A recent string of mass shootings in the United States have reignited the debate around gun control. Mass shootings and gun violence have become such a fixture in the news, many have said that after so much violence with no change, mass shootings start to seem like a regular part of life. This sentiment was captured well by, oddly enough, NBA basketball coach Steve Kerr. “When are we going to do something? I’m tired,” Kerr yelled. “I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I’m so tired. Excuse me. I’m sorry. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough.”
A lot of people are now arguing that something must be done, and in a timely fashion, the Trudeau Liberals have tabled Bill C-21, a law centered around restricting handguns in Canada. But are these measures going to stop mass shootings? Or have an effect on gun violence in general? And how did the Liberals get on this so fast?
The federal Liberals have watched their popularity continue to slowly diminish since the beginning of the year. Their progressive veneer has faded, thanks to things like their government handing a $10 billion loan guarantee to the Kinder Morgan pipeline Most polls now place them slightly behind the Conservative Party, who do not even currently have a party leader. Meanwhile gun control is very popular. According to a 2021 Leger survey, 66 per cent of Canadians were in favor of stricter gun control, with only 10 per cent wanting less strict gun control. For the Liberals the time was right. Bill C-21 is just over 50 pages of very technical and conditional legalese. This is not something drafted in short order. It is likely that this bill was drafted beforehand, and the Liberals were cynically waiting for a tragedy to capitalize on.
What’s in the bill?
Bill C-21 was described by the Liberals as a national “freeze on handguns”, meaning handguns cannot be bought, sold, imported, or transferred to another person. Only current, legal owners of handguns can continue to own them. What happens to those firearms when an owner dies is unknown. In the short term, this has caused a run on handguns, as many license holders are rushing to become legal owners and get grandfathered in before it’s no longer an option.
Also written in the bill are changes to what is considered legal firearms equipment. Magazines for long guns would not be allowed to carry more than five rounds, and the sale of larger magazines would be banned. Additionally the maximum penalty for firearm-related offenses, like illegally owning, modifying, or manufacturing a firearm, would increase from 10 years of imprisonment to 14. Aside from handgun owners, groups like airsoft hobbyists and Olympic shooters have been caught in the crossfire of this bill. Airsoft hobbyists are people who shoot small plastic air-powered pellets at targets, and each other. In many cases, these people have spent thousands of dollars to pursue this hobby, and they will find their airsoft guns to be deemed “replica firearms”, essentially criminalizing airsoft.
This bill would not mean the elimination of handguns from Canadian society, or even the end of purchases of handguns, as there are exceptions. Government spokespeople said, as reported by the CBC, that a “limited number of people would be exempt from the handgun restrictions, including elite sport shooters and those with authorization to carry, such as valuable goods carriers”. Also exempt are “public officers” and “a person employed by the Bank of Canada or the Royal Canadian Mint who is responsible for the security of its facilities”. In short, state security forces, and people who guard large bags of money.
Red flags
Something the Liberals have decided to import from the United States are so called “red flag laws”, which would allow anyone to apply for an “emergency weapons prohibition order” to require the state to remove a person’s firearms for up to 30 days, and suspend their firearms licence, if they pose a risk to themselves or others. In fact, this bill would empower state security forces to search and seize the household of legal firearms owners, without a warrant, in a number of scenarios, mostly at the discretion of police. People suspected of firearms offenses could also be subject to police wiretapping, or surveillance of their phone calls.
All in all this bill is a massive empowerment of the state, and for that reason, socialists must oppose it. For Marxists the state is not a neutral arbiter; it’s an organization of class rule that manages the affairs of the rich and ensures the continued exploitation of the working class. The police have showed time and time again—by breaking strikes, demolishing Indigenous blockades, and by murdering unarmed, usually racialized people—that they exist to serve and protect the ruling class and no one else. Expanding police powers to wiretap, or search and seize without a warrant, empowers the state and the capitalists they serve over the rest of society. For socialists this is a bad thing, and not a good thing.
