Most violent crimes involving a firearm in Canada are committed with handguns.
December 12, 2019
Toronto is the city with the most firearm-related violent crimes in Canada. The federal government is preparing a bill to ban assault weapons, yet 60% of criminal weapons seized by the police in Canada's largest city are handguns, not assault weapons.
"Assault weapons are very dangerous [...], but they are not as widespread as handguns", says Francis Langlois, gun culture expert and History teacher at the Cégep de Trois-Rivières in Quebec.
He notes that while so-called assault weapons are more lethal due to their design, in major cities like Toronto or Montreal, these weapons are "hard to hide and to obtain" and so less often used in crimes than handguns.
Toronto police services have seized a total of 831 crime weapons in 2018 (including firearms, but also toy guns and air guns). Of these weapons, 58.5% were handguns.
Legal definition of “handgun” in Canada: a firearm that is designed, altered or intended to be aimed and fired by the action of one hand, whether or not it has been redesigned or subsequently altered to be aimed and fired by the action of both hands.
According to Statistics Canada, 57.4% of homicides in the country were perpetrated using a firearm in 2018. It also notes that in 2016, there were 130 homicides committed using a handgun, "the most since 2005. These accounted for 21% of homicides overall, and 58% of shooting homicides."
It is worth noting that certain automatic and semi-automatic weapons can also be handled with one hand, according to the model.
No legal definition of "assault weapon"
"As promised to Canadians during our campaign, we will ban assault weapons", wrote Public Safety Canada to Radio-Canada.
"Following the advice of the Canadian Firearm Program, we will provide more details in due time." Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair says he is currently developing a list of firearms that will be prohibited.
Yet, while "handgun" has its own definition in Canadian law, there is no legal definition for "assault weapon" or "assault rifle". "Therefore, the CFP [Canadian Firearm Program] does not use any of these expressions as classification category for the seizure and communication of statistics on firearms", says the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). It is therefore difficult to grasp the actual impact of assault weapons on crimes across Canada.
"What is used in certain crimes in the United States - which we haven't much seen in Canada yet - are assault weapons. How can we define it in Canada? We will have to come up with a fitting definition before we can even think of banning them", says François Doré, a former police officer at the Sûreté du Québec.
A local approach to a national problem
When it comes to handguns, the federal government wishes to leave it up to municipalities to regulate them.
"We understand that each city and each province has its own needs and concerns, and our plan is to work with them by authorizing them to adopt additional laws to restrain the storage and usage of handguns in their jurisdiction", replied the government in writing.
Would that change anything about firearms trafficking? "Absolutely not", says former police officer François Doré.
Francis Langlois also believes that it will "not be a very effective way" to go about it.
"I feel like the liberal government is straddling the fence on this issue and practicing a form of somewhat asymmetrical federalism."
"By leaving it up to municipalities, [the government] may be thinking [...] that in the West for instance, where people are more open to gun ownership and so potentially to handguns, that they'll regulate their way, and in the East and Center of Canada they'll be able to regulate more tightly."
Besides, local bans have already been tried without much success in the US for instance, says Francis Langlois, who is also a member of the Observatoire sur les États-Unis de la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand, a think tank that analyzes public debates in the US, American domestic and foreign policy, and Quebec-US relations.
"For instance, they banned the sale and carrying of firearms and all sorts of things in Chicago, but what happened is huge gun stores settled right across the town border. And studies have shown that crime guns often come from these peripheral stores."
Nevertheless, there are differences between Canada and the US. Weapons are better regulated in Canada, partially explaining the lesser number of homicides and suicides due to firearms in Canada compared to the US.
Toronto asks the federal government to ban handguns
At the city council meeting on November 26, motion HL11.1 was adopted. It asks the federal government for a national handgun ban, and asks the province to ban the sale of ammunition in Toronto and to reinforce firearm sale legislation.
That's because city councilors do not believe in a local ban either. "From what I understand, a lot of handguns are already illegal and prohibited and are imported to our city to commit these crimes," says Josh Matlow, city councilor representing Toronto-St.Paul's. "What are we doing about that? I don't know the answer to that."
Kristyn Wong-Tam, city councilor representing Toronto-Centre, adds: "When we think about the fact that we already can't regulate noise in the city of Toronto, there is no way our bylaw officers can regulate handguns."
"We need to understand this problem better and give a framework to this conversation", adds Michael Thompson, city councilor for Scarborough-Centre, "because honestly, I've been here 17 years, and 17 years later, we are still asking the same questions and still talking about the same problem."
Easy access
One of the issues, according to François Doré, is the easy access to these weapons all over Canada, whether they are coming from Canada or from the US.
The RCMP's Caroline Duval says "the Canadian Firearm Program does not gather and does not follow any statistics regarding the origin of illegal or stolen firearms." That is up to local police services. "The process and/or policies can differ from one service to another, including when it comes to declaration requirements," she adds.
Which is why adding additional regulations will not work until police services are well-funded and efforts are streamlined, says François Doré.
"It takes regulation measures, yes, but it takes efficient police services that can seize these firearms too."
Public Safety Canada wants to underline the government's investments to support police services to fight gun violence: "We have invested 86 million dollars in the Canada border agency and the RCMP to fight firearm trafficking, and 65 million dollars in Ontario for initiatives aiming to prevent and fight gun violence and gangs."
Yet the purchase of firearms by straw buyers who then resell them on the black market seems to be a trend on the rise.
Justin Green, a former philosophy student at the University of Toronto, legally purchased 23 handguns in less than two years, including as many as 15 from a single location, and then illegally resold them. During that same period, Andrew Winchester purchased 47 handguns in the Greater Toronto Area over the course of six months, selling them on the illegal market for as much as $100,000.
Wes Winkel, the owner of an Ontario sporting goods store, says the real issue comes from a lack of enforcement. He says years of sales records are already being kept by retailers, yet authorities aren't effectively using that information. "For whatever reason, the amount of time it takes for law enforcement to identify a straw person is too long."
Up until December 9 of this year, there have been 458 shootings in Toronto, a 20% increase compared to last year.
With files from Mia Sheldon and Matthew Amha.
This story appeared in French on CBC/Radio-Canada.