The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can a Firearms Buyback Reduce Gun Violence?

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

As the federal government’s gun buyback program faces growing criticism, questions remain about whether it will meaningfully improve public safety, or miss the forces driving gun violence in the first place. From the legal challenges surrounding firearms policy, examined by lawyer Edward Burlew, to decades of crime-prevention research outlined by University of Ottawa professor emeritus Irvin Waller, the debate extends well beyond legislation. It also intersects with lived realities on the ground, highlighted by a November 2024 shooting at a Toronto recording studio linked to rival gangs. Drawing on insights from youth advocate David Mitchell and music producer and business owner Shakkir Brown, this conversation looks at how policy, community, and culture collide, and what real change might actually require.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what we see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. is furious about the federal government's gun buyback program. They are going to rip $750 million away from our border and police services to harass duck hunters and farmers by banning the firearms they use. But they're only doing it for political reasons.

No surprise, the Prime Minister disagrees. So how does it actually work? While Ottawa has banned more than 2,500 makes and models of what it calls assault-style firearms. Now, owners who turn the government, them in before today may get compensation. Those who didn't have until October 30th to get rid of them. But the program is facing criticism and not a lot of uptake, with a lot of police forces opting out due to resources. We look at whether the buyback program is targeting the right issues and what

kind of impact it will have. Then, one of the criticisms of the program is it targets legal guns when experts say so many of the guns used in crimes are smuggled in from south of the border. That was the case with handguns found at the scene of a November 2024 shootout outside a recording studio in downtown Toronto. The incident led to dozens of arrests and more than 100 charges. We look at how this affected the hip-hop community and at efforts to fight gun violence on the ground. This is the rundown. The federal government gun buyback program has faced some blowback, but will it actually make Canadian safer? is a lawyer who specializes in firearm cases,

and Irvin Waller is Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa and author of The Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime. Great to have you in studio, Edward. Thank you. Great to have you on the line, Irvin. Edward, I'm going to start with you. The Federal Firearms Buyback Program

is nearing its deadline for registration. It's 31st of March. What do you believe the program will accomplish? It's not going to accomplish much. It hasn't so far. By the way, you use the word registration. It's not. declaration. Okay. What that means in very plain terms is I as a gun owner would declare I have this

gun, this gun, and the other gun. Some of the guns are already registered. They know about those. Some may be the one that the minister talks about, which is the Ruger Mene 14, which was always non-restricted. They wouldn't know I have that unless I say, I have it. I put on my declaration. The declaration is not a contract. It does not obligate the government to pay me anything for that gun no matter where or how it's surrendered. Now, the government has said that they hope that this program results in fewer mass casualty events. Does this program do that at all? I would say no, because for the last six years since May of 2020, when they did the big grab, um, or the big announcement that made the

AR-15s and another, um, about two, um, about two, 1,500, 1,500, actually, types of guns and models prohibited. They haven't been used to mass casualty in Canada. And it's significant to look at the Canadian situation of licensing, compliance, regulation, and constant eligibility because we have very strict and demanding laws

that govern our ownership of handguns, and all guns, in fact. Irvin, I want to get you in on here. Let's talk about the declaration. What do you believe that the program will accomplish, given what Edward has said? Well, it looks as if it will eventually bring in, who knows, 50,000, guns, assault-style guns. my interest is very much what policies will actually reduce the number of homicides. And it's very clear that this action really going back so many years and inspired a little bit by Australia

is not going to save a lot of lives. All right. With that being said, Edward, it seems like a drop in the bucket when we talk about, exactly, you know, how many guns are actually going to be declared here. You as a lawyer, you represent the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. That's correct. I'm hoping it among other groups. And I want to help us understand, how is the buyback program being viewed among legal gun owners at the moment? Well, we do have some that are participating by doing the declaration. Okay. But by and large, they've developed a wait and see, look, because they understand

