By Nia Williams<\/p>\n
Feb 11 (Reuters) – Ten people including the shooter are dead after an assailant described by police as female opened fire at a high school in western Canada on Tuesday, one of the country’s deadliest mass casualty incidents in recent history.<\/p>\n
Canada has tightened its gun laws in recent years, but has \u200cexperienced mass shootings in the past and gun ownership is permitted.<\/p>\n
Here are key details about Canada’s gun control laws:<\/p>\n
ARE GUNS ILLEGAL IN CANADA?<\/p>\n
No. Canada has much stricter \u200cgun laws than the United States, but Canadians are allowed to own firearms providing they have a licence. Restricted or prohibited firearms, like handguns, must also be registered.<\/p>\n
Canadians must be over 18 and pass a firearms safety course \u200bto hold a licence, which is renewed every five years.<\/p>\n
Children aged 12-17 can get a minor’s licence, allowing them to borrow non-restricted firearms like most rifles or shotguns for hunting or shooting competitions, and buy ammunition.<\/p>\n
Exceptions may be made for under-12s, including indigenous children, who need to hunt to sustain themselves and their families.<\/p>\n
Indigenous people who engage in traditional hunting practices may not need to take a firearms safety course if it is too far away or expensive. Instead they can ask for alternative certification based on a recommendation from a community elder confirming they have necessary firearms \u200cknowledge.<\/p>\n
HOW HAVE GUN LAWS BEEN TIGHTENED?<\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government \u2060introduced a number of restrictions on gun ownership starting in 2020 following a mass shooting in Portapique, Nova Scotia and the Uvalde school shooting in Texas.<\/p>\n
More than 2,500 makes and models of assault-style firearms, like the AR-15 rifle, have been banned since May 2020, according to Public Safety \u2060Canada.<\/p>\n
A freeze on the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns was introduced in 2022.<\/p>\n
However, attempts to ban certain types of rifles and shotguns were abandoned after opposition from farmers and hunters.<\/p>\n
Further legislation enacted in December 2023 prohibited new makes and models of certain firearms, increased penalties for firearms smuggling and trafficking, and added new offences related to illegally manufactured guns.<\/p>\n
It also included “red flag” laws and expanded licence revocation and \u200bineligibility \u200bprovisions to help address the role of firearms in domestic abuse, Public Safety Canada said.<\/p>\n
HOW WILL GUNS BE \u200bREMOVED FROM CIRCULATION?<\/p>\n
Owners of banned assault weapons must give up or \u200cpermanently deactivate their guns before an amnesty expires in October. To encourage this, the Canadian government has instituted a multi-million-dollar voluntary buyback program that will run until the end of March for individuals.<\/p>\n
The ban on certain types of assault-style weapons has drawn criticism from gun rights and hunting groups, many of which also object to the compensation program.<\/p>\n
Some Canadian provinces, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, have refused to participate in the buyback program, citing concerns about the cost and safety risk to officials of taking part.<\/p>\n
HOW MANY GUNS ARE THERE IN CANADA?<\/p>\n
The number of registered handguns increased by 71% between 2010 and 2020, reaching approximately 1.1 million, according to the federal government.<\/p>\n
A 2017 Small Arms Survey estimated there were 12.7 million firearms in civilian possession in \u200cCanada, and there are an estimated 34.7 firearms per 100 people.<\/p>\n
WHERE IS GUN OWNERSHIP CONCENTRATED?<\/p>\n
According to the \u200bRoyal Canadian Mounted Police more than 2.2 million people held gun licences in 2020.<\/p>\n
Most of those were in Ontario \u200band Quebec, the two most densely populated provinces, followed by the western provinces \u200bof Alberta and British Columbia.<\/p>\n
A 2019 Angus Reid survey found most guns in Canada are found in rural areas and used for hunting and recreational \u200cshooting.<\/p>\n
HOW MANY PEOPLE DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE IN CANADA?<\/p>\n
Canada’s rate of firearm \u200bhomicides is 0.5 per 100,000 people, versus the \u200bUnited States’ rate of 4.12, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said in a 2021 analysis.<\/p>\n
HOW MANY MASS SHOOTINGS HAS CANADA HAD RECENTLY?<\/p>\n
1989 – 14 women engineering students were killed in their classroom at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec.<\/p>\n
1992 – four professors were shot dead by a colleague at Concordia University, Montreal.<\/p>\n
2006 – a \u200bgunman killed one woman and injured 19 other people in a \u200cshooting at Dawson College in Montreal.<\/p>\n
2016 – a teenager killed four people in La Loche, Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
2017 – six Muslim men were killed in a shooting at a mosque in \u200bQuebec City.<\/p>\n
2020 – a gunman driving a fake police car killed 22 people in multiple shootings and a fire he set in Portapique, Nova Scotia, the \u200bdeadliest shooting rampage in Canadian history.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nia Willaims and Toby Chopra; editing by Mark Heinrich)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nia Williams Feb 11 (Reuters) – Ten people including the shooter are dead after an assailant described…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[190889,49,48,190888,190885,190890,190886,44,907,190887,77050,190884,190883,190882,190891,13845],"class_list":{"0":"post-468189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-assault-weapons","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-gun-control-laws","12":"tag-gun-laws","13":"tag-gun-ownership","14":"tag-mass-casualty-incidents","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nova-scotia","17":"tag-portapique","18":"tag-prime-minister-justin-trudeau","19":"tag-prohibited-firearms","20":"tag-public-safety-canada","21":"tag-stricter-gun-laws","22":"tag-uvalde-school-shooting","23":"tag-western-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}