What’s a homeowner to do when there’s a spate of home break-ins by armed assailants?

If you’re in Toronto, apparently the best advice police can give you is give up your car to avoid being hurt by a violent criminal.

“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door,” Constable Marco Ricciardi of Toronto Police Services advised at a community meeting. “Because they’re breaking into your homes to steal your car. They don’t want anything else. A lot of them that they’re arresting have guns on them, and they’re not toy guns. They’re real guns. They’re loaded.”

The advice came after it was revealed that home intrusions—many of them by armed criminals—for the purpose of stealing cars had already reached the total from all of last year. According to Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw, more than 12,000 vehicles were stolen across Toronto last year. Additionally, carjackings are on pace to more than double in 2024 compared to last year.

The first reaction for many Americans to such advice is thinking how crazy it sounds. But after some community members questioned giving their cars away to thieves to avoid an armed assault, the Toronto Star came to the police’s rescue.

The Star’s story, headlined, “Should Torontonians leave their keys where thieves can find them? Why the idea may be better than the alternative,” actually interviewed a former thief currently in witness protection who said the constable was giving sound advice.

“It’s not a bad idea,” the unidentified former thief told the Star. “I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I’ve gone into people’s houses.”

The thief further told the Star that he was often armed and on crack cocaine when he broke into homes. As the story reported, “The difference between a robbery and a murder is often a one-second lapse of judgment, he reasons. If a thief stumbles onto your seven-year-old daughter’s bedroom looking for your car keys, the former thief said, ‘Now your daughter has seen his face.’”

As The Truth About Guns readers know, Canadians have been pushed, shoved and pummeled by the government to the point where they are nearly completely disarmed. Now that the government has accomplished that goal, the best advice it can offer is to leave your keys at the front door so armed criminals, who haven’t obeyed the gun laws, can take your car without hurting you?

This seems to be one of those situations where the operable phrase is, “You’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.” Home intruders in the United States know they stand a good chance of being shot if they break into a citizen’s house. That’s why most thefts at homes are done when the residents are away.

Alas, in Canada the opportunity to fight off an armed home intruder is all but gone. And while Americans can shrug and say, “Too bad,” gun-ban advocates want the same thing for citizens of our country.

If we don’t fight diligently to protect our right to keep and bear arms, it’s not impossible that we could be getting similar advice from the “authorities” in the next five or 10 years.