Guess who Canada is blaming?

United States-Canadian relations are at their lowest ebb in generations. Recently, David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, admonished Canadian politicians for their anti-American campaign rhetoric. It didn't do much good, as the Canadian politicos struck back at Wilkins for meddling in Canada's elections.

Now they're stepping up the blame-game. The nation has been plagued by a rash of violence - particularly in Toronto which has seen 78 murders this year, including a record 52 gun deaths. The most recent was apparently a teen gang shootout on a busy shopping street shortly before Christmas that killed a 15-year-old girl and wounded six bystanders.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller had to blame someone or something for the tragedy. Certainly it had nothing to do with their nation's soft-on-crime policies - there's no death penalty in Canada; or less-than-adequate response to social ills; or its 6.4 percent unemployment rate, which is low by Canadian standards, but is still more than a point higher than in the United States.

So after looking everywhere they could think of for the cause of the violence craze, they finally figured it out: The United States is to blame. America is exporting its gun culture to Canada, and the result is more mayhem and death.

Why don't they put the blame where it properly belongs - on the punks and thugs that do the shooting and killing? Longer prison terms for violent felons has cut down on crime in the United States. It might work in Canada, too.

As for all those Saturday Night Specials and other guns pouring across the U.S. border into Canada - why don't Canadians police their borders? In fact, they might even find a ready border patrol ally in the United States.

Americans are as eager to prevent jihadist terrorists from entering the United States coming from Canada as Canadians are to keep guns from the U.S. entering their country. Isn't that a mutuality of interests to prompt both nations to cooperate on closer border controls?