Hamilton and Halton Police forces have provided CHCH News with the total number of guns taken off the street last year and where they are coming from.

Last year Hamilton Police worked to get 23 guns off the street, Halton Police seized 22.

While the numbers are close, where they came from is quite different.

In Hamilton the majority were traced back to legal Canadian gun owners but in Halton nearly 70% of firearms were from the United States.

Hamilton Police Superintendent Ryan Diodati says the criminals often sell firearms for drug money or they use it as protection.

Any gun police take away from a criminal is sent off for Firearm Analysis Tracing Enforcement. It’s referred to by police as “fate”, they look at where they guns came from and if they were used in any other crime.

Of the 22 guns Halton Police took off the street last year, 3 were traced to Canada but 15 were sourced back to the United States.

While police work closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the United States, along with the RCMP and Canada Border Services

The country’s border with the U.S. makes gun smuggling into Canada a relatively easy game and the guns are mainly coming across at the Ohio and Michigan borders.

According to Diodati, the three big states in the U.S. are Ohio, Michigan and Georgia. That’s where the greatest number of firearms enter into Canada from.

Canadian Border Services says the number of guns seized last year at the Southern Ontario border was 235, 18 more than the year before.

In Hamilton, two guns were from the United States, three were from Canada and the others, Police couldn’t determine where they were from because the serial number had been removed or obliterated or non existent.

While gun violence in Toronto has been on a sharp incline, the numbers in Hamilton show a decrease.
By the end of July last year Hamilton police had responded to 21 shootings for the same time period this year the number has dropped to 14.

In Toronto, police say they are dealing with legal Canadian gun owners selling guns to criminals and say that police have seen more than 40 cases of that in recent years.