Harold Hutchison, DCNF
Canadian gun-control laws, which included a gun “buy back” program, failed to prevent shootings in Toronto that occurred on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Three people were killed and others wounded in at least three shooting incidents in the Toronto area, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). The shootings took place even though Canada passed legislation known as C-21 that banned modern semiautomatic firearms and implemented a “freeze” on handguns, including a plan to launch an Australian-style “buy back” of the banned rifles and shotguns.
“It is alleged that there was an exchange of gunfire between the accused and an unknown suspect. After discharging his firearm, the accused stole a vehicle from a rideshare driver that had customers on board,” Toronto police said in a release about a Sunday shootout that left multiple people wounded. “While fleeing the scene, the accused struck pedestrians and vehicles. Two victims were transported to hospital with gunshot wounds, one victim was struck by the vehicle and they were transported to hospital.”
In March, Conservative Member of Parliament Dane Lloyd of Alberta questioned Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree about the apparent large-scale refusal of gun owners to comply with the ban.
“The plan we have is as of March 31st, the time to complete the enrollment, will be, will be done and then the RCMP and other agencies will be available throughout the spring and the summer to do the collection,” Anandasangaree responded.
Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control, Canada’s most prominent gun-control organization, told the CBC that people shouldn’t “overreact” to the shootings over the weekend.
“Every shooting is concerning, of course, and every shooting makes us feel less secure. But I think you have to look at the overall picture,” Cukier claimed. “If we look specifically at firearm incidents, they have gone up but firearm homicides have actually leveled out.”
National Firearms Association Ontario Director Tom Mavin took aim at Cukier’s comments in a Monday post on X.
“The anti-gun lobby usually rely on panic and fear to advance their cause. In this case, however, the problem is smuggled handguns, which undermines their narrative that legally owned firearms are the primary cause,” Mavin said.
“The Liberal government has spent years banning legally owned firearms, and somehow the criminals still have plenty,” NFA National President Blair Hagen told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “How are those slogan-driven non solutions working out for them? The Canadian public has woken up to this political gimmick, it’s time to abandon this failed social experiment.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the majority of firearms used in crimes in 2023 and 2024 came from Canada.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) remarked on the limitations of firearms tracing in Volume III of the National Firearms Commerce and Tracing Assessment.
“Firearms selected for tracing are not chosen for purposes of determining which types, makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes,” ATF said. “The firearms selected do not constitute a random sample and should not be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that universe.”
ATF also noted in a 2000 report that firearms tracing usually stops at the first retail sale of the firearm.
The Toronto Police and Coalition for Gun Control did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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