“These tragedies reverberate still. They shape our identity, they stain our conscience, they make adults out of children and the heartbreaking truth is they’re happening more often than they once did.”

– Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the effects of mass shootings

INTRODUCTION

On the evening of April 18 2020, a 51-year-old gunman went on a 13-hour rampage across the small town of Portapique, Nova Scotia, murdering 22 people and injuring six others (Boyko, 2021). The tragedy marked the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history (Boyko, 2021) and sent shockwaves through a nation that has become more and more familiar with the devastation of gun violence in recent years. 

Just two weeks later on May 1st, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a nation-wide ban on military assault-style weapons (Tasker, 2020). The ban targeted approximately 1500 types of firearms (Tasker, 2020) in an attempt to prevent another mass shooting or gun-related death from ever happening on Canadian soil.

While many applauded this move, others pointed out flaws in the Prime Minister’s new law. Two opposing sides emerged: on one side, critics accused Trudeau of unfairly punishing law-abiding gun owners with strict and ineffective regulations; on the other side, experts criticized him for not taking enough action to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals. An examination of gun violence from a public health perspective could be used to help us make sense of these two opposing viewpoints and come up with an effective solution.

In this blog, we’ll be discussing:

• The public health implications of gun violence
• Gun violence in Canada
• Potential policy approaches: to ban or not to ban?
• A public health solution

The public health implications of gun violence

Gun violence has a number of direct and indirect implications for public health. The issue, after all, represents a major threat to our most basic human right – the right to life (Amnesty International, 2021).

Every day, more than 500 people worldwide die and another 2000 are injured due to gun violence (Amnesty International). An estimated 2 million people are living with gunshot injuries (Amnesty International), which have severely affected their quality of life. Gun violence and gun-related deaths can be inspired by a number of different motivations, including domestic violence (Amnesty International), homicide, and suicide, or could simply be the result of an accident (Pelletier, 2020). 

In addition to its direct effects on health, gun violence also has several indirect effects on the health and wellbeing of a population. These include:

• Increased experience of anxiety and depression as a result of witnessing or living in an area plagued by gun violence;
• Difficulty accessing essential services like health care due to ongoing gun violence;
• Disruptions to education in high-incidence communities due to fear of being shot (Amnesty International).

Gun violence in Canada

Canada is often overshadowed by its southern neighbour, the United States, when it comes to gun violence. In light of this, we often don’t think of gun violence as a prominent issue in Canada – much less a public health issue. 

Nevertheless, gun violence represents a significant threat to the health and wellbeing of Canadians. 

• Between 2009 and 2019, criminal use of firearms increased 81% across the country (Raycraft, 2021). 
• In 2019, 263 people were killed by homicide using a gun (Statista, 2020).
• In 2016, 570 suicides were carried out using firearms, accounting for 14% of all suicides that year (Statistics Canada, 2019)
• In 2017, Winnipeg reported the most gun crimes per 100 000 people, highlighting the concentration of gun violence in larger cities (Statistics Canada, 2019)

The issue of gun violence is ripe in the Canadian public conscience. A 2021 study revealed that 47% of Canadians surveyed feel that gun violence is a threat to their community (Public Safety Canada, 2021), and another study showed that 66% believe Canada should have stricter gun control regulations (Leger, 2021). 

Potential policy approaches: to ban or not to ban?

While Canadians of all stripes can agree that gun control is a problem in Canada, there seems to be little consensus on how to best address the issue. The Trudeau government’s ban on assault-style weapons, though decisive and motivated, seemed to leave both pro- and anti-gun advocates unhappy.

The pro-gun camp argued that the new regulations cracked down unnecessarily hard on responsible gun owners while doing little to prevent deadly weapons from falling into the wrong hands. Thousands of Canadians use guns for hunting or recreational purposes without incident, and additional regulations would make it much harder for these people to access a gun for such use. Additionally, many have pointed out that the firearm used in the Nova Scotia shooting was purchased illegally, leading some to question if increasing regulations for legal usage would have any substantial effect at all (White, 2020). 

On the other hand, anti-gun activists believe that even stricter regulations are needed, and that the Prime Minister’s 2020 ban did not do enough to prevent the bulk of gun violence. In 2017, just 6% of violent gun crimes involved the use of a fully automatic firearm while 59% involved the use of a handgun (Statistics Canada, 2019) – a firearm not covered under the 2020 ban. This suggests that, while the ban may be effective at preventing shootings with a military-style weapon, it will have a minimal effect on preventing overall gun deaths.

All in all, the overall goal of Trudeau’s gun ban did not appear to line up with the goals of either side of the debate. In banning military-style assault weapons, one can interpret that the aim of the policy was to prevent the number of mass shootings in Canada, not the overall number of deaths from guns. This conflicted with the pro-gun interest of keeping guns accessible to responsible owners as well as the anti-gun interest of preventing overall gun deaths. 

A public health solution

So what’s the best solution to prevent gun violence in Canada? Adopting a public health perspective may help shed some light on this debate. 

Above all, the goal of public health is to maximize the health and wellbeing of the population as a whole. From this stance, approaches to minimizing gun violence should consider the best interests of the general population instead of kowtowing to any one particular political group. 

Public health-focused policy making would therefore favour the approach that results in the fewest possible deaths from all types of gun violence – be they mass shootings, homicides, suicides, or accidental deaths. As such, policies that ban an extensive range of guns – more than just military assault-style weapons – and impose strict regulations on their purchase would be favourable. This has long been a demand of gun control activist groups in Canada, including the Coalition for Gun Control and Doctors For Protection From Guns. 

In addition to enhanced regulations, policy initiatives that target the underlying causes and consequences of gun violence should also be adopted. The links between gun violence, poverty, and mental health have been well-documented (Prevention Institute, 2021), and thus should be addressed through appropriate policy responses to reduce the incidence of gun violence in Canada. Financial welfare programs, accessible mental health services, and community violence reduction programs could all be used to move towards this goal. 

While gun control regulations should recognize the interests of responsible gun owners, policymakers must also take the wellbeing of the broader society into account. Implicating public health in the debate surrounding gun control helps centre the conversation around the interests of the public at large, resulting in policies that work more effectively towards putting an end to gun violence in Canada. 

Written by: Claire Borgaonkar, BPAM (c)