How the American Gun Epidemic is Spreading into Canada
Easy availability of firearms in the U.S. facilitates the creation of gun smuggling networks along the border
By: Francis Langlois
Armed violence spiked in Canada between 2020 and 2021. According to the Montreal Police Department, there were 78 attempted murders in 2020 compared to 33 in 2019. 144 gun shots were reported in 2021 compared to 71 in 2020. Handguns are the primary firearm used to commit armed crimes. And in cities like Montreal, around 90% of those seized by the police were brought into Canada from the US.[1]
According to numbers released by the ATF last year, between 2017 and 2021, 24,586 American firearms were recovered in Canada.[2] The vast majority of firearms smuggled into Canada are sourced from the United States.
The Routlege Handbook of Smuggling (2022) defines smuggling as “the purposeful movement across a border in contravention to the relevant legal frameworks.”[3] Usually, smugglers move goods and people across a border from a low regulation territory to a highly regulated one. Smuggling is a political construct as borders are often arbitrarily put in place and are thus “criminogenic“.[4] Borders often develop across commercial, cultural, and kinship networks that were operating well before the enforcement of the separation. Smuggling appears as law enforcement becomes more effective.
The border between Canada and the U.S. separates such networks, but like other borders also creates smuggling opportunities. This is not a new phenomenon.
Indeed, along the Vermont-Québec border, many houses stand across the border at least since the beginning of the 20th Century. These houses were either cut in two by the separation or purposefully built to take advantage of the division of the land between the two countries.
This was especially true during Prohibition in the 1920s. Canadian alcohol was stashed in the northern part of the house before being transferred to the other side for distribution in the U.S. When law enforcement on one side of the border raided the house, smugglers simply fled toward the other country. High U.S. regulations of the Prohibition era created opportunities for Québec smugglers.[5]
Smuggling between Québec and Vermont is still an issue today. As firearm regulation was tightened north of the border during the last few decades, smugglers began to bring guns to Canada through so-called “iron pipelines,” many of them following the main south to north highways along which weapons are obtained.
One such iron pipeline follows the I-95 from Florida to Québec and was used by a small group of five smugglers. Like their Prohibition era forbears, they used a building that stands across the Vermont-Québec border.
The border between Stanstead, Québec and Derby Line, Vermont was settled in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, opened in 1904, was purposefully built on the border by the American-born Carlos H. Haskell and his Canadian-born wife, Martha Steward Haskell. The Haskells wanted to offer the citizens of both Stanstead and Derby Line a public house to solidify the links between the two communities.
Both populations were able to access the premisses without having to go through customs until the hardening of the border following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. Crossing the border remains easy as streets are still connected. Some, like Canusa, are shared by both cities and countries. Canadian addresses are on the North side of the street and American addresses are on the South. Others are delineated by flowerpots.
Probably because both communities are so close, the smugglers were quickly spotted by the Haskell Library’s employees, and the authorities informed of their suspicious ins and outs.
The modus operandi was simple: an American couple bought handguns in Florida and elsewhere on the I-95 up to Derby Line. The smugglers entered the library on the U.S. side. The handguns were in a backpack that was left in the restrooms. Quickly, an accomplice entering from the north retrieved the backpack, replaced it with an identical one and left with the handguns through the Canadian side of the library.
Every delivery brought between six and ten handguns that on the Canadian black market could fetch up to ten times the American price, according to the police officers I talked with. The smugglers were caught in 2012 after three or four runs.
The Stanstead/Derby Line smuggling network is one of many that proliferate along the U.S.-Canada border separating a low regulation country from a high regulation neighbor. Availability and accessibility of firearms in the U.S. facilitates the creation of gun smuggling networks. It encourages both “amateur entrepreneur” smugglers and more organized criminal groups.
The Haskell Library smuggling operation is a good example of a simple “chain network” in which all members know each other. They are small operation with few members and resources. Most of them are attracted by high profit margins and easy access to smuggled goods, like American guns.
Even more attractive is the fact that gun smuggling is not a highly punished crime in the U.S., a fact that explains why the ATF often tries to link gun smuggling to other crimes such as drug smuggling.
Contrary to drug smuggling, gun trafficking is simple. It does not require a foreign producer and elaborate system of transportation because guns are legal and easy to obtain in the U.S. Crossing the border is the main challenge. Given the length of the U.S.-Canada border, constant surveillance is difficult — a task even more difficult where the line between the two countries is arbitrary and sometimes contested and/or used by local inhabitants. The Stanstead/Derby-Line area is one such area. There are many more.
