As Trump complains about Canada, data shows most crime guns seized in GTA come from U.S.
Law enforcement officials say they’re seizing guns with alarming frequency
While U.S. President Donald Trump claims Canada hasn't done enough to stop the flow of illegal migrants and fentanyl south, data from GTA police forces shows American guns are being used as tools of crime and violence this side of the border.
In 2024, 88 per cent of the 717 crime guns seized by the Toronto Police Service were traced to the United States.
It's a similar story in other parts of the Greater Toronto Area, too:
- Of the 94 crime guns seized by York Regional Police in 2024, 63 were traced back to the U.S., a police spokesperson said.
- Durham Regional Police say 83 per cent of crime guns seized by police last year came from the United States.
- Peel Regional Police seized more than 200 illegal firearms last year, approximately 90 per cent of which can be traced back to the U.S.
Peel police are now seizing illegal firearms every day, said Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich.
These weapons are being used in the type of offences "that are really harming our community", such as home invasions, carjackings and commercial robberies, he said.
"It's something that, definitely, we are beginning to see an uptick in and creates a tremendous amount of concern because the reality is these are tools of violence," he said.
It's a huge change from when Milinovich first became a police officer close to 25 years ago.
"When I began, if an illegal firearm or if any firearm was seized as part of a crime, it was a conversation piece. Everybody in the police service knew about it," he said.
"But we are seeing them with such regularity that it's become commonplace and that's just the seizure of the gun."
In York region, about a third of the crime guns seized were found by frontline officers during their regular patrols, said Deputy Chief Alvaro Almeida.
"Most often not it's a regular traffic stop that they're coming upon these individuals. This is quite scary and is a threat to our public safety," Almeida said.
"What we're particularly concerned about is the steady increase of our frontline members coming into contact with individuals without even knowing that they're involved in criminal activity, being in possession of a firearm."
Long running trend, expert says
The data from GTA police is in line with what research has shown for many years, says Jooyoung Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the underlying causes and long-term consequences of gun violence.
"One thing we've known for many, many generations is that the U.S. is a global exporter of firearms and the vast majority of crime guns in Canada are originating in a very small kind of handful of U.S. states that have much more lax and porous gun laws," he said.
Those lax laws make it easy for people to get their hands on guns, he said.
"There's not really this clandestine network that we see in Hollywood films of sophisticated purchasers who then reroute to some underground market," he said.
"It's really that some individuals go into stores and if they don't get disqualified at the time of purchase and they pass the background check, they get the firearm and leave that day."
Recent data from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) suggests the issue might be getting worse.
CBSA is seizing many more drugs, prohibited weapons and firearms than they were just two years ago, according to figures compiled by the border agency and shared with CBC News.
In 2022, CBSA seized 581 firearms coming into Canada from the U.S. That figure jumped to 839 last year, according to the agency's data.
While Trump may complain about the harm caused by drugs and migrants flowing south into the U.S., Lee said these guns are causing grave harm to Canadians.
"If we go kind of downstream and look at the effects that these kinds of crime guns have on Canadian society, then we'll see that the president is really out of touch with claims about fentanyl and other kinds of criminal elements coming from Canada," he said.
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