Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney recently defended his government’s gun confiscation and “buyback” program, stating the government “has acted swiftly and decisively to combat gun crime” by removing “prohibited assault-style firearms from communities across Canada through the Assault Style Firearms Compensation Program” (a.k.a. the “buyback”).
“Swiftly” is not the most apt description for a program that has been dragging along since the “assault-style firearms” ban and confiscation law took effect immediately upon being unveiled by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau in May 2020. A new extension of the amnesty period for affected gun owners was announced last week (the fourth such extension so far), this one made necessary because the validity of the 2020 law is expected to be decided by the Supreme Court of Canada sometime next year. “Decisively” is another howling misnomer, given that licensed and police-vetted gun owners – the only ones eligible to participate in the “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program” – aren’t the individuals responsible for Canada’s criminal violence.
A “report card” on Canada’s criminal justice system, released in March by the nonpartisan Macdonald-Laurier Institute, confirms that the Liberals’ gun bans haven’t reduced crime. “Violent crime, violent crime severity, and property crime have continued to increase in most provinces and territories” over the last decade. Police clearance rates have fallen, the percentage of court decisions resulting in a guilty verdict has dropped over the last five years from 61 to 46 percent, and more offenders are being released on non-custodial sentences. Canadians, understandably, “are increasingly feeling unsafe in their communities and are losing faith in the justice system more broadly.”
Carney’s legislative focus on honest gun owners, coupled with his assertion that “irresponsible American gun laws” enable criminals and illegal gun smuggling into Canada, conveniently divert attention from this dismal state of affairs. “Gun control in Canada,” sums up Dr. Gary Mauser, “is based on lies that the Liberals spread about guns and crime,” and chief among them is that measures like gun bans and buybacks will keep Canadians safe.
Mauser, a Canadian criminologist and emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University, has written and testified extensively on the issue of firearms and crime, and his recent article highlights the compelling differences in crime trends between America, with its “irresponsible” gun laws, and Canada.
“Almost all of the US is safer than Toronto,” he writes. “Canadians may be surprised to learn that murders in the US are concentrated in just a few places. Except for a few localities, half of the counties in the USA have no murders at all; many other counties have very few. There are more murders each year in Toronto than in most places in the US.” The factors contributing to this relatively greater security include the Trump administration’s “tremendous effort” to arrest or deport violent criminals and other offenders, citing 413,991 violent crime arrests and 868,330 property crime arrests. And, unlike Canadians, Americans enjoy and exercise a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Given the “wide-spread ownership of firearms and civic minded owners willing and able to defend themselves and their communities,” much of the United States “has both very high gun ownership rates and zero murders.”
In contrast, Canada’s laws “make it all but illegal for citizens to use a firearm to protect themselves or their families.” Mauser points out that violent crime in Canada has increased by 34 percent in the last decade; repeat offenders get bail, imprisoned offenders are typically released early, and the federal government has, it seems, no interest in keeping track of how many illegal immigrants are in the country.
In one horrifying crime last year, a father of four was shot dead in front of his children after his door was kicked in during a home invasion in Vaughan, Ontario. News reports indicate several suspects were apprehended, and the 26-year-old charged with first-degree murder was, according to law enforcement, “out on four separate forms of release” at the time. The locality’s police chief commented that the incident “once again highlights how police chiefs across the country, myself included, remain adamant that changes need to be made to the (justice) system” (emphasis added).
Meanwhile, 29 American states no longer require law-abiding individuals to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun, and gun owners are increasingly embracing the freedom to carry firearms for defensive use outside the home. A survey of general election voters commissioned by Dr. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) found that almost 30% of respondents said they carry a firearm, a 5.5% increase since the last such poll in December 2024. Of those, 13.2% said they carry a firearm all or most of the time and 16.6% replied they carry sometimes or rarely. The CPRC makes the especially interesting point that loosening carry permit requirements in six states, as required to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, not only resulted in an “enormous increase in the number of permits issued” but, contrary to grim predictions by politicians and gun control activists, violent crime in those states actually declined.
Canada’s liberal lawmakers may be surprised to learn that far from fueling a crisis in crime, America’s gun laws, its increase in first-time gun owners and persons lawfully carrying are expected to coincide with a new record low in America’s murder rate. According to the CPRC, the 2025 figure is likely to fall “at least 10% below the previous record low.”
It begs the question – does Canada have a gun problem, or a crime and enforcement problem?
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