that there's a limited amount of funds and there's no guarantee they'll get paid. That's, of course, a big motivation. And the other one is that they say it's voluntary. Well, right now it is voluntary to make a declaration. But come the end of October, October 31st, yeah. Then it's no longer voluntary and there's a lot of risk. Two things have developed. Number one, the response to the voluntary declaration,

expiring on today, has been less than robust. And now the Supreme Court will be hearing the appeal of the challenge that may defeat the order in counsel. And that may be argued in September. So not very straightforward. A bit confusing for some gun owners

who might be wondering where they stand in the law. Very much. So very confusing. People were seeking direction and we're not really getting that. We're getting the same statements, which still are the law today. There's no doubt about it. But things may change.

We don't know. And people are looking at these maybes. Okay. Irvin, much of the focus, as you mentioned, firearms like AR-15s, critics often say that that's a weapon designed really for military purposes. So I am curious, from that perspective, do you think taking them out of civilian circulation would make things safer?

Well, yes, but very marginally. We know that AR-15s are used significantly in mass shootings in the United States. You have to remember that mass shootings still only account for one or two percent of all homicides in the United States. We also know that mass shootings have been increasing over the last decade in the United States. So, yes, potentially there may be more mass shootings in Canada involving assault-style weapons, but it's hypothetical and I think unlikely to lead to a lot of mass shootings. There are much better things that they could be doing to reduce deaths from guns in Canada, and they're not doing them.

I'll get your take on that. Well, I agree, and I'd like to work with him with Professor Waller to work on a strategy. One of the things we've been pushing for about three years, and me about 10 years, through this Canadian Shooting Sports Association, is to develop a better police powers. For instance, when a person is found guilty of something, some act of violence, it could just be an assault. They're given a prohibition order by the court. Prohibition order means you can't touch a gun. You can't pick one up. And that goes sometimes lifetime, mostly five to ten years. But those people don't have to say where they live. They're not

subject to police inspection. They don't have any reporting. We would like that change. We would like that changed. We would like that as, and this is the majority of gun owners like this. And when I talk to the police about it, you know, in courts and other sessions, they say, please do it. And we would very much like to see this done so that those people with prohibition orders can be traced. They can be held accountable. Because as gun owners, we are. Just give them the same sanction of reporting that we are subject to, and the courts have found that the sanctions we are facing are constitutional. We didn't do anything wrong. And we're saying, we're not saying loosen them to us, but put other people under them. That will make a significant difference because you can see it in the

reports that we see every day. So-and-so was arrested. He had a gun. He was already under a probation or a prohibition order. That would go a long way. I want to take a step back here. Help me understand. There are probably going to be some viewers and listeners who are wondering, why do people need to have an AR-15? Well, first of all, let me define something. After that highly tragic event, the Canadian government immediately changed the law about cartridge magazines.

Semi-automatic rifles were restricted to five rounds, period. That's it. Doesn't matter. That's it. So the AR-15s could have. only shoot five rounds legally. That's all you can have. It's used primarily in competition sports. And those competition sports are sanctioned through Canadian bodies, international bodies, which are actually larger bodies than the Olympic Foundation. And the first thing all those

sanctioning bodies do, be it IDPA or IPSIC, are, give increased safety. rules and you have to have accuracy and you have to have safety rules that you learn on top of the other safety rules that exist. And that's the reason why people have that and they participate in that way. That's what they're used for in Canada. I want to get Irvin in here, but I do have a quick follow up here. You mentioned rules. And one of the things that I have to do ask is, well, criminals don't follow a lot of those rules. None of them.

They don't. They flaunt them. They absolutely flaunt them. Is there a fear that if people aren't following the rules, then does this open up concerns and issues? That, you know, if we put in these policies that you would mention, will people who are taking advantage of our criminals will continue to do what they do?

Well, I think a criminal will continue to flaunt rules. But it gives the police access to where they are, to their homes, to their cars, and the checking up on them. And that's very important because these are the people who have been found to be violent or be violent with guns.

