As gun violence rises in Canada, weapons from the U.S. complicate gun control efforts

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/09/ [login to see] /canada-gun-control-us-guns-trafficking
A few weeks ago, the Rev. Sky Starr led a funeral in northwest Toronto for a 24-year-old shooting victim. Among the mourners, she noticed a young man.

"I saw this youth was kneeling at the casket, he was praying," Starr recalls. The next morning, she received a call letting her know the same young mourner was dead. He'd been shot and killed overnight.

Canada's 2019 rate of violent deaths by firearms of 0.5 per 100,000 people was an eighth of that in the U.S. But shootings have been trending upward since 2014. Many homicides, particularly those committed with handguns, are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods like Jane and Finch, in Toronto, where Starr counsels families of gun victims.

In Canada, weapons are federally regulated. Unlike in the U.S., gun ownership is not a constitutional right. Since 2020, when Canada's deadliest mass shooting occurred, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has enacted a series of anti-gun violence measures, including legislation banning 1,500 models of assault-style firearms.