Canadians often pride themselves on being different from Americans — including in our approach to gun ownership.
But Noah Schwartz, a professor of political science at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C., says there is an “almost lazy reliance on American understandings of gun policy to explain what’s going on in Canada.”
In his new book Targeted (University of Toronto Press), Schwartz explains the history of Canada’s gun regime and why Ottawa’s more recent gun laws have frustrated gun owners.
Schwartz spoke with Canadian Affairs reporter Meagan Gillmore about the experience of getting a gun licence as part of his research, why approaches to gun policy are often flawed and how guns relate to Canadian identity.
MG: What are the key differences between American and Canadian gun culture?
NS: Generally speaking, in the United States, since the 1970s and ‘80s, gun laws have become looser. You have the rise of concealed carry in many U.S. states, where more people are carrying concealed firearms than at any other time in the nation’s history.
In Canada, we went in a different direction. In the 1970s, Canada started tightening gun laws, first bringing in a licensing system, and then in the 1990s really tightening that licensing system.
For more than 30 years, Canada has had a really robust gun licensing system that covers all of the bases that the academic literature suggest work: safe storage laws to make sure that kids aren’t getting access to guns and that firearms theft is deterred, licensing to make sure that there’s enough screening done that we can be confident that if someone in Canada owns a gun, they are probably someone who should be allowed to do so.
American gun culture is centered around self defence, and constitutional arguments about rights. In Canada, it’s different. The gun owners that I spoke to saw guns as tools, and not necessarily tools of violence, but tools of leisure, tools to engage in sports shooting, tools to go hunting and put food on the table for their families.
MG: You mentioned the difficulty of getting a gun licence, and you went through that process as part of your research for this book. How did going through that process change your thoughts on Canada’s gun laws?
NS: I very much grew up on the urban side of the urban-rural divide on gun ownership in Canada. I grew up in Ottawa, in the suburbs. I wasn’t even allowed to play with Nerf guns as a kid. I never really had thought about it much until I started my research on it.
I think everybody is in favour of things that regulate people who aren’t them. And when suddenly you become the regulated, it changes your view on things. I wanted to go through that process. You get to see how rigorous the process is. If you want a gun licence in Canada, you have to go through this class, you have to pass with 80 per cent.
MG: You had gone through a relationship breakdown, and they had to call your former partner to check in and make sure it’s OK that [you] want a gun.
NS: Part of the licensing system is assessing people’s mental health. You have to report to the RCMP if you’ve experienced any mental health issues, if you’ve been treated for them, loss of a job and breakdown of a significant relationship. It’s a safeguard to make sure that people aren’t getting firearms for the purpose of getting revenge on their ex. If you’ve had the breakdown of a significant relationship in the past two years, you either have to reach out yourself and get them to sign on the paper, or provide their contact information so that the RCMP can call them and interview them to assess whether you should have a gun or not, which is obviously really invasive.
But when you talk to gun owners, most are supportive of this legislation.
When they see something like this ban on assault style weapons that the government brought in [following the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting], they say, ‘I’ve gone through this really strict screening to be able to own this firearm. You’ve decided that I’m trustworthy. So why are you suddenly saying that this property that I’ve owned safely for decades after going through this rigorous screening process is now too dangerous for me to own?’
MG: There is this reoccurring theme of [gun] legislation brought in in response to a public tragedy. Is that the best approach?
NS: I don’t think it’s the best approach.
Think about mass shootings. Your statistical likelihood for [being in a mass shooting] is infinitesimal. Tragedies like this open up what we call agenda windows, opportunities for people who have been looking to push these policies. I understand why it happens, but it’s definitely a suboptimal way to do policy.
I think the 2020 [cabinet order banning 1,500 models of assault-style firearm] and the Nova Scotia shooting really demonstrates that.
If the [federal] government had taken the time to wait and let the details emerge after the Nova Scotia shooting, they would have found that the laws that they brought in afterwards would have had absolutely no impact on what happened there, because the shooter was unlicensed, and they smuggled their firearms from the United States.
Really the solution there was making sure that police respond to reports of people who are dangerous. I understand the temptation to pass policy in the aftermath of a shocking tragedy, but I think that waiting and allowing that incident to be studied, and then obviously basing policy on the best evidence in the literature [is a better option].
MG: What are some of the topics related to gun policy in Canada that you think we should be talking about more?
