加拿大枪支管控的困境与现实：从立法禁令到社区根源

Canada has relatively strict gun laws, especially compared with our neighbor to the south. Unlike the United States, where firearm ownership is treated as an inalienable right, in Canada, the laws are set up to make gun ownership a responsibility. Those who want to get a gun have to apply for a license that has to be renewed every 5 years. As part of being a licensee, you have to take a gun safety training course. You have to have people write letters of recommendation and speak on your mental fitness and social responsibility of owning a gun.

In addition to all of that, the federal government has been increasingly limiting the types of firearms that Canadians can legally own. Today, our government is finishing the job, adding a further 179 unique makes and models of assault style weapons to the list of prohibited firearms here in Canada. So, why does gun violence still happen here?

Canada's gun laws go back to the 1800s, but have been shaped largely by two mass shooting events. The first of those happened in 1989 when a gunman entered the École Polytechnique and killed 14 women. In the aftermath, the government passed Bill C-17, which establishes most of the gun control laws that we now know about. Things like a waiting period to get a license, a safety training course, expanded screening for people who are applying to own a gun. All of these things came in the aftermath of that massacre. These represent some of the most effective gun control laws that exist on the books. These are all common sense laws that are there to protect Canadians and also to prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on guns.

And then in 2020, the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history where a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 22 people. So after the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre, there were a number of different laws that restrict Canadians' access to firearms. The most immediate was a ban on various long guns. After that, in 2022, there was a national handgun freeze and then in 2024-2025, there was an expansion of the long guns that are prohibited in Canada.

These policies came through Bill C-21. The bill also introduced a buyback program for those newly banned models, though several police services said they would not directly participate. The measures from Bill C-21 received criticism because of the low participation rate in the buyback program.

So buyback programs are a very popular policy item for governments. They tend to be very symbolic in nature, and the reason for that is the people who participate in these buyback programs are not likely to become gun traffickers or commit crime. They tend to produce good photo opportunities where lawmakers can show a bunch of firearms that have been submitted into the program, especially when it comes to long guns. Long guns are not typically used in shootings in Canada. Critics also said that not enough was being done to address the real issue, illegal guns, most of which they say come from the US.

The Nova Scotia case is kind of an exemplar in this respect. If you look at how the shooter got his guns, three of them were obtained illegally from the United States. The other was obtained illegally through an estate. This was not a lawful gun owner who decided to go rogue. This was somebody who was skirting the policies and the controls that are already in place. US is a global exporter of both licit and illicit firearms. And even though we don't have long-term systematic data on this phenomenon, the select case studies and instances where people submit guns to traces tend to show that most crime guns, especially handguns, are originating in the United States.

There have been attempts to address this. Bill C-21, that contentious law passed in the aftermath of the Nova Scotia mass shooting, did also include stiffer punishments for smuggling illegal weapons, and it gave border security and law enforcement expanded powers to try to deal with the issue. In reality, this is a very hard thing to do because we share this enormous border with the United States. Attacking this problem through gun control legislation is perhaps missing the bigger picture.

Gun violence is an issue with difficult and complex factors, but there are things that can be done. I think the biggest issue is that the Canadian government has been focused heavily on gun control restrictions, but not on prevention. If we look at any map of any city in Canada where shootings are happening, you can see that they're clustered. Shootings tend to be concentrated in the most underserved neighborhoods. These are places that have a high percentage of black, indigenous, and recent immigrant groups. These are places that have a high rate of people who are coming in and out of carceral settings, a low rate of employment, a high risk of people not having access to long-term health care, child care, and other kinds of unmet needs. One of the major policy items that could help address gun violence in Canada is to strengthen the communities in which shootings are occurring.

One of the secondary effects of gun violence is that victims can become perpetrators. Gun violence is very cyclical. Whenever somebody gets shot, there's immediate period in the aftermath of a shooting where retaliation is very likely. This is precisely why we need to invest in intervention resources who can go in and cool things down before they bubble up again. If we really want to affect gun violence and reduce gun violence in the Canadian context, policies ought to be addressing disparities and need. And these are things like intergenerational poverty, housing, healthcare. All of these things when they're not met, we see gun violence as a kind of downstream effect of that.