The case of the 31-year-old, who was indicted last month on charges that could land him in prison for years, shows the leading role the Lone Star State now plays in the smuggling of weapons used for violence into Canada and how detection can help firearms. fight this trade. Canadian police chiefs say such cases also show the limits of their government’s domestic policies to combat gun violence, such as freezing gun purchases, when it has the world’s largest civilian gun market on its doorstep. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register “We really believe that restricting the legal ownership of guns does not really address the real issue, which is illegal guns being obtained from the United States,” said Evan Bray, the police chief in Regina, Saskatchewan’s provincial capital. Canada’s gun homicide rate in 2020 was one-eighth the rate in the United States, where rules for purchasing firearms are more lax, but it is higher than rates in many other wealthy countries and rising, according to Census Bureau data. of Canada. Exclusive data obtained by Reuters for Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, shows that when guns involved in crimes were traced in 2021, the vast majority – 85% of them – were found to have come from the United States. Additionally, 70% of all traced guns used in crimes in Ontario came from the United States, and so far this year the U.S. share has risen to 73%, according to data from the police’s Firearms Tracking Analysis and Enforcement program Ontario (FATE). . Ontario is the only province with a dedicated tracing program that seeks to trace the source of all guns used in crimes, said Scott Ferguson, head of FATE. The rest of Canada found only 6%-10% of guns involved in crimes, according to 2019 data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), a federal agency. On Monday, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police called on the federal government to make it mandatory to trace crime weapons across Canada. “I’m sure we’ll take steps in that direction,” said Bray, who co-chairs the association’s special committee on firearms. Alexander Cohen, communications director for Public Safety Minister Marco Medicino, said the government is aware of the importance of gun tracking. “We know more need to be detected, which is why the 2021 budget invested C$15 million ($11.7 million) to improve the RCMP’s gun detection capability,” he added. But the method has its limitations: Ontario data shows police were unable to locate nearly half the firearms they tried to locate last year, for reasons that include obliterated serial numbers and the lack of a national long gun registry. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government introduced new legislation in May to combat gun violence, including a freeze on gun purchases and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines. But mandatory tracking is not part of it. read more The announcement came in the wake of mass shootings south of the border – in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. The toll of gun violence was felt closer this week when a gunman shot four people in British Columbia, killing two. read more Mendicino told Reuters the government took Canada’s specific circumstances into account with the May measures, citing “disturbing statistics about the rise in gun violence,” specifically the rising rate of gun homicides. “We came to the conclusion that a national gun freeze would be the fastest and most effective way to reverse this trend,” Mendicino said.
TEXAS CONNECTION ‘SHOCKING’
Canada’s gun homicide rate is on the rise: 2020 and 2017 are tied for the highest levels since at least 1997, according to Statistics Canada. In 2020, gun homicides accounted for nearly 40% of the nation’s 743 homicides, while more than 60% of violent gun-related crimes in urban areas involved guns. Canada’s firearm homicide rate in 2020 was 5.6 times that of Australia, according to each country’s government statistics. Canada’s rate was also five times that of Germany in 2010 and 2.5 times that of the Netherlands, according to a 2016 comparative study published in the American Journal of Medicine. Ferguson’s team at FATE takes serial numbers and runs them through databases in Canada and, if nothing turns up, the United States. Texas has become the top source of US crime guns found in Ontario, with 150 firearms counted last year – five times the 30 found in 2018, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), citing the FATE numbers. Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Oklahoma round out the top five. The southern US state has some of the most lenient gun laws in America, according to the ATF’s Texas office in Dallas. The detection by Canadian authorities provides key information to the ATF, which can then investigate and prosecute the buyers of firearms that are then sold illegally or smuggled, said Chris Taylor, ATF attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. The agency opens about 120 investigations a year in the United States based on guns recovered from crimes in Canada, with more than 90 percent coming from Ontario, Taylor said. The number of cases is growing, with the ATF having opened more than 180 probes since October thanks to the Canadian detection, he added. Jeff Boshek, ATF special agent in charge of the Dallas field division, said he and his colleagues were surprised when they began looking for data showing that Canada was a growing destination for guns from Texas. Boshek said an estimated 30 percent of all guns purchased in Texas and then traced to crimes committed abroad are linked to Canada, “which is shocking to me,” because just a few years ago 100 percent were linked with crimes in Mexico. Boshek said the Dallas ATF office is currently investigating several Canadian-flagged leads. Where Texan smugglers might double their money on a gun sold in Mexico, they earn 10 times the gun’s price in Canada, the agent added.
A GLOCK FOR $8,000 Canadian
Gun smuggling can be lucrative: A typical Glock gun trafficked from the US fetches between C$6,000 ($4,603) and C$8,000 in the Toronto area, Ferguson said, about 10 times its purchase price of 500 $ south of the border. It’s busy, too: The number of firearms Canada seized at the border more than doubled last year to 1,110 from 495 in 2020 — the highest total since at least 2016, according to numbers provided to Reuters by the Canada Border Services Agency. This year is on track to be nearly as high, with 523 firearms seized in the first week of June. Gun violence in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, hit a 15-year high in 2019, with 492 incidents involving firearms, according to police data. That number declined over the next two years, but in 2022 it’s on track to rise once again. In Winnipeg, which had the highest firearm homicide rate of any major Canadian city in 2020 — at 1.32 per 100,000 — police have a firearms investigation and analysis unit to identify weapons involved in crimes. They can use shell casings to trace a weapon from shootings in Winnipeg to crimes elsewhere, according to Winnipeg Police Superintendent Elton Hall, who called the technique a “game changer.”
A “WINNING RACE”
But tracking is far from foolproof: Last year 1,173 guns — about 47% of all those Ontario tried to track — could not be traced at all, up from about 28.5% in 2018. In addition to the lack of a registry for long guns in Canada, 3D -printed guns and those with serial numbers that are too damaged cannot be traced. Toronto Police Detective Sergeant Andrew Steinwall, who has been investigating gun crime in Toronto for more than 15 years, sees efforts to combat gun smuggling as an “unwinnable battle.” “We don’t have the resources to seize every gun in this country that has entered illegally,” he said. Smugglers are resourceful: In May, a drone carrying handguns believed to be from the United States was caught in a residential backyard tree in Port Lambton, Ontario, just across the St. Clair from Michigan. “A drone, a gas tank, an unsuspecting mule … these guys will find a way to get these weapons across the border,” Steinwall added. “The demand is here.” ($1 = 1.2874 Canadian dollars) Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto. Edited by Denny Thomas and Pravin Char Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
