SURREY - Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is calling on a couple of political big guns in Ottawa to take action against the street violence that has been playing out in Surrey and elsewhere in the Lower Mainland.

On Friday Watts fired off a letter to federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews, requesting that the feds "toughen sentences and increase mandatory sentences for the illegal possession of a firearm.

"I am also advocating for new provisions which stipulate that prior drugs convictions be an aggravating factor resulting in more severe mandatory sentences," she said.

Though Watts' missive was sent just hours after Surrey's latest gang-related shooting, which happened late Thursday night, she said her letter wasn't penned in reaction to that particular shooting.

"I had the letter drafted prior to that," she said Monday. "There has to be a deterrent. We have to get these weapons off of the street."

One man was killed and another man was sent to hospital in critical condition just after 11 p.m. Thursday night. The men, ages 27 and 28, were found in a car in a driveway in the 13900-block of 56th Avenue, in Panorama Ridge.

"Although it is in the very early stages, at this point this shooting appears to be targeted and gang-related," Sgt. Jennifer Pound, spokeswoman for the Integrated Homicide Investigation Unit, said Friday.

The survivor has undergone surgery and remains in critical condition in a hospital, which had reportedly been locked down. Pound wouldn't confirm which hospital.

"Of course, we want to protect the safety of the surviving victim therefore we cannot release hospital info," she said.

By press time Monday, police still hadn't released the names of the victims although it has been reported that the man who was killed was a Dhak-Duhre group associate named Sean Beaver, from Montreal, while the survivor is a relative of 27-year-old Stephen Leone, also of the Dhak-Duhre group, who died in a hail of bullets near a Whalley strip mall last Oct. 22.

"We're not going to be confirming who the victims are," Pound said Monday.

Leone was in a black Acura TL, with a 27-year-old man and 15-year-old boy, when a lone gunman opened fire on them at the strip mall at King George Boulevard and 100th Avenue. The other two survived.

Last September police warned the families, friends and associates of Dhak and Duhre gang members that they could be in danger after Jujhar Khun Khun, 24, a member of the Dhak gang, was sprayed with bullets in Guildford on Sept. 16.

Khun Khun was shot in a Nissan Murano in the 10100-block of 144th Street. Police are investigating if the shooting was in retaliation to the fatal shooting of Red Scorpion gangster Jonathon Bacon in Kelowna in August.

Thursday's shooting in Surrey happened two days after Vancouver's first homicide of the year, in which gangster Sandip Singh Duhre, 36, of Surrey was shot dead inside a restaurant at the Sheraton Wall Centre.

In her letter to Nicholson and Toews, Watts wrote that police are noticing an "increased propensity for people to carry guns as a status symbol and for intimidation.

"When these individuals become involved in an altercation, the gun is a convenient way to settle the dispute. We believe more serious consequences for illegal firearm possession would deter people from carrying guns and, therefore, reduce the number of gun crimes," she wrote.

Watts also asked the feds to work closer with the U.S. to curb gun smuggling into Canada.

"We know the vast majority of guns enter the country through land border ports, and Surrey has the second-largest border crossing in Canada," Watts said. "Increasing efforts to prevent gun smuggling will help reduce death, injury and criminal activity."

Watts isn't the only local political taking aim at gun-related crime. Jinny Sims, NDP MP for Newton-North Delta, recently sent out a householder newsletter to her constituents showing a family strolling down a street, with a young girl on her daddy's shoulders, above the caption "Keep sniper rifles off our streets."

Inside the pamphlet is a picture of a scoped Steyr-Mannlicher HS .50 sniper rifle that can pierce armor from a kilometre and a half away.

"Thanks to Stephen Harper, police have no way of knowing if one enters our community," Sims' pamphlet says.

tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com