Something is Fundamentally Wrong, Canada

"Approximately 90 percent of [the] firearms that we seize are directly traced back to the U.S."

"And I can say in reality the remaining 10 percent are likely also from the U.S." 

"The availability of firearms has just saturated the community."

Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah

"Our communities are experiencing a 45 percent increase in shootings and a 62 percent increase in gun-related homicides compared to this time last year."

"What difference does your [Trudeau government] handgun ban make when 85 percent of guns seized by our members can be sourced to the United States?"

Toronto Police Association

Seized firearms...Surrey, B.C.  The Canadian Press

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week marked the second anniversary of the 'handgun freeze', his sweeping crackdown on legal ownership of pistols which are classified as "restricted firearms". A restricted firearm must legally be: locked up at home, at a licensed gun range, or in the process of transport from one point to another. The handgun 'freeze' banned the "sale, purchase and transfer" of handguns. "We choose  your safety over the gun lobby -- every time", Trudeau declared.

Handguns have been placed in a category of stricter ownership rules than are "non-restricted" firearms like rifles and shotguns. Trudeau's statement let loose a cannonade of condemnation from police unions spurning a policy that Trudeau trumpets which in actual fact has no effect on gun crime. Police departments in Canada are fairly unanimous in stating that virtually all crime-related guns have their illegal genesis as imports from the United States.

A number of those illegal imports have been modified, their serial numbers removed, making them difficult to trace. Project Sledgehammer was the police investigation and dismantling of a gun smuggling ring. It led to the seizure of a shipment of "giggle switches"; black market devices that can transform an ordinary handgun into an automatic machine pistol.

Chief Duraiappah of the Peel Regional Police, west of Toronto including Mississauga and Brampton, stated that a decade earlier that if a criminal in the region wanted to acquire an illegal gun "it was doable, but it required a lot of work". Currently, Peel Police seize illegal guns every 30 hours; representing an 87 percent increase over the year previous. Even investigating an impaired driver might turn up one of these guns in his glove compartment.

Statistics Canada published 2022 data that "firearm-related violent crime" was currently at the highest rate on record since 2009. Recently, Statistics Canada published numbers indicating legal gun owners represented a small proportion of illegal firearms use. In their 2022 gun crime data analysis the agency recorded that the firearms used in homicides were rarely legal firearms used by their legal owners who were in good standing.

 

Widespread handgun possession coincides with a countrywide rise in gun crime, inclusive of fatal shootings. Shootings went up 92 percent in the past year, according to York Regional Police covering an area east of Toronto. The Surrey Police Union in British Columbia working in the high crime municipality face similar problems. "The federal handgun freeze fails to address the real issue: the surge of illegal firearms coming across our borders and ending up in the hands of violent criminals."

 

Coupled with the tsunami of illegal guns entering Canada from the United States, leading to a spiked crime wave, Police forces across the country point to another contentious issue outstanding between police and the Trudeau government; the fact that violent recidivist criminals are given bail or early release through the Trudeau-government-mandated soft-on-crime justice system.

 

Toronto police say a spike in gun violence this year is a city-wide priority. Over the past six days, there have been seven shootings in the city — including two that were fatal. As youth firearm arrests in particular skyrocket, police say an escalating amount of the violence is coming from gangs recruiting children. CBC

"Something is fundamentally wrong ... when we keep putting citizens and police officers in harm's way because of bail, the revolving system of justice."

"Half the people that we pick up for a crime are known to us and have done another crime or are on bail."

Nando Iannicca, chair, Peel Police Service Board