An April 16, 2026, CBC report shows exactly what crime-gun enforcement should be focused on: cross-border trafficking, criminal resale, and violent offenders – not confiscating firearms from licensed Canadians who acquired them legally.[i]
This should end, once and for all, the fantasy that confiscating legally owned firearms from licensed Canadians is a serious answer to violent crime.
The report lays out a rare, detailed look at a real crime-gun pipeline.
A Florida man legally purchased 28 handguns in the United States, smuggled them into Canada, and sold them to a Canadian trafficker for the retail price plus a $1,000 fee per gun.
Those firearms later turned up at 10 crime scenes in Ontario and Quebec. Two killings were linked to the scheme. Eighteen of those smuggled handguns are still unaccounted for.
This is what a public safety crisis looks like.
A smuggling network.
A trafficker.
A criminal supply chain.
And yet the Liberal government remains obsessed with the wrong target.
Instead of putting the full political weight of Ottawa behind stopping the flow of smuggled crime guns, this government continues to pour time, energy, and your taxpayer dollars into confiscating firearms from Canadians who acquired them legally and who were already vetted by the same government that now treats them like the source of the problem.
That is not evidence-based policy, that’s public safety political theatre.
The CBC report is especially devastating because it doesn’t speak in abstractions. It shows what actually happens after smuggled guns cross the border.
One of the trafficked firearms was linked to a fatal shooting in Hamilton. Another was seized in a Quebec homicide investigation. Another surfaced after a reckless Toronto gunfight in November 2024, one police officer described as “a miracle” no one was killed or injured.
These were crime guns in the hands of dangerous people.
These were not licensed hunters, target shooters, or firearms collectors with a PAL, a background check, and a locked safe.
Toronto police told CBC that, among the crime guns seized in the city last year and traced to date, 86 per cent came from the United States.
Read that again.
Eighty-six per cent.
So the obvious question is this: if the overwhelming majority of traced crime guns in Toronto are coming from the U.S., why is the Liberal government still fixated on licensed Canadian gun owners?
Because licensed owners are easier to target.
They are known to the system. They have names, addresses, licence numbers, and records.
They are compliant by definition.
They are safe to regulate, safe to threaten, and safe to use as props in a pre-written political script about “doing something” on guns.
Stopping gun smugglers is harder. So is stopping gun traffickers, gang networks, and cross-border criminal enforcement is harder.
But that’s where the danger is.
The CBC article makes another point that Ottawa should be forced to answer for.
Every gun recovered in this case had its serial number obliterated. Authorities had to restore those serial numbers to trace the firearms back to the smuggler.
That’s what criminal gun use looks like: a smuggled handgun with its identifying marks ground off to evade detection.
That’s the world of organized gun crime.
That is the world public policy should be built to confront.
Instead, the federal government keeps pretending that broad punishment of the compliant is the same thing as meaningful action against violent criminals.
Worse, this case involves only one gun smuggler. And even here, 18 of his smuggled guns remain missing.
That should stop every honest policymaker cold.
If one known scheme can send 28 handguns into Canada, link them to 10 crime scenes, connect them to killings, and still leave 18 firearms out on the streets, then the last thing this country needs is more moral posturing about licensed owners.
What Canada needs is relentless focus on smuggling routes, criminal trafficking networks, border interdiction, intelligence-sharing, and real enforcement against the people who supply the underworld.
The Liberal government keeps choosing the easier enemy over the real one.
It keeps chasing the compliant while the criminal pipeline keeps proving where the threat truly lives.
You cannot protect Canadians by confiscating legally owned firearms from licensed citizens, while smuggled handguns keep flowing into criminal hands. You protect Canadians by crushing the gun smuggling pipeline and everyone associated with it.
[i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gun-smuggler-plea-deal-9.7159464
1 Comment
Tom
Very noteworthy, while 85%+ firearms used in crimes in Chinada are traced to the USA, the remaining 15% are largely not traceable, meaning their origin is not known (but likely also from the USA, largely, if you are a common-sense type of person). Bottom line: It’s not PAL holders who are the problem. It is not the guns either. It’s the criminals in Chinada you need to be mad at, the guys that Chinada’s justice system keeps giving free passes to.