RCMP struggles against tide of illegal firearms, including assault rifles, machine guns and grenades
Handguns are the weapon of choice for street level crime, but why the apparent increase in much heavier weapons? You'll have to ask the criminals, says RCMP
When Mission RCMP officers pulled over a moped rider without a helmet on April 9, they had no idea that a routine traffic stop would first turn into a criminal comedy sketch and then offer a window into the violent world of fentanyl trafficking.
The rider claimed not to have his identification, but did provide a name and date of birth. A skeptical Mountie warned him that providing a false name could lead to arrest for obstructing a peace officer.
The chastened moped driver quickly admitted he had lied and provided his real name.
It proved to be that of a repeat offender, who was not only subject to conditions of a release order for trafficking but was also on probation for carrying a concealed weapon and firearms possession.
The moped driver’s bad day was just beginning. He then dropped a package of cigarettes to the ground, which police immediately identified as contraband. They placed him under arrest under the Excise Act.
Then another confession: the man announced he was carrying a firearm, a loaded pistol with a silencer, tucked into his waistband. A further search produced hundreds of dollars in cash, as well as fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine and cannabis. The moped driver went to jail.
The pistol was just one of thousands of illegal weapons RCMP say are circulating in the criminal economy as a basic tool of the fentanyl trade, contributing to 40 per cent of homicides annually and scores of targeted shootings.
Police forces across the province are seizing scores of these weapons monthly.
“There’s been an increase in the firearms that our officers are seizing,” says Cpl. Sarbjit Sangha, a media relations officer with CFSEU, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, “and also an increase in the firearms analyzed by the lab and getting connected to different crime scenes.”
Firearm-related violent crime has risen sharply since 2018 although incidents appeared to level off in 2023.
The Canadian Border Services Agency seized more than 1,100 firearms in BC in 2023. The RCMP seized hundreds more. Ghost guns or PMFs, or privately manufactured firearms, are increasing in number, homemade but just as deadly, but the majority of illicit handguns are imported from the United States. (The RCMP reported 355,690 legal possession and acquisition licences in BC that year.)
“Mostly it’s handguns that we see,” says Sangha, because that seems to be the weapon of choice for street-level intimidation, robberies,” but a review of recent enforcement actions and seizures around the province shows a disconcerting number of high-powered assault rifles, heavy machine guns and even hand grenades.
The most dramatic seizure last year resulted from the RCMP raid on the Falkland superlab, which the Mounties termed a “supermarket of criminality” that netted 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 assault rifles and submachine guns, and two 50-calibre machine guns.
Shortly after the Falkland enforcement action, Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan reported on a police raid on a Surrey home that was heavily fortified. An RCMP search resulted in three arrests and the seizure of 23 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and kilograms of drugs linked to a Mexican drug cartel. The home has been on police radar since 2019 and was the target of a civil forfeiture action.
In April, Kamloops RCMP executed a search warrant in Chase that resulted in the “seizure of multiple firearms, body armour, ammunition, explosives, and a 3D printer with associated accessories, used in the illegal manufacturing of guns.”
In early May, CFSEU’s Uniform Gang Enforcement Unity joined local RCMP in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John for a five day operation that resulted in 33 arrests, as well as the seizure of various drugs, three rifles, three pistols, a knife, a bayonet, two batons, a machete, two tasers and assorted ammunition, scopes and magazines.
Richmond RCMP reported June 6 that crown prosecutors had laid charges against a man who was arrested on April 24, 2024, in a hotel room where police found four assault rifles, one of which was loaded, a loaded handgun, cash and illicit drugs. The entire hotel had to be evacuated.
Police searched several locations in Prince George on June 6 and 7, seizing nearly 20 kilograms of cocaine, contraband cigarettes, assault rifles, handguns, ammunition and hand grenades.
RCMP in Langford announced June 23 that charges had been laid against two men and two women after a search on a home uncovered twenty firearms, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, body armour, 4.5 kilograms of cocaine and $27,000 cash.
Federal legislation to strengthen laws against illicit firearms was approved in December, and the province has also tightened up its rules. BC’s Firearm Violence Prevention Act, passed in 2021, completed the implementation of the government’s 2017 Illegal Firearms Task Force recommendations to provide police with more tools to advance investigations and combat gun violence.
The changes proved effective, Sangha says, but CFSEU has also increased pressure on criminal networks by co-ordinating work among the agency’s intelligence, enforcement and forensics sections, often finding links between guns seized in one investigation with crimes committed elsewhere.
Despite the obvious threat posed by illegal firearms, BC Conservative leader John Rustad repeatedly pledged during the provincial election not to enforce new federal laws if they passed. (Fortunately, he would have had no choice.)
Why do BC’s criminal gangs acquire and maintain such arsenals? Noting that assault rifles are used for mass killings, Sangha won’t hazard an answer. “You’ll have to ask the other side,” she says.
We know from hard experience, however, that such weapons eventually get used, another heavy price British Columbians pay for the organized crime networks driving the drug trade.
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The article once again starkly points up the fact that, as we allow organized crime to control the market for drugs, violence, and death are a sure thing. The obvious answer is to legalize and regulate the drugs that people want and need. Take the black market away. Thank you Geoff!