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| Canada Bans Sales and Shipments of Guns |
Ottawa - Canada implemented a new ban on the sale, purchase and shipment of guns starting Friday (10/21/2022). It is the government's latest move to reduce gun violence across the country. Starting Friday, people will not be able to buy, sell or transfer handguns in Canada. Nor can they bring newly acquired pistols into the country, according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement.
"With gun violence increasing across Canada, it is our duty to take immediate action to remove this deadly weapon from our communities," Trudeau said in a statement.
Trudeau announced the freeze in May, a week after 19 children were killed in a school shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Canada does not want tragic events to occur in its territory. “We cannot allow the gun debate to become so polarized that nothing can be done. We can't allow that to happen in our country," Trudeau said at the time.
The Canadian government says it has seen a drastic increase in the number of guns in the country over the past decade, with 70% more pistols in Canada than in 2010. The gun freeze was implemented while other gun control laws were passing through Canada's parliament.
In 2020, 22 people died in a mass shooting in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the country's deadliest mass shooting in recent years. That led to a ban on assault-style firearms and renewed discussion around gun control and access to illegal weapons.
While Canada has sounded the alarm about gun violence, gun violence rates are still relatively low compared to its southern neighbour. There are far more mass shootings in the United States: more than 500 and counting in 2022 alone, according to the Archives of Gun Violence.
In 2020, 277 people were killed by firearms in Canada, at a rate of 0.73 per 100,000 people, according to Canada's national statistics office. That same year in the United States, more than 19,000 people died at the hands of gun violence at a rate of 5.9 per 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.