Nisga'a celebrate return
Thief steals church's bees
Huge pink salmon returns
Discrimination at hospital?
Manslaughter in tot death
Updated vaccine approved
Oldest senator passes
3 dead in shootings
Gang violence escalates
Canadian GDP stays flat
Unifor sets GM deadline
Air Canada pilots picket
Warriors honour fire heroes
Rockets schedule change
Warriors named BCHL star
Rockers roll back the clock
Harry Potter actor passes
Sophie staying at Taylor's
Re. Andy Thomsen’s letter PM’s ‘anti-gun’ campaign (Castanet, June 5)
Firearms flooded into Canada after (former prime minister) Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dismantled the federal long gun registry in 2012 .
Nearly two million rifles, shotguns and handguns were imported for retail sale across the country over just five years, federal records show.
The surge in firearms, with a total import value of $751 million, rose 79 per cent over the number of firearm imports from the start of 2007 to the end of 2011, customs information held by Statistics Canada reveals.
The data going back to 1988 shows that even by 2007, firearms imports that were growing steadily after a steep dive when the Liberal government (of former prime minister Jean Chretien) implemented the long-gun registry in 1995, began to increase sharply after Harper and his Conservatives won their second minority government in 2008.
Ian Skinner
