A deadly mass shooting at a school in British Columbia is likely to increase scrutiny of whether Canada’s gun laws should be toughened to prevent further attacks.
Currently, gun ownership in the Canadian provinces is largely federally regulated by the government in Ottawa, and there are stricter laws in place than in most US states.
Mass shootings in Canada are therefore rare, especially if compared with its southern neighbour.
Still, gun-related killings as a percentage of all homicides are significantly higher in Canada than in England and Wales, or Australia.
Under Canada’s Firearms Act, guns must be kept locked and unloaded.
Anyone wishing to buy a firearm is also subject to extensive background checks and needs to have a licence.
Across the country, more than 2.2 million people – or 7.7% of Canada’s adult population – had firearm licences, according to government statistics from 2021.
An estimated 10 million firearms were in circulation in the country that year.
In the past, Canada’s justice department has reported that British Columbia – where Tumbler Ridge Secondary School is located – has the highest ownership of handguns in the country.
A national freeze on the sale and transfer of handguns has also been in place since 2022.
The latest mass shooting follows a string of others over the past decade.
In 2020, a gunman posing as a police officer killed 22 people in the eastern Nova Scotia province over a two-day period – in what is Canada’s deadliest mass shooting.
In the wake of the attacks, most military-grade assault-style weapons were banned in the country.
In 2017, a gunmen killed worshippers in a Quebec City mosque in Canada’s largest province of Quebec. The attacker got a life sentence.
A year earlier, four people – including two at a school – were killed in La Loche, western Saskatchewan province. A 17-year-old attacker was later sentenced to life in prison.
In 2014, a gunman shot dead eight people, including two children, in Edmonton, western Alberta province.
One of the deadliest shootings in the country took place decades earlier – in 1989. Fourteen women were killed by a gunman in an anti-feminist attack at l’École Polytechnique university in Montreal.