The Akwesasne territory, home of a large, tightly knit Mohawk community is divided by many borders — Québec, Ontario, New York State, and obviously between Canada and the U.S. Political and cultural issues make law enforcement more difficult, forces international and interprovincial cooperation, and makes the borders more criminogenic. Smugglers use the Saint Lawrence River as an east-west water highway to move goods to Montreal and Toronto.
Firearms trafficking is confirmed by the fact that in both cities around 90% of handguns seized by the police were first bought south of the border, many of them along the I-95.[6]
Organized “hub networks” smuggle guns, tobacco, drugs, and people. As Christian Leuprecht and Andrew Althouse explain, these hub networks are more complex because they have a broader goal than “mere rent seeking.” In other words, they want more than quick money.[7]
They are operated by people who usually don’t know each other. The “mules” used to bring the guns across the border are often chosen because they are in difficult position and outside the organization. Sometimes, as in the case of a Detroit/Windsor network, the mules don’t even know they are being used. In this case, the smugglers hid wrapped firearms in the bumpers of Canadian cars visiting Detroit, and got them back once they were North of the border. The packages were linked to a GPS system. That network was dismantled in 2019.
In large networks, brokers buy guns in the U.S. from multiple sources and store them before crossing the border. On the other side of the border, another broker buys the firearms and sells them according to demand on the Canadian black market.
Guns have a dual use for big networks: they are tools for protection and profitable commodities. Usually the U.S. buyers, like the mules, are farther on the periphery of the network in order to minimize the risks for the larger organization. The weaker points in these networks are the brokers who know more members and the structure of the networks.
Complex gun smuggling networks remain simpler than those moving drugs because firearms are easy to obtain legally in the U.S. Handguns are the most popular firearms on the Canadian black market as they are easier to hide, use, and dispose of. A “clean” handgun may be bought for a few thousand of dollars; a “burned” handgun (already used to commit a crime) goes for a few hundred.[8] Once in Canada, illegal guns may move several times before being seized by the police.
3-D printed unidentified “ghost guns” are growing in popularity on the black market and are thus also smuggled across the border.[9]
In March 2021, a young man was caught nearby Dundee, Québec, with 249 3-D printed, unassembled Glock 17s he just smuggled from the U.S. A few months before, he had bought a house standing beside a lone boundary post indicating the border between the two countries.
As with Mexico, the United States is the main source of illegal firearms in Canada. For the moment, Ottawa has increased border security and focused on cooperation between the Canadian Border Patrol and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Even still, it remains clear that gun smuggling will remain a problem since firearm law enforcement is so weak in the U.S.
Francis Langlois (Photo courtesy of author)
[1] Statistics Canada, Canadian Center for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, Homicide Survey (2022); Service de police de la ville de Montréal, Rapport d’activité annuel (2021)
[2] ATF, National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment. Crime Gun Intelligence and Analysis Vol.2 Part IV, « Crime Guns Recovered Outside of the US and Traced by Law Enforcement (January 2023), p.2-3.
[3] Max Gallien and Florian Weigand, “Studying Smuggling” in The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling, New York, Routledge, 2022, p.2-3.
[4] Nikos Passas, “Globalization, criminogenic asymmetries and economic crime”, European Journal of Law Reform Vol.1 #4 (1999)
[5] Laurent Busseau, “La prohibition sur la frontière Québec-Vermont (1860-1930)”, Histoire Québec Vol.23 #4 (2018); Frédéric Lassere et al, “Politique de sécurité et villages-frontière entre les États-Unis et Québec”, Revue européenne de géographie (March 2012)
[6] Denis Thériault, “J.E. sur la route des armes illégales”, J.E. TVA, (March 25, 2021)
[7] Christian Leuprecht and Andrew Althouse, “Guns for Hire: North America’s Intra-Continental Gun Trafficking Networks”, Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, Vol.15#3 (2014)
[8] Simon Coutu, L’arme du crime, Radio Canada, 4 episodes, (February 2024)
[9] Carlo Morseli and Dominik Blais, “The Mobility of Stolen Guns in Quebec”, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Vol.20 #3 (September 2013)
Francis Langlois is Professor of History at Cégep de Trois-Rivières in Quebec, Canada, and Director of the Observatory on the United States. Langlois studies the legislation, control, and trafficking of legal and illegal firearms, the technical and industrial history of these objects, as well as the culture which surrounds them.