safer.

While the Danforth shooting that prompted much of your nation’s latest gun control push was a tragedy, let’s keep a few things in perspective.

First, let’s remember that the Danforth shooting killed two and wounded 13 others in the same city where a man killed 10 people with a freaking van. That van attack also injured 15 others, all without a firearm being used.

Even if every gun was somehow removed from the city, would there no longer be a threat to the people of Toronto from the deranged?

Second, the Danforth killer obtained his firearm through illegal means. He didn’t walk into a gun shop and buy it as a law-abiding citizen would. Instead, it was a black market gun.

Guess what kind of guns generally don’t show up in buybacks? Go on, take a guess.

If you said “black market guns,” you win a prize.

Buyback programs may allow ordinary citizens to dispose of their guns, but it doesn’t take anything off the streets in the grand scheme of things, especially since you’re talking about 3,100 guns in a population of almost 3 million people. You have, at best, made a teeny, tiny dent in the number of guns in Toronto.

But you’ve made no difference in the safety of the people of Toronto.

Look, if you want to delude yourself into believing this somehow made a difference, that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. Where I take issue is that you’re trying to delude others into believing they’ve been made safer somehow, that their tax dollars were well spent in helping to keep them safe. I have an issue with anyone lying to the people like that.

At best, a few black market guns were “sold back,” but probably as a way to dispose of a murder weapon. And when I say “a few,” I mean fewer than one percent of all guns turned in.

To make matters worse, I think you know it. I don’t think you’ve deluded yourselves to that extent. You’re just hoping no one will call you on your BS.

Well, I am. Since I’m an American, you can’t even claim this as “hate speech” and try to prosecute me as a way to shut me up. Well, I suppose you could try, but it would be rather silly.

Stop lying. Stop pretending.

You made nothing safer, and the people of Toronto deserve to know that.