In a recent editorial entitled “Justin Trudeau Runs for Congress,” the Wall Street Journal mocked Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, for the new gun legislation he proposed in the wake of recent mass shootings in the United States.
Trudeau recently announced the Canadian government’s plan to freeze handgun ownership by banning the purchase, sale, transfer, and import of handguns in Canada. The new legislation would also require that long-gun magazines never hold more than five rounds, and it would confiscate assault weapons in a mandatory buyback program. The Wall Street Journal piece, written underneath the byline of their editorial board, implies that this move was unnecessary in a country like Canada and merely a political stunt — even an act of cultural condescension — in response to the gun violence epidemic in the United States.
News flash for the Wall Street Journal: Canada has a gun problem, too. This fact seems to have eluded their writers, who insist that Trudeau’s proposal stems from nothing more than his supposed obsession with U.S. politics.
Our gun problem in Canada is nowhere near that of the U.S., but we rank poorly on a list of comparable countries. While mass shootings are uncommon in Canada, we have a relatively high rate of homicides and individual violent crimes involving firearms. Among high-income countries with populations of 10 million or more, we have the third highest number of firearm homicides per 100,000 people, trailing behind only Chile and the U.S. In 2020, over 60% of firearm-related violence in urban areas in Canada involved a handgun, the type of weapon that is targeted directly by the government’s recent proposal. Also in 2020, Nova Scotia suffered the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s modern history, which catalyzed the Trudeau government’s ongoing effort to crack down on assault weapons.
The Wall Street Journal article points to evidence from Toronto police that 85% of guns used in crimes in the city are trafficked from the U.S. and asserts that a Canadian ban can’t stop this smuggling. But Toronto is just one city. What about gun crimes in other parts of Canada, where smuggling is becoming less common and criminals are increasingly stealing firearms from legal owners or using straw purchasers to obtain them on their behalf? In British Columbia, for example, 61% of guns used in crimes are sourced domestically. And are we simply to ignore the remaining 15% of crimes in Toronto caused by domestically sourced guns? As a Canadian, it is disturbing to see the Wall Street Journal selectively present misleading evidence about my country to influence public opinion among its American readership.
In addition to disingenuously dismissing Canada’s gun problem, the Wall Street Journal seems to find humor in the timing of Trudeau’s announcement. The writers assert that Canadian politicians “often sound like they’re running for office in the U.S.” and go on to make the sarcastic claim that Trudeau’s government announced the new gun policies “right on time this week,” alluding to the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
When is the right time? What is wrong with a government seeing a tragedy unfold next door and deciding now is the time to do something to prevent the next one from happening within its own borders?
When a mass shooting occurs in the U.S., there are three ways Canadians can respond. We can ignore it and let the news cycle pass, desensitized by the frequency of gun violence in the U.S. We can pat ourselves on the back for being a safer country and having better laws than our neighbor. Or we can do something, while millions of people are still tuning into the news in horror and while the political will to act is strong. Trudeau chose the third option. That’s the same option he chose in 2020, the last time we saw a mass shooting within our own borders. And he should be commended for it, not mocked.
To the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, however, Trudeau’s decision was nothing more than an attempt to influence the U.S. approach to gun control and to cater to a version of Canadian exceptionalism that sees Canada as “more enlightened than its neighbors to the South.” They go on to make a half-hearted attempt to show that Canada’s progressive approach to gun reform will undermine gun control efforts in the U.S., expressing concern that Americans will view Trudeau’s apparently radical gun policy as exactly what Democrats and progressives are trying to achieve in the U.S. They imply that Americans may stop supporting any modest gun reforms out of fear that they may eventually lead to more extreme Canadian-like measures.
However, this argument is misguided. First, American pro-gun activists wishing to fearmonger about the slippery slope of gun control measures have always had the opportunity to point to Canada’s restrictive gun laws to influence public opinion. Canada’s approach to gun policy was always an easy political bogeyman in this respect, and Trudeau’s decision to introduce additional restrictions this week should have little impact on this reality.
Second, if it is true that the new Canadian gun policies will actually affect American public opinion, this consequence may also play out differently than the writers expect. The Canadian government’s action offers a timely example of how other democracies respond to unnecessary and wholly preventable tragedies. Maybe Canadians can play a small but worthwhile role in shifting the Overton window in the U.S. by adding fuel to the rhetoric of America’s gun reform movement, which can now ask: “Why are we not acting when our neighbor is, even though it is in our schools that children are dying?”
Contrary to the suggestion of the editorial, Trudeau is not obsessed with U.S. politics and has no plans to “run for Congress.” He is acting on behalf of the majority of Canadians who wish to see the government address a real problem in our country. As for the timing of the new legislation, maybe the Wall Street Journal is right. Nowadays, we are tuned into U.S. politics. Not because Canadian politics is “too boring,” as the writers claim, but because when repeated mass shootings occur in the U.S., the entire world is watching. And yes, Canada and the rest of the world will have something to say about this American epidemic, and will hopefully continue to look inward and treat the issue of gun violence with the weight and urgency it deserves.
Image by Maria Lysenko licensed under the Unsplash License.
Senior World Editor
