As U.S. Guns Pour Into Canada, the Bodies Pile Up
The proliferation of illegal firearms from the United States has fueled a spike in gun violence in Canada, where most guns used in crimes are smuggled across the border.
By Norimitsu Onishi
American firearms are spilling increasingly into a country where gun control is far stricter than in the United States, according to government data and the authorities. Smugglers are hiding them inside commercial and personal vehicles, but are also loading them on drones, concealing them in boats or stashing them in a dead drop in a library straddling the border. Many guns then fetch up to eight times their original price on Canada’s black market.
The proliferation of illegal guns from the United States has fueled bloodshed in Canadian cities and even in remote northern communities. It has brought the kind of random gun violence rarely seen before, like the shootout last year at the studio in Toronto’s hip Queen Street West neighborhood.
Homicides have spiked in Canada in the past decade, most of them from guns. Gang-related shootings have killed at least three innocent bystanders this year in the Toronto area, including an 8-year-old boy in his own bedroom. Most guns used in crimes in Canada enter illegally across the border.
In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, 91 percent of handguns recovered from crimes in 2024 came in illegally from the United States, according to the provincial government. In Toronto, the country’s biggest city, 88 percent of all firearms recovered from crimes in 2024 were smuggled across the border, up from 51 percent in 2014, according to the Toronto police. The actual figures are almost certainly higher because many recovered guns have been tampered with to make them untraceable, the police said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/world/americas/canada-gun-violence-us.html
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/as-u-s-guns-pour-into-canada-the-bodies-pile-up/
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-boston-globe/20251222/281556592175564