‘We’re seeing far too many weapons coming across the border from the United States’ – Watching America

“It used to be that whenever we heard about a shooting in the US, we would think, ‘Maybe they’ll see how safe it is here and become more like us.’ But unfortunately, now we’re becoming more like them.”*

With these words, Wendy Cukier, co-founder of the Coalition for Gun Control and professor at the University of Toronto, expresses her deep disappointment with Toronto, the country’s largest city, once considered one of the safest cities in the world.

The data shows that there have been 306 shootings in Toronto as of the end of August this year, a sharp 50% increase from the same period last year. Guns smuggled from the United States are the main reason.

‘A gun that costs $500 in the US can sell for $5,000 in Canada’

According to The Wall Street Journal, the rise in gun violence in Toronto is largely driven by turf wars in the tow truck industry. Some local tow truck companies are controlled by gangs, and rival factions often clash when one encroaches on the other’s territory. Local police say that in the past, these disputes were usually settled with fists, but now guns smuggled from the U.S. have turned these conflicts into a “blood sport,” turning tow trucking into a deadly business.

Canadian Border Patrol data shows that the number of smuggled guns seized at the U.S.-Canada border increased by 25% between 2019 and 2024, with the guns primarily coming from U.S. states with lax gun control, such as Ohio, Michigan, Texas and Florida. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has blamed the influx of smuggled U.S. guns for the city’s rapid rise in violent crime: “There’s no question that we’re seeing far too many guns coming across the border from the United States.”

Some American media have previously reported that, unlike the United States, Canada’s constitution does not provide for the right to bear arms, meaning that it is easier for the government to pass gun control laws and that restrictions on gun sales are much stricter. However, gun regulations were relaxed during the Conservative government from 2006 to 2015, most notably with the 2012 repeal of a mandatory national gun register, making it harder for law enforcement to effectively track weapons used in crimes. In addition, American gun lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association have stimulated the gun market and stoked anti-gun control sentiment, deliberately influencing the gun culture of neighboring countries. This has led to a sharp increase in the number of firearms flowing from the U.S. to Canada.

Per capita, Canada is now the largest foreign buyer of American small arms and has the second-highest rate of gun ownership among developed nations, after the United States. (Former) Toronto Police Chief Bill Fordy has stated that the explicit right to bear arms in the U.S. Constitution makes it easy to obtain weapons, creating a lucrative black market. Some people buy guns in the U.S. and then resell them in Canada for huge profits.

It is believed that a gun purchased in the U.S. for $500 can easily be sold in Canada for $5,000. Once these American guns enter Canada, they are likely used in robberies, murders and other violent crimes. Fordy noted that last year in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, 90 percent of the guns used in known violent crimes could be traced to the United States. “Through our tracing and analysis, we know that the top states (where these guns are coming from) are Ohio, Texas, Florida and Georgia.”

‘Being geographically close to the US is a very big problem’

In fact, gun violence has not only long been an epidemic that the U.S. cannot cure, but has also become a contagion that harms other parts of the world, especially neighboring countries. Compared to Canada, a developed neighbor to the north, Mexico, the U.S. neighbor to the south, suffers even more from the smuggling of U.S. weapons, for which there is no cure.

Mexico has very strict gun laws, with only one gun store in the entire country. However, the U.S. border states are full of gun stores. The Mexican government has long accused U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors of fueling rampant gun smuggling across the border, resulting in some 500,000 guns entering Mexico illegally each year, many of which end up in the hands of criminal gangs.

Since 2021, the Mexican government has been filing lawsuits against several U.S. gun manufacturers and dealers in at least two states, seeking $10 billion in damages. However, the Mexican side has so far been unable to win its lawsuits due to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was passed by the U.S. in 2005 and protects U.S. gun manufacturers and dealers from civil liability.

Statistics show that most of the guns found and traced in violent crimes in Latin America come from the United States. The long-running crisis in Haiti is a clear example of how American guns are plaguing Latin American countries. A research report, “Haiti’s Criminal Markets,” released earlier this year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, noted that “every measure of insecurity … in Haiti is trending upward” and is a major reason “the U.S.-Haiti arms trade is on the rise.”*

According to estimates by Haiti’s National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, the country may have as many as 500,000 small arms in circulation, of which only 38,000 are legally registered. Analysts say that with the increase in trafficking in recent years, that number may now be even higher. Brazilian security expert Robert Muggah has pointed to the easy flow of American weapons as one of the main factors exacerbating Haiti’s social instability. He has warned that the massive influx of illegal weapons has greatly strengthened the power of Haitian criminal gangs, allowing them to easily overwhelm the country’s poorly armed law enforcement agencies and lead to an escalation in violent crime.

All of this explains why the number of Haitian immigrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally has increased in recent years. Haitian economist Camille Chalmers has said that Haiti’s ongoing unrest and popular insecurity are not just a product of U.S. and Haitian domestic forces conspiring to create chaos, but are also linked to the covert support provided by U.S. arms smuggling. He says it “makes the country’s development increasingly difficult” and that “geographic proximity to the U.S. is a very big problem.”*

*Editor’s note: While these quotes are correctly translated, they could not be independently verified.