The legal recourse brought in by the state to deal with the far right, or gun violence, or “extremism” today will be used against the left tomorrow. While taking firearms away from someone in a crisis sounds fine in the abstract, the fact that these laws can be used by anyone, against anyone, all at the judgment of the state is very dangerous. If a weapons prohibition order is obtained, the subject of the order is immediately “guilty until proven innocent”. Once again, the state is not a neutral arbiter. We saw this very clearly in the contrast between how cops dealt with the right-wing “Freedom” Convoy and blockade movement and the Wet’suwet’en resistance to the Coastal Gaslink pipeline.
At the “Freedom” Convoy blockade in Coutts, Alberta, an international border was blockaded for 18 days, RCMP seized firearms in raids, and there were multiple instances of blockaders and cops ramming into each other in their vehicles. There is currently an ongoing court case where four men are being charged with conspiracy to commit murder, specifically of a RCMP officer. Yet when it was all said and done, police hugged and thanked the blockaders and let them go home without consequence. Conversely, when an energy giant wanted to ram a natural gas pipeline through the traditional territories of the Wet’suwet’en, the Indigenous people were treated by the RCMP as enemy combatants in a war zone. Journalists were arrested, camps demolished, and the police themselves came in body armor, holding assault rifles. We can predict in advance that red flag laws, and others in Bill C-21 will be used to disarm militant movements, and justify police raids on Indigenous and left-wing activists who happen to be gun owners.
Where does the violence come from?
Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho said the legislation will not address gun violence, because it “fails to focus on the root cause of gun violence in our cities: illegal guns smuggled into Canada by criminal gangs.” While police services have said the majority of firearm-related crimes are done with illegally obtained firearms, the Conservatives are not telling the whole story.
The fact is that there is gun violence in Canada, with both legal and illegal guns. This violence is horrific, and must be dealt with. But it is not a matter of tweaking the rules, or cracking down on smuggling.
For example, a significant amount of gun violence comes from the police. The data around police shootings is difficult to track because Statistics Canada only tracks fatal police shootings if the officer involved is criminally charged. This is rare as most police shootings are declared justified or cleared of any wrongdoing—either by the police themselves, a different police department, or an “independent” organization made up of state bureaucrats and ex-cops. But data from The Canadian Press shows that in 2020, 60 people were shot and 36 killed by police including a one-year-old boy killed in Ontario. Police often seriously injure and even kill other police, by accidentally or negligently discharging their firearms. According to a freedom of information request, the RCMP had 22 negligent discharges in 2017 alone. A police officer in Kingston, Ontario accidentally shot and injured himself the same month Bill C-21 was tabled! And these are the people we’re supposed to trust with the handguns?
The argument that police are in the best position to protect us from gun violence is losing ground fast. In the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, police were criticized for not entering the building where an active school shooting was taking place. There are allegations that police went in early to take their own children out, and at least one police officer has admitted that they tried. Graphic videos show police tasering parents attempting to get inside the school. Uvalde police and the Texas Department of Public Safety are also refusing to release police body cam footage, with the director of public safety admitting the response by law enforcement was an “abject failure”
Aside from police we can see that an enormous amount of gun violence comes from the right wing. In the United States the Pittsburgh shooting at a synagogue was motivated by antisemitism; a shooting in Buffalo, New York targeted Black people; and the shooting in El Paso, Texas in 2019 targeted Latinos and immigrants. Here in Canada, the 2017 shooting at a Quebec City mosque which killed six people and injured many others was carried out by Alexandre Bissonnette, a Trump and Le Pen supporter. There is also the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting where the shooter was motivated by anti-feminism. Time and time again, horrific acts of violence are carried out by right-wing terrorists, and yet Justin Trudeau has done next to nothing to counter the far right, and has spent time equating “left-wing extremism” with that of the right. “We see the organizations of extremist groups on the far right and the far left that are pushing white supremacy, intolerance, radicalization, promoting hatred, fear and mistrust across borders but within borders, as well,” Trudeau says. There are currently no left-wing organizations denoted as terrorist groups according to the government of Canada
There are also shootings which are less politically motivated. These can only be understood as an expression of the deep sickness of the capitalist system. For the vast majority of people, capitalism offers nothing but a life of crushing alienation. Young people have very little to look forward to, as housing prices rise, wages fall, the climate crisis worsens, and capitalism and all of its social ills get worse every single day. The majority of gun deaths in Canada and the United States are suicides. Once again this shows the alienation and depression bred by the system. Mental health supports are few and far between, and if they exist they are too expensive, or have long waiting lists. Even if firearms are eliminated from all of society, the alienation, hatred, and shame that comes with life under capitalism will still exist, and still push individuals towards violent acts.