And they need to be watched. They need to have sanctions. All right, very good. I want to get Irvinen on here. Unlike the AR-15's handguns are often used, as you mentioned, in crimes in Canada, but they are now controlled by legislation.

Initially, with a handgun freeze in 2022, then became law in 2023. Does the focus on handguns better address the root causes of some of the gun violence that we're seeing? Absolutely not. And of course, the way that the government did it, they actually expanded the number of people who were owning handguns.

But I don't think the legal owners of handguns are the major issue in urban areas. So in urban areas, we know a lot about how to stop that gun, handgun violence before it happens. South of the border, there has been dramatic changes in handgun homicides and really brought about not by handgun controls, but by tackling the causes and risk factors that lead to young men using these guns. Edward, I'm going to get your take on here,

but I do want to get an understanding of what is working and what is not. Canada's gun control framework includes licensing storage and enforcement rules. Where is it succeeding? Where is it falling short? Well, it's succeeding in the training, the mandatory training, in the control by storage, transport, where we can shoot. It's being successful. It's also being successful in mental health issues.

A lot of what I do is, counseling, arranging counseling, and working with people who've had problems psychologically and then police get their guns. We have tremendously strong laws about that, and instantaneous police response to any type of suicide threat or threat of harm to others. And that's been built into the law for at least 35 years. So I fully agree with the professor here. that there are other things to do.

One of the things I would really like to see, and when I talk with other people, we would like to see our prime minister go down and talk with the President of the United States and say stop the flow of illegal handguns into Canada. Do all you can. That's what's created this epidemic of handgun violence. The statistics of Toronto are that 90s,

6% of the crime guns that they recover have been smuggled. And that has to be stopped. Now, the province last week in their budget announced some money towards securing the border, dealing with sort of gaps in enforcement there, to the tune of about $32 million for next year. Part of that would be going to that. Is that a good sign? It's a very good sign.

But, you know, CBSA is federal. Yeah. Here's an interesting fact. The Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms, which is down in the United States, they are the gun control people in the United States, everything about them, they have offices in Toronto, in headquarters in Toronto and at Pearson Airport. And we work, our people in Canada who are in enforcement, they work. with them as one unit.

And that's very good. And I'm glad to see that. And that's existed for decades. Irvin, well, both of you had mentioned public safety Canada. So I'm going to want to put you guys in their shoes. If you were in charge of Public Safety Canada, Irvin, what's the first thing that you would do to prevent a tragedy from happening in the future when it comes to using guns? I would appoint a deputy minister to lead violence reduction strategies across Canada.

And that person would have a small team of people who are knowledgeable on how you tackle the risk factors, what sorts of programs. that have worked and they would help cities and regional government and indigenous groups across the country do the planning that is necessary to get effective programs implemented. And that is basically what the UK did on a national basis. And it's what the US did on a national basis and it's what the US did on an a less national basis. Today, there are over 100 cities in the US that have a planning group like that, and we effectively don't have one.

And then you have to inject, invest the funds. It's maybe the equivalent of 5% of what was spending federally on reaction to, Ukraine in getting those programs implemented. We are today all in Ontario. In 2019, the Ontario government changed their police act, to call it the Community Safety and Police Act. Section 251 and around there talk about the type of planning group

that is now spread across the UK and has spread across many cities in the U.S. But legislation is not enough. You have to actually do the things that bring this legislation to light. The Mass Casualty Commission, the largest mass casualty in recent Canadian history, yes, it recommended some measures relating to safer safety in relation to guns, but it also recommended exactly what I'm talking about, the community safety strategies, that are the secret to actually getting significant reductions in homicides across Canada.

