The urgent need to do more to prevent the spread of weapons in Canada was set back this month when the Liberal government rescinded additional measures it put forward on its new gun control law.
Our friends at Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns shared this commentary with us this week, which was published in the Toronto Star. The group has been at the forefront of pushing politicians to make gun laws much stronger.
Do we have the political will to prevent mass shootings?
Today, I am left to wonder if politics in Canada trumps public safety, science, and decency.
By Najma Ahmed
It has been nearly five years since one of the most difficult nights of my career as a trauma surgeon. A mass shooting in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood sent multiple victims to the hospital and brought me unexpectedly into the operating room. It catapulted physicians to the forefront of the debate on gun control, beginning with an op-ed I penned after the mass shooting.
Today, I am left to wonder if politics in Canada trumps public safety, science, and decency.
Since that summer evening in 2018, Canada has endured at least seven additional mass shootings, killing 39 people, injuring many others, and traumatizing families and communities.
How then, did Members of Parliament fail to act — some regretfully, others gleefully — to permanently ban the types of semi-automatic assault-style firearms that have inflicted such terror?
The withdrawing of the proposed amendments to Bill C-21 is a clear loss for public health and safety. The amendments would have enshrined in legislation the May, 2020 Order-in-Council banning more than 1,500 types of assault weapons and prohibited some additional guns including the SKS rifle used in recent mass shootings and in the killing of two police officers in Ontario last fall. The amendments would have also created a clear definition of prohibited guns to prevent gun manufacturers from skirting the ban with similarly lethal but slightly modified versions in the future.
Certainly, the federal Liberal government has taken positive steps the last few years: stronger background checks, a freeze on the sale of handguns, and the 2020 ban. Yet the definitive action — permanently banning assault weapons — still eludes.
My colleagues and I were left asking each other: what are MPs waiting for? More tears from survivors and victim families? More pleas from doctors and nurses? More research papers demonstrating — unequivocally — that removing these guns from our society will save lives? More opinion polls showing Canadians massively in favour of banning assault weapons?
My colleagues and I were left asking each other: what are MPs waiting for?
Dr. Najma Ahmed
The process by which the C-21 amendments were introduced was imperfect, to put it mildly. Just as doctors must properly explain to patients why they propose certain treatments, so do governments need to explain — and justify — proposed policy. No one — regardless of what the self-interested gun lobby and some opposition MPs suggest — is trying to attack hunters.
It is essential however, that the government engage in good faith negotiations with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples to ensure treaty rights are respected.
Clearer communication, wider consultation, demonstrable respect for Indigenous Peoples, and even compromising on policy details — none of these are inconsistent with the goals of permanently banning the types of guns that can kill and injure many people in a short period of time.
Modern medicine and the best efforts of surgeons can heal many wounds — but little can be done to repair the damage to the human body — rendering it almost unrecognizable — caused by bullets from semi-automatic assault weapons.
No, the only fix here is prevention. It is what Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns has been calling for since we formed four years ago. It is what the Canadian Medical Association recommended in its 2021 Policy on Firearms Control.
Yet we wait. The toll on human lives increases, as do the costs. A new study from B.C. calculated that violent firearm injury and death costs that province almost $300 million per year.
Other countries have successfully legislated assault weapon bans. Their political debates followed a similar trajectory. Eventually though, those countries chose the public interest and acted.
If Canada fails, who will be held to account?
Will the politicians grandstanding last week take responsibility? Will they join me in the “quiet room” the next time I tell devastated parents we could not save their daughter? Or be there as I explain to the scared young man that he will never walk again? Will they be there with my colleagues in the trauma room as we await the arrival of multiple injured patients during the next mass shooting?
Or will they continue to invoke gun lobby disinformation? Will they continue to look smugly at the even worse situation of mass shootings in America while hoping it does not happen here? When it does, will they send their thoughts and prayers?
We know we can save lives. We know how to prevent mass shootings. We have the evidence. Do politicians have the will?
Dr. Najma Ahmed is a trauma surgeon and co-founder of Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns.