Counting Guns Isn’t Enough — What Canada’s Firearm Declarations Really Tell Us

Posted on March 26, 2026
Categories: Faculty, Research, Tanya Sharpe

By Dr. Tanya L. Sharpe

March 31^st marks the deadline to declare ownership of prohibited assault-style firearms under the federal government’s the national buyback program. When the initial numbers were released in February, the headline “roughly 32,000 firearms declared so far,” sparked predictable debate.

Some see these numbers as proof of compliance. Others see them as evidence of overreach. But as a researcher who has spent nearly three decades studying the impact of homicide and firearm violence on Black families and communities, I see something else.

The declaration numbers tell us that assault-style firearms are embedded in communities across this country. And when firearms are present at scale, the risk of harm increases.

Removing dangerous firearms from our communities is an important step in reducing gun violence, but isn’t enough. We must move beyond counting guns and start asking what conditions make communities feel they need them in the first place.

First, it’s important to understand what these numbers actually mean. The declared assault-style firearms are not a full count of all prohibited firearms currently in circulation. Some owners may have decided not to participate, and even though businesses and individuals will be required under law to safely dispose of or permanently deactivate their assault-style guns by October 30, that doesn’t mean that all will.

In other words, the declaration numbers provide a snapshot, not a final outcome.

Second, these numbers represent normalization. They reflect how routine assault-style firearm ownership has become in certain parts of Canada. When something becomes normalized, it shapes culture, perceptions of safety and public health. It influences how communities define protection, risk and belonging.

Gun violence must be understood not as a series of isolated incidents, but as a systemic issue that affects families, neighbourhoods and entire communities. In my research with Black survivors of homicide victims, I have seen how one fatal shooting ripples outward. On average, each homicide leaves seven to 10 immediate family members struggling to survive the loss. The trauma is not contained to a crime scene. It reverberates through schools, workplaces and entire neighbourhoods.

Canada often sees itself as separate from the gun violence crisis unfolding elsewhere. But as a recent report on Gun Violence in Canada that I co-authored shows, despite recent improvements, across the country firearm-related incidents remain elevated compared to a decade ago. The trend is persistent. That tells us this is not a temporary spike it is a structural issue requiring structural solutions.

While ultimately reducing the number of guns in communities has been shown to reduce gun-related homicides, the declaration numbers alone are just one piece of a broader story. They don’t directly measure risk or violence — and they can’t capture lived reality.

What my work and the work of many community-engaged researchers in North America make clear is that firearm violence is inseparable from structural inequities. It intersects with housing instability, employment gaps, educational streaming, over-policing and under-resourced mental health systems. When we focus solely on the object the gun without addressing the systems that shape vulnerability and harm, we miss the larger story.

If we want to reduce firearm violence in Canada, we need a culturally responsive public health approach. That means investing in community-led prevention programs, supporting survivors of homicide victims with sustained resources, and collecting race-based data responsibly so we can understand who is most impacted and more importantly why.

Declaration totals provide a starting point. The real question is whether we are willing to confront the deeper conditions that make firearms feel necessary in some communities and devastating in others.

Counting guns may help us track policy implementation. But a comprehensive and sustainable safety plan requires us to measure something far more complex: whether families feel secure, whether communities have equitable access to resources, and whether we are reducing the structural violence that too often precedes a trigger being pulled.

Until then, the numbers, whatever they are, will never tell the whole story.