OTTAWA/TORONTO, July 27 (Reuters) – A Texas man bought dozens of guns from licensed dealers in the state before illegally reselling at least 16, according to U.S. officials. Twelve were traced to crimes committed in America. The other four were identified with crimes in Canada.
The case of the 31-year-old, who was indicted last month on charges that could land him in prison for years, illustrates the leading role the Lone Star state now plays in the smuggling of weapons used by to violence in Canada, and how firearms tracking can help. fight this trade.
Canadian police chiefs say the cases also show the limits of their government’s domestic policies to combat gun violence, such as a freeze on handgun purchases, when it has the largest civilian gun market the world at your door.
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“We really think that restricting legal gun ownership does not meaningfully address the real problem, which is illegal handguns obtained from the United States,” said Evan Bray, 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 on the purchase of firearms are looser, but higher than rates in many other wealthy countries and has been increasing, according to Statistics Canada data.
Exclusive data obtained by Reuters for Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, shows that when guns involved in crimes were traced in 2021, they were found to have come from the United States overwhelmingly — 85 percent of the time.
In addition, 70% of all tracked guns used in crimes in Ontario came from the United States, while the U.S. share has risen to 73% so far this year, according to data from the analysis program and Ontario Police Firearms Tracking (FATE). .
Ontario is the only province with a special tracing program that aims to identify the source of all guns used in crimes, said Scott Ferguson, head of FATE. The rest of Canada traced only 6% to 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 tracking crime weapons mandatory across Canada.
“I’m sure we’ll take steps in that direction,” said Bray, who co-chairs the association’s special firearms committee.
Alexander Cohen, communications director for Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino, said the government is aware of the importance of tracking weapons. “We know more tracking is needed, which is why the 2021 budget invested C$15 million ($11.7 million) to improve the RCMP’s gun tracking capability,” he added.
However, the method has its own limitations: Ontario data shows police were unable to trace almost half of the firearms they tried to trace last year, for reasons including obliterated serial numbers and the lack of a national registry of long weapons.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government introduced new legislation in May to combat gun violence, including a freeze on handgun 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 to home this week when a gunman shot four people in British Columbia, killing two. Read more
Mendicino told Reuters the government was taking Canada’s specific circumstances into account with the May measures, citing “alarming statistics on the rise in handgun violence,” specifically the rising rate of homicides by firearms
“We came to the judgment that a national gun freeze would be the fastest and most effective way to reverse this trend,” Mendicino said.
“SHOCKING” TEXAS CONNECTION
Canada’s firearm homicide rate has been rising, with 2020 and 2017 tied for the highest since at least 1997, according to Statistics Canada. In 2020, gun homicides accounted for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s 743 murders, while more than 60 percent of violent gun crimes in urban areas involved handguns.
Canada’s firearm homicide rate in 2020 was 5.6 times that of Australia, according to each country’s government statistics. The Canadian rate was also five times that of Germany in 2010 and 2.5 times the rate 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 else, the United States.
Texas has become the top U.S. source of crime-related guns traced to Ontario, with 150 firearms counted last year, five times the 30 identified in 2018, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco , US Firearms and Explosives (ATF), citing FATE. numbers Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Oklahoma round out the top five.
The southern US state has some of the most lenient gun purchase laws in America, according to the ATF’s Texas office in Dallas.
Tracking by Canadian authorities provides key information to the ATF, which can then investigate and prosecute purchasers of firearms that are later illegally sold or smuggled, said ATF Acting Assistant Chris Taylor at the US Embassy in Ottawa.
The agency opens about 120 investigations a year in the United States based on guns traced to crimes in Canada, with more than 90 percent coming from Ontario, Taylor said. The number of cases is rising, and the ATF has opened more than 180 probes since October thanks to Canadian tracking, he added.
Jeff Boshek, ATF special agent in charge of the Dallas field division, said he and his colleagues were surprised when tracking data began to show that Canada was a growing destination for to the arms of Texas.
Boshek said an estimated 30 percent of all guns bought in Texas and then traced to crimes committed overseas are linked to Canada, “which surprises me” because just a few years ago 100 percent were linked with crimes in Mexico. Boshek said the Dallas ATF office is currently investigating many tracks flagged by Canada.
When Texas smugglers can double their money on a gun sold in Mexico, they make 10 times the gun’s price in Canada, the agent added.
A GLOCK FOR C$8,000
Gun smuggling can be lucrative: A typical Glock pistol smuggled from the U.S. costs 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 also busy: The number of firearms seized in Canada at the border doubled last year to 1,110, from 495 in 2020, the highest total since at least 2016, according to numbers provided to Reuters by 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 fell in the following two years, but is on track to rise again in 2022.
In Winnipeg, which had the highest firearm homicide rate of any major Canadian city in 2020 at 1.32 per 100,000 residents, police have a firearms investigation and analysis section to locate weapons involved in crimes.
According to Winnipeg Police Inspector Elton Hall, who called the technique a “game changer,” they can use bullet casings to trace a gun from a shooting in Winnipeg to crimes elsewhere.
AN “INVINCIBLE FIGHT”
However, tracking is far from foolproof: Last year, 1,173 guns — about 47% of all that Ontario tried to track — could not be traced at all, compared to 28.5% in 2018. Aside from Canada’s lack of registration for long guns, the 3D-printed guns and serial numbers that are too damaged cannot be located.
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 fight.”
“We don’t have the resources to seize every weapon in this country that has come illegally,” he said.
Smugglers are resourceful: In May, a drone carrying guns believed to have come from the United States got stuck in a tree in a residential backyard in Ontario’s Port Lambton, 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)
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Reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Pravin Char
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.