Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 25, 2018
Does Canada Have a Gun Control Problem?
July 18, 2012
In the aftermath of the deadly mass shooting in Toronto that left two bystanders and the shooter dead and 12 others injured, a right-wing blogger has questioned whether Canada’s gun control laws actually work.
“I thought they had gun control in Canada,” Laura Loomer, tweeted. “What happened?” she asked.
That tweet was one of dozens of others posing the same question, with many branding the shooting as evidence that gun control laws do not work.
But others have been quick to point out that the number of shootings should speak for itself.
“This is the first mass shooting in our country in almost two years,” one Canadian tweeted. “How many has the USA had just this year? Gun control DOES work, obviously. Just not 100 percent of the time.”
The past year has seen a spate of mass shootings across the U.S., with a total of 154 taking place since June 28 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any that results in four or more individuals shot or killed in the same general time frame or location.
Sunday’s mass shooting in Toronto was the first in Canada since an attack on a mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, which saw a single gunman kill six people and wound 18 others.
Before that, Canada had not had a mass shooting since January 22, 2016, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed two people at a residence in La Loche, Saskatchewan, before continuing his rampage at La Loche Community School, killing a teacher and an assistant, and wounding several others.
A firearm is nearly seven times less likely to be used in a homicide in Canada than in the U.S., according to Statistics Canada. (More Stats: Newsweek)