The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has lost 205 firearms since 2020, including more than 120 handguns and at least five fully automatic weapons like machine guns.
The data, which was obtained through an access to information request, also shows that nearly a dozen RCMP firearms have gone missing so far this year.
In total, 122 handguns, 55 shotguns, 23 rifles, three submachine guns and two machine guns have been reported lost by RCMP detachments across the country since 2020. Canadians are largely prohibited from using or acquiring machine guns and submachine guns, which are fully automatic and capable of rapid fire.
Nearly half of the guns were lost in 2021, when a staggering 99 RCMP firearms were reported missing, including three fully automatic weapons. There were also 25 lost firearms in 2020, 44 in 2022, 26 in 2023 and 11 in the first seven months of 2024.
The data was obtained and shared exclusively with CTVNews.ca by Matt Malone, a government secrecy researcher and scholar with the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont. Malone is also the founder of Open by Default, a digital database that contains more than 5.2 million pages of documents released through Canada's access to information system.
In its response to Malone, the RCMP's access to information office said it "cannot determine specifically if a firearm was lost by a service member." The RCMP is Canada's federal police force and employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 19,000 police officers.
Between 2000 and 2019, an additional 601 firearms were reported lost by police, including 15 machine guns and submachine guns, according to a previous RCMP access to information request.
The RCMP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CTV News. It is not known if any of these lost firearms were eventually recovered, or if charges or disciplinary measures have resulted from their disappearance.
"Canada has strongly regulated fully automatic rifles for decades due to the belief that such weapons are particularly dangerous as they would allow criminals to commit mass shootings or overpower police," legal historian and gun control expert Blake Brown told CTVNews.ca. "This makes the loss of those firearms especially concerning."
Brown is a history professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, N.S., and the author of Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada.
"Given the number of firearms possessed by police, it is perhaps unsurprising that a small percentage of guns go missing each year, either because they are misplaced or stolen," Brown said. "I think that Canadians should always be concerned any time that legal firearms are possibly being stolen or lost, as there is a chance that such guns could be used in criminal activity."
When it comes to public safety, Brown says the number of lost or stolen civilian firearms in Canada is a far greater concern. In 2022 alone, there were 2,086 theft incidents where at least one firearm was stolen, down from 2,196 in 2021, according to Statistics Canada. In 2022, stolen firearms were used in at least eight homicides.
"With millions of firearms in circulation in Canada, there is bound to be some that are stolen, despite Canada's safe storage rules," Brown said. "The RCMP should be held to a very high standard in terms of safeguarding its firearms, but the bigger threat to public safety in Canada is the theft or loss of privately owned firearms."
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