A third of guns used in Canadian crimes and then traced by authorities were legally imported from the US. That’s three times the global average.
Some 300 miles north of Canada’s border with Montana, the prairies end, the roads narrow and the rural towns give way to the vast, unbroken forests of northern Saskatchewan, where on clear nights the aurora borealis dance above pristine lakes.
This is the home of Canada’s highest rate of gun crimes.
Drive-by shootings, the latest just a few months ago, have erupted in the quiet lanes of La Ronge, which serves as an entry point to the northern expanse. In May 2022, a 32-year-old man was shot dead at a cottage. A month later, on a sunny Sunday morning, La Ronge went into lockdown as an emergency alert warned of two suspects, armed with handguns, on the loose. In a community of some 7,000 people, police in recent months have seized more than 50 rifles and handguns. The firearms now line one wall of a storage room. A dozen more are stashed, barrels down, in a blue bucket.
Must be an election looming.
