![]() ![]() On Monday, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police called on the federal government to make the tracing of crime guns mandatory across Canada. The rest of Canada traced only 6%-10% of guns involved in crimes, according to 2019 data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), a federal agency. Ontario is the only province with a special tracing program that seeks to identify the source of all guns used in crimes, said Scott Ferguson, head of FATE. share has risen to 73%, according to the data from the Ontario police's Firearms Analysis and Tracing Enforcement (FATE) program. "We really think that restricting lawful handgun ownership doesn't meaningfully address the real issue, which is illegal handguns obtained from the United States," said Evan Bray, police chief in Regina, capital of Saskatchewan province.Ĭanada's gun homicide rate in 2020 was an eighth of the rate in the United States, where rules on buying firearms are looser, but it's higher than the rates of many other rich countries and has been rising, according to data from Statistics Canada.Įxclusive data obtained by Reuters for Ontario, Canada's most populous province, shows that when handguns involved in crimes were traced in 2021, they were overwhelmingly - 85% of the time - found to have come from the United States.įurthermore, 70% of all traced guns used in crimes in Ontario came from the United States, while so far this year the U.S. The case of the 31-year-old, indicted last month on charges that could see him jailed for years, illustrates the leading role the Lone Star State now plays in the smuggling of guns used for violence in Canada, and how firearms tracing can help combat that trade.Ĭanadian police chiefs say such cases also show the limits of their government's domestically focused policies to fight gun violence, such as a freeze on handgun purchases, when it has the world's largest civilian gun market on its doorstep. The other four were traced to crimes in Canada. Twelve were traced to crimes committed in America. A Texas man bought dozens of guns from licensed dealers in the state before illegally reselling at least 16, U.S. ![]()
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