NS: I frame this around supply and demand. The conversation in Canada is obsessed with the supply of illegal firearms. We don’t have control over that. We share the world’s largest undefended border with a country that has more guns than people and has trended towards increasingly concealable guns. Guns are getting more plentiful in the U.S. and easier to smuggle, and as we tighten gun control laws in Canada, we create more incentives for smugglers.
What we need to do is focus on demand. Why are people picking up illegal firearms and committing crimes? Legal firearms owners account for a very small percentage of gun crime in Canada. The problem is folks that are picking up illegal guns and using them to commit crimes, often in connection with criminal gangs or with the drug trade.
This is where we have to talk about the social conditions that lead to crime. Crime ultimately stems from unmet needs. Criminal gangs do a good job at recruiting young people and providing them with easy money and status.
MG: What does Canada lose if we lose sport shooters?
NS: We’re facing a crisis of civic engagement and of connection. Fewer people are involved in organized leisure activities than in the past. It’s a lot easier now to stay home and be entertained than it was in the past.
We know that having people engaged in organized activities exposes them to people that they wouldn’t ordinarily meet in their everyday life, and this increases political cohesion. When we lose those opportunities for social connections, we see more isolation, more depression, more violence.
MG: One of the themes in your book is citizenship. What do you think the gun debate tells us about Canada?
NS: Citizenship is really tied to belonging: who belongs and who doesn’t, and how we imagine who belongs. This is where the book really connects to ideas of rural and Western alienation.
What it means to be Canadian has really been shaped around an urban view. Even though Canadian [identity] is tied to nature, it’s about experiences of nature that people from cities will have, like someone going out to their cottage. The woods isn’t somewhere you live, but it’s somewhere you visit. I think that’s why that image of what it means to be Canadian is so hostile to gun ownership.
Our definition of Canadianness has also been really built around what we’re not, and that’s American. Guns are coded as American. We need to broaden what we think about as what it means to be Canadian.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thank you for this great article.
The point about urban rural divide is key. Nowadays, especially with the recent political drama between us and the US, it’s becoming pretty clear that being Canadian means being a caricature of an urban Ontarian. Being from Alberta or BC is especially weird because we have yet to really exist on the national stage as a culture.
With the Blue Jays playing the Seattle Mariners in the MLB playoffs, I made a social media post explaining why so many people in BC pull for the Mariners, while contemporary urban Vancouverites (who have often moved from elsewhere in Canada and the world) cheer for the Blue Jays. I got a lot of comments saying I don’t really sound like a Canadian or I’m not a real Canadian. That’s a problem because being a Canadian needs to be about more than just not being an American. I’ve never seen Canadian bacon. I’ve never seen milk in a bag. I grew up shooting guns on a farm far enough from any city that police and fire services usually ran a day late, and we had a higher murder rate than the national rate of Mexico the year I graduated high school. Oh and I don’t talk like a “Canadian” or say aboot.
Pretty much every country in the world has regional differences, but not every country celebrates these differences. Maybe Canada needs to broaden its idea of what being Canadian means.
For all of us across this huge country, when we sit down to watch the news or discuss politics, the topics generally revolve around Ontario or Quebec, like protecting auto jobs, or steal and aluminum, and making sure that dairy farmers have their supply management system. I wonder if the lumber industry ever makes conversations across Canada? The forestry industry employs more people across Canada than the auto industry, and since the current softwood lumber dispute began, BC has lost over 40,000 jobs alone. No wonder rule people feel alienated, knowing that their tax dollars are being used to prop up investment in battery plants and auto factories in Central Canada, while their own communities are being hollowed out.
Alberta is the poster child for alienation, obviously, and though some of the rage is political bait, they do have some legit reasons for discontent. Across Canadian media and discourse, oil and gas are vilified into a force of evil, while national budgets are very content to survive off their taxation. Universities, government ministers and radio shows will continuously harp about emissions in Canada associated with Alberta, but I have yet to hear a balanced conversation that also explains why Japan and Taiwan and other East Asian countries need Canadian natural gas to lower their own emissions. I hate Trump, so it pains me to know that he lowered emissions in the US more than Trudeau lower emissions in Canada. Why? Because he pushed liquefied natural gas, which has lower emissions than coal. There are countries that burn coal for electricity because they don’t have the capacity for hydroelectric dams and don’t have their own natural gas.
So while the people who work in these industries are basically labeled as selfish and immoral scumbags, the world cries for their product. I spend time in Taiwan every year and I’m not even joking when I say that they are crying for natural gas, because they are dependent on Russia who could easily turn off the taps if China asked, leaving Taiwan in the dark.