Will Bill C-21 stop shootings, gang violence, mass shootings?
When it comes to fighting organized crime and gang activity, this law will likely be of little consideration to gang members. Getting a license to carry firearms means your address is known to the police, and if it is a restricted license, which is currently required for handguns, it makes it much easier for the state to search and inspect the homes of gun owners. This is not something gang members will want to subject themselves to. Another reason the law will not have the intended effect is that when people commit crimes, getting caught is not “part of the plan.”
The punitive measure against gun smuggling will likely also not bring the intended effect. Just as the illegal drug trade is well established in Canada, so too is the illegal arms trade. In May 2022, the same month bill C-21 was tabled, a drone carrying 11 guns was found stuck in a tree near the Canada-U.S. border. The fact is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Firearms can be improvised, if they cannot be smuggled. And if they can’t be improvised, a different weapon will be used. This is shown by the terror attacks in Edmonton and Toronto where in both cities, an assailant drove a vehicle through a crowd.
Gun control for whom?
All considered, the fact that Bill C-21 will not end gun violence in Canada does not mean that nothing can be done. Something must be done to end the violence that capitalism brings. But the working class cannot rely on the state to end gun violence, especially considering that some gun violence comes from the state itself. The working class needs a solution independent of alien class influence.
It wasn’t so long ago that shootouts took place between workers on picket lines and state security forces. One of the more famous examples is the Battle of Blair Mountain, West Virginia in 1921, where striking coal miners fought police, soldiers, and even private security for union recognition, better pay, and better conditions. Between 50 and 100 miners died in that fight and nearly 1,000 were arrested. During the Minneapolis general strike of 1934, 50 armed policemen were escorting a scab truck which was confronted by a vehicle carrying picketers. The police opened fire on the vehicle with shotguns and shot at strikers filling the streets. On what came to be known as “Bloody Friday”, two strikers were killed and 67 wounded in the affair. These examples come from the period in the labor movement where the eight-hour day, the right to strike, and the right to form a union were won. Many workers fought and gave their lives for this struggle, and many more were disabled, beaten, or blacklisted for fighting for their own interests.
When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he enacted the Mulford Act of 1967 in direct response to the Black Panthers carrying firearms to protect themselves from police brutality. Reagan has no legacy of being a staunch advocate of gun control, and neither does the state of California, but when militant socialists and Black power activists were the ones exercising their rights to bear arms, Reagan, as the loyal servant of the ruling class he was, worked to disarm those fighting against injustice.
As recently as the Oka Crisis in 1990, the Indigenous struggle was pushed to take up arms to defend their land rights, when a golf course was planned to be built on Mohawk land. The Canadian state brought in 4,500 soldiers, as well as 2,000 police, and in the shootouts that proceeded, one soldier and one Mohawk warrior were killed by the other side. Had the Mohawk been disarmed, their struggle would have been weakened. If the state uses organized violence against the workers and Indigenous people, then workers should have the ability to defend themselves in a proportional way.
What should be done?
Despite the fact that Marxists oppose gun control by the capitalist state, Marxists are not against gun control on principle. It is true that there are some people who should not be given access to firearms. The key question is, who is controlling whose access to firearms? In the past period, workers and youth have been moving to the left as the crisis of capitalism deepens. The more sophisticated bourgeois strategists, like the ones in Trudeau’s camp, are not happy about this, and ultimately aim to disarm the working class and to further strengthen their state.
As socialists, we should fight for gun control by the organized working class, as well as fighting for a socialist society to eliminate the alienation, poverty, and crisis that are inherent to capitalism. It is clear that firearms should not be available to everyone, and their distribution should be controlled. But the capitalist state has proven that it is not interested in dealing with gun violence, and seeks only to disarm the working class and maintain its system. We cannot entrust the state with a monopoly on firearms. The problems of gun violence and the general alienation and depression of capitalism need to be tackled simultaneously, and can only be solved by the working class overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist society.
