At around 4 p.m. on June 29, the crowd of roughly 30 that had gathered in Keppoch, P.E.I., began the slow walk down to the shore.

The trek, along a trampled dirt path and accompanied by the music of a piper, took a little more than five minutes.

A few words were said by some when they reached the water’s edge, which flows into the Charlottetown harbour, before the group headed back up the path for wine and beers, sandwiches and sweets.

The guests, a mix of friends and family, had gathered at the wood frame, two-storey cottage to mark the birthday of Oliver Martin.

“We spent a bunch of our summers here,” Alan Dudeck, Oliver’s stepfather, says over the phone from his car in P.E.I. “And since Oliver was killed, we definitely make a point of being here for the 29th.”

On June 13, 2008, 25-year-old Martin and friend Dylan Ellis, 26, were shot to death while sitting inside a sport utility vehicle parked outside an apartment complex at Richmond and Walnut streets in downtown Toronto.

Four years later, their murders remain unsolved and police have few leads on any suspects or even a motive in the case.

The issue of gun violence in the City of Toronto, and the accompanying calls for firearm legislation reform, has once again become a hot political topic this summer following a series of high-profile shootings.

Nixon Nirmalendran, 22, and 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan died following a shooting in the Eaton Centre food court on June 2 which left several others seriously injured, including a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the head.

Six weeks later, on July 16, 14-year-old Shyanne Charles and 23-year-old Joshua Yasay were killed and more than 20 others were wounded while attending a community barbeque and party on Danzig Street in Scarborough.

Police have since linked the Danzig shooting to at least eight others in the city in the past year. Detectives believe members of the notorious Galloway Boys gang are behind the shootings.

“My reaction to both those events – it doesn’t tear me apart emotionally,” Dudeck says. “It sickens me, and it rekindles a lot of stuff. I think a lot of my reserves have been used up. I can’t even describe what it took out of me when Oliver was killed, emotionally, physically, mentally, you name it.”

In the wake of the shootings, the outcry from concerned citizens and positions from city councillors and provincial politicians has covered just about every viewpoint on what action should be taken to end further instances of gun violence.

Here in the city, Coun. Adam Vaughan, Dudek and others have re-issued a call for a national ban on handguns at Queen’s Park in June, something proposed by then Toronto mayor David Miller in 2008.

“Our largest security threat, by far and away, is not al-Qaeda, it’s the flow of guns from legal owners in the States to illegal owners in the States to illegal owners in Canada,” Vaughan says.

“That path of violence is the biggest problem we have in terms of public safety in Canada.”

And Vaughan is not alone in his call.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, days before a so-called “gun summit” meeting with Mayor Rob Ford and police Chief Bill Blair, voiced his support for the ban.

Torontonians seem to back the ban as well.

In a Forum Research poll released to the Toronto Sun in late June, 75 per cent of the 1,212 residents polled favoured a ban on handguns.

Vaughan, who concedes that the proposed handgun ban, as well as one seeking to ban the sale of ammunition in the city, was as much a symbolic gesture as it was a specific initiative, says that the key to keeping illegal guns out of the hands of Torontonians is a focused response on Ontario’s border crossings.

“It’s not like they are coming across the Prairies and making their way to Toronto,” he says. “We know where they are coming from – we know that it’s the bridges in Buffalo and Detroit.“

According to figures provided by the Canadian Border Services Agency, as of July 17, 317 weapons had been seized by the agency. Of those, 56 weapons were seized in southern Ontario, excluding the Greater Toronto Area, which reported another eight weapons seized.

CBSA representatives declined to be interviewed for this article.

Others, however, argue that a ban would do little to curb gun violence within the city.

In his study Canadian Firearms Legislation and Effects on Homicide 1974 to 2008, Dr. Caillin Langmann contends that the enactment of three major pieces of firearms legislation – including the long-gun registry in 1995, Bill C-17, in 1991, that required waiting periods and safety training for firearms owners and Bill C-51 in 1977 that implemented required criminal code checks – had little impact on stemming gun-related homicide rates.

“[The study] failed to demonstrate a beneficial association between legislation and firearm homicide rates between 1974 and 2008,” the abstract states.

Langmann, a doctor of emergency medicine at McMaster University, says he doesn’t see greater firearms legislation or a bullet ban as the answer to gun violence.

“Probably very expensive and largely ineffective,” Langmann says of such measures. “I don’t think [criminals] are acquiring the ammunition from legal gun stores or from firearms owners anyways. So it would probably have no affect other than ruining the hobby of a lot of people.”

Instead, Langmann believes that the way to properly tackle the problem is through specific proactive policing and problem solving.

Patti Dobbin, a 28-year Ontario Provincial Police veteran, has been with the Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau for eight years.

She now leads the Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit, charged with “identifying and taking enforcement action against persons involved in the illegal movement of firearms, ammunition and explosives, including the offences of smuggling, trafficking and the possession of ‘crime guns.’”

Dobbin agrees that a handgun ban would not have a major effect on gun crime in the city.

“The people that are [in possession of] the crime guns aren’t legitimate owners of handguns,” she says. “They don’t have a possession licence for those handguns, they’re not registered. You’re still going to have those crime guns coming from whatever source – whether it’s a domestic break and enter, or if it’s being smuggled in from the U.S. or from another country – those are people that aren’t registered to have handguns.”

According to Dobbin, in 2011, 60 per cent of gun traces performed led back to U.S. sources, with 70 per cent of the weapons being handguns.

In the first six months of 2012, 55 per cent of gun traces performed led back to U.S. sources, with 75 per cent of those being handguns.

Last week, nearly two months after the shooting on Danzig Street, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair attended a town hall meeting to address residents and answer questions on police activity in the area since the shootings.

“About 70 per cent of the guns we seize are being smuggled into this country, mainly from the United States,” Blair told the crowd when asked about measures being taken to cull the flow of guns into the country.

“The penalties should be certain and they should be serious for people who bring guns into this country” Blair added. “Because when those guns get into the hands of some of these young criminals, people die.”

Vaughan, however, disagrees that a handgun ban would be ineffective.

“That’s just bullshit,” he says. “‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,’ or whatever the crap that is coming out of the gun lobby is - the truth is that a madman with a baseball bat does far less damage in the Eaton Centre than a madman with a gun. And that’s just the end of the conversation.”

Dudeck agrees.

“I think that’s crap,” Dudeck adds of suggestions that the proposed bans are simply empty gesture. “It’s not a gesture; it’s a reality that whatever we can do should be done.”