A former trucker from Florida has been sentenced to more than four years in U.S. prison after smuggling handguns into Canada that were later recovered at 10 crime scenes in Ontario and Quebec, and linked to two killings.

Court documents reviewed by CBC News provide a rare glimpse into a cross-border pipeline for crime guns.

The scheme saw U.S. firearms purchased legally, then transported up to 2,000 kilometres north to be re-sold to a Canadian trafficker for the retail price of the gun, plus a $1,000 fee for each weapon.

One of the weapons was found in Toronto after what police described as a "reckless" shootout in November 2024 that they said highlighted the "real and present danger" posed by illegal firearms.

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[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The government recently banned a ton of long guns that were previously legal, in the name of crime prevention and that fact they look scary. The compensation program for the buy back is nearly a lottery, there are not enough funds to refund the expected number of returned firearms.

[–] ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca 1 points 12 hours ago

Those rifle bans are dumb, but they're basically how they've always done things. When they were deciding on what was a 'restricted' vs 'prohibited' rifle in the 90s when the licensing scheme first got into play, it was clear that they looked up a gun digest and simply picked out a lot of stuff at random and it made no sense.

For example AK rifles were prohib, but ARs were not. AR rifles were restricted, but plenty of equally capable rifles were non-restricted. Some bans literally made no sense. The G41 assault rifle, an experimental German rifle that never went beyond the prototype phase, was added to the prohib list anyway. That gun was produced in such limited quantities and uses such unique and highly specialized ammunition (it was an experimental caseless round) that no criminal or criminal organization can get a hold of no matter what.

The whole point is their thinking is 'I hate guns and I want to destroy any and all shooting sports and hunting' This even apparently is extending to subsistence hunters who need a rifle to survive. This is why the SKS is not yet banned even though they have been trying to for a very, very long time. If they ban that it will cause a hell of a lot of problems for a lot of people... and they're still trying anyway!