Now they're using drones to smuggle handguns ...

As provincial and municipal politicians work to make handguns illegal in specific Canadian jurisdictions, or even the whole country, there's one problem that Canadian gun owners continue to point out: Criminals in Canada are carrying handguns smuggled in from the US. Modern technology and increasing economic incentive continue to drive that black market forward; the latest example is a smuggling-by-drone operation along the Ontario/Michigan border.

The report comes out of Lambton County, between Sarnia and Lake St. Clair, where Ontario Provincial Police say they located a shipment of smuggled handguns when the operation went awry. The OPP say a drone carrying a bag containing 11 handguns was located in a tree along the St. Clair River. Given the nature of the situation and the proximity to the US, they presume this was a smuggling operation, shipping firearms from the US to Canada.

In an email to the press after the incident, an OPP spokesperson said he believed the handguns were prohibited in Canada. Obviously, under Canadian law, even if these were not prohibited handguns, but simply restricted-class, there was something illegal going here, as no Authorization to Transfer paperwork includes allowances for flying handguns around in a bag attached to a drone.

What can we learn?

Obviously, criminals are adapting to new technology, and it's surprising it's taken this long for police to discover a smuggle-by-drone operation. But even more importantly, it's worth noting the lesson that initial media coverage seems to miss: Banning legal firearms in Canada will not turn off the illegal firearms pipeline.

The Canada-US border is almost 9,000 kilometers long, and most of it is deserted. Firearms are smuggled across this border every day, just as firearms are smuggled across the Mexico-US border. Law enforcement officials themselves say that the vast majority of firearms used in Canadian crime are brought into our country illegally. Law-abiding Restricted PAL holders are not using their handguns in crime, and criminals are not sourcing their firearms from RPAL owners either. The drone smuggling operation should come as no surprise, as law enforcement has already reported similar operations in Canada smuggling narcotics into prisons.

Given the sheer length of the Canada-US border, CBSA and other agencies face difficult logistics, if they wish to end this type of smuggling. However, increased difficulty in enforcing the law does not mean that officials should give up, and chase law-abiding citizens instead. Canadian lawmakers and police instead need to focus on new approaches to new challenges, instead of changing the fight against crime into a fight against non-criminals.