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.
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.
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.”
In other words, the article specifically says that they don’t know (or at least, the RCMP won’t say) what led to most of these firearms being reported as lost (we have external invormation in a few cases, like the trailer theft mentioned by another commenter, but not for most). There isn’t even enough information there for us to be able to tell whether all detachments use the same criteria in deciding whether a firearm qualifies as lost.
The trailer article doesn’t specifically say which police force owned the trailer of guns, and the RCMP doesn’t take care of any policing in Ontario (except policing on federal gov’t grounds) because that’s done by the OPP.
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In other words, the article specifically says that they don’t know (or at least, the RCMP won’t say) what led to most of these firearms being reported as lost (we have external invormation in a few cases, like the trailer theft mentioned by another commenter, but not for most). There isn’t even enough information there for us to be able to tell whether all detachments use the same criteria in deciding whether a firearm qualifies as lost.
The trailer article doesn’t specifically say which police force owned the trailer of guns, and the RCMP doesn’t take care of any policing in Ontario (except policing on federal gov’t grounds) because that’s done by the OPP.