So, with all that in mind, of course Albertans feel angry at Canada. Stable jobs in oil and gas only exist when investment is coming in. To be fair, we can’t just build pipelines and wells forever, but then why hasn’t Alberta gotten any kind of significant investment in other employment? When they say they want a data center built, the rest of Canada laughs at them. That’s kind of contradictory when other provinces get subsidized battery plants.
So now, for some people, being told that you can’t keep your firearms is like the finishing blow. Not because they can’t go on without their firearms, but more so because it’s now evident that their culture is not valued in Canada. Their contributions are not valid. This problem is fueling the right wing rage that’s growing in rural and especially western Canadian communities.
I concur with Stefan.
In addition, Canada has always had a firearms culture, firearms were a major commodity during the fur trade that built our country.
Canadian made firearms had a hand in winning both world wars and kept Canadians and Native nations surviving prior.
People forget how much of Canada is harsh wilderness, and wild animals don’t generally bother people, but there is always a chance. Particularly when urban environments encrouch on their territory.
Average American firearm owner has 2 firearms and any Canadian firearm owner knows thats nothing 😂 a small collection is 8-12.
Firearms are not a part of Canadian culture to fight tyranny like the states. Our firearm culture exists because firearms have historically kept us alive regardless of the specific conditions.
World wars flooded the civilian population with firearms and despite coming out of war with PTSD and all kinds of problems mass shootings were not a thing. Most were converted or used for hunting.
Kids were riding their bikes with .22 caliber rifles on their backs for ages with no issues. Canada has produced a truly enormous amount of good cheap .22s that have been sold worldwide and still do.
Gun grabs are also the first thing authoritarian governments do before they hurt their populace in transition to ruling rather than governing.
We have forgotten to respect our own free will enough to make good choices and have chosen to blame the tool to our significant detriment.
I grew up in Calgary and moved to the US after high school. I now work full time for the NRA and carry a defensive pistol with me wherever possible. Canada needs a gun culture (nay, ANY culture) which has more of a definition than just “Not the US.”
An emphasis on sporting and hunting is natural, given Canada’s geography. However, a cursory glance at Canadian history shows that the government has been on occasion absolutely horrific to certain people groups, and it’s for those reasons that the US enshrined the Second Amendment in the Constitution.
The NRA continues to make the same weak justifications for barely regulated gun ownership year after year. The USA was a fledgling country that was essentially bereft after throwing off British rule. Unable to support a standing army, the government entrenched gun ownership by citizens, mainly farmers and woodsmen, as a defence against possible retaliation by the British or collaborators ,as part of “a well regulated militia”. That onetime need is now moot. USA has a standing army for defence, the largest in the world, and the average gun owner is not part of a well regulated militia. How do these lightly armed citizens rationalise their ability to defend against the most technically advanced and trained army in the world? American culture has devolved gun ownership as a tool to gun ownership as a fetish. As for the constitution, as one comedian said, ” You can’t just amend the second…amendment.”
Dr. Schwartz’s reflections on Canada’s urban and rural divide feel especially relevant given what has unfolded in the West over the past few years.
The alienation he describes, the sense that national identity is shaped by urban and Eastern perspectives that treat rural and resource-based life as something different, closely mirrors the concerns raised in the Buffalo Declaration in 2020. That document expressed the same cultural divide he analyzes here, but in political and constitutional terms rather than sociological ones.
Five years later, very little has changed. Despite Alberta’s efforts to assert greater autonomy, the federal government has not implemented meaningful reforms to address the imbalance of power or the perception that Western prosperity depends on who governs in Central Canada. At the same time, talk of separation has grown louder, not quieter.
If anything, the distance between Canada’s urban imagination and its rural reality has widened. Unless both the cultural and institutional roots of this alienation are taken seriously, the opportunity for reconciliation may close with a more divided country rather than a stronger one.
I am in favour of hunters owning a gun for hunting animals for food. Nothing else is excusable, guns are not toys and that’s all there is to it. Yes I know the bad guys will find a way to get guns, so please don’t bring that up! And by the way I have yet to see statistics of how many times a person has been able to prevent an intruder from harming his family or stealing his Picasso by keeping a pistol under his pillow.
Gun owner here in rural Ontario. I use it for sport shooting and hunting (if needed). Despite that, I support the ban on assault rifles and restrictions on handguns. I do not agree with the comment from Kevin Creighton that Canada needs “a gun culture” or “ANY culture”. I believe our Canadian approach is pragmatic and inclusive (and typically Canadian).