Now Guns Are a Border Problem : U.S. exports its misery to Canada

The 5,500-mile border separating Canada and the United States remains the world’s longest undefended frontier. Border relations have long been amicable, a source of justifiable pride for both nations. But the growing presence of guns in Canada--guns made in the United States or smuggled from the United States--may injure that solid relationship.

These guns are surfacing in street crimes from Quebec to British Columbia, in shootouts with Canadian police and, in one case, as they fell out of a smuggler’s pocket.

Understandably, the influx of U.S. guns into the hands of Canadian criminals has raised alarm among law enforcement officials there. It should raise concern--and shame--here as well. Thanks to our lax gun laws, this country, already awash in firearms and the violence and tragedy they inevitably produce, now appears to be increasingly exporting its misery northward.

Canadian law tightly restricts firearm possession; U.S. law does not. As a result, there are just 7 million firearms in Canada--a nation of 29.1 million--and only 950,000 are handguns. Compare that to the more than 200 million guns--including 67 million handguns--among the 260.8 million residents of the United States.

This discrepancy has created a ready market in Canada for smuggled firearms, one that, sadly, some Americans are eager to exploit. More than 100 guns traced to a federally licensed gun dealer in Burlington, Vt., have been seized under warrants or have turned up at crime scenes across Canada. Agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have traced 952 weapons ordered in a single year by this dealer; they believe all the weapons were smuggled into Canada. A Detroit gun dealer, also holding a federal license, was the source of at least 120 guns funneled onto the streets of Toronto.

The number of guns entering Canada illegally is impossible to determine, experts say. Many officials believe they are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.

Though Canadian crime rates are still low compared to those in the United States, many there fear that the smuggled guns will lead to increases in domestic killings and more deaths in other types of crimes. They are also concerned that accidental shootings will balloon.

Intercepting guns once they are smuggled in is largely Canada’s problem to solve. Officials are trying to do that with new police units to track firearms, by raising the penalties for trafficking in weapons and tightening laws on gun possession.

However, lax U.S. gun laws are the source of the problem--laws that permit the largely unlimited manufacture of cheap handguns and the importation into the United States of many foreign-made semiautomatics. So what is this nation doing to restrict these activities? Alas, shamefully little.