All right, just very quickly, you get the last word here, Edward, but looking forward, what's the most realistic path to reducing firearm violence while respecting legal ownership? I would say this. I'd say that the federal government needs to appoint the 50 plus judges into the Superior Court of Ontario, which has been in a deficit having only about 150 judges and 200 are needed, to then give us the judicial resources and to create a fast-track court

to deal with gun violence, with weapons violence offenses, so that they don't take two years, three years to get through court, so that they can be brought to court within months. And that as well, the judges would respect the grounds for release right now, which is the tertiary ground, which is that the release of a person after violence, after gun violence, weapons violence,

if at their release, that brings justice into disrepute. Because certainly people are feeling that. The press is saying that. Police are saying that. Politicians are saying that. That tertiary ground needs to have more respect. And once the gangsters, those people who are prone to this type of violence, whether gangs or individuals, realize that they will be dealt with quickly,

that will be another deterrence as well as what Professor Waller has said, which is tremendously useful. All right. We are going to have to leave it there. Edward, Irvin, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for your insights. Thank you. On November 11th, 2024, gunfire broke out at a recording studio on Queen Street West in Toronto.

The police say rival gangs were involved. I got insight into the factors that fueled this violence and at how people are trying to make change. On November 11, 2024, a shootout broke out just off of Queen Street West right behind me in this alleyway. It started off as a late night jam session in a music studio, ended up with nearly a hundred shots fired. Amazingly, no one was injured. Now surveillance video later showed a group of young men inside the studio prior to the shooting, holding and even dancing with the guns.

Police say three people then arrived in a stolen vehicle and opened fire outside the studio. They were met by return fire, people scattered, tossed guns into nearby laneways and garbage bins. By the end of it, police seized at least 16 guns, including handguns and assault-style weapons. The gathering was supposed to be a party. Who brings a gun to a party? But we know that it was live-streamed, that the group that was there down on Queen Street in the studio came from the northwest of Toronto. There's a group in central Toronto that claims that area of the studio as their turf, and were offended because this was all live streamed.

And this is one of the things the Ace talks about in terms of what we call digital violence accelerants, explicit or implicit threats that evolve to a situation where there's going to be gun violence. In a matter of minutes. My understanding in terms of the research that we've done because we're trying to mitigate this as a clear and present threat to what we call get back killings and reciprocal violence. So the party started at about 10 to 11, and by 20 after 11, three of the individuals from Central Toronto would come down and 100 rounds were fired.

And eventually, you know, thank God nobody was hurt. And there's still people outstanding from that matter. Some people can look at this, probably with your background, and say this is perhaps some form of organized crime in some sense. 100% because those firearms aren't free, right? And so if we want to begin then to look at organized weapons trafficking, definitely there's a connection to it. Over the past decade, firearm-related homicides have gone up by nearly 90% across Canada. Over the last three years, Toronto police have reported on average 350 shooting in. incidents per year. The result, about 150 people either injured or killed in the city every year.

Experts are saying gun violence is now a public health crisis. The Queen West Shootout could easily have been much worse. For the neighborhood and for Toronto's music community, however, this one hit close to home. For a lot of young artists in Ontario's capital city, a music studio is supposed to be a creative space. Some would say even a safe space. So what happens now? Hey, it's the track. Yes, sir. How's it going? Nice to meet you.

It's a recording studio so like anybody can come here and make music. I kind of just like created a space for just like people to be able to make music without like breaking their pockets. You might see some of your friends here or you might see a famous rapper here. It's more of like also like a meeting grounds for people. Let's go! The shooting that happened. happened. Obviously, even just pulling up, you can still kind of see remnants of it. Was this studio operating at the time that that happened? I literally just moved in, maybe like a month before.

It was horrible. I thought I was done. I was like, this is terrible. I spent so much money, like trying to like renovate and do whatever, whatever, and like shooting happens. I wasn't here. I was in Los Angeles, but some of my engineers were here and they ended up just like locking themselves in the bathroom. So let's help clarify it. Was there, there's a studio upstairs that's separate Yeah, there was a studio upstairs, two floors upstairs. Okay. And that's where the... That's where it happened. Yeah. What were those messages, like, I'm just curious, like,

what were the messages from your engineers to you being like, what's happening? They were frightened as, like, they were scared, rightfully so. But they were safe. Like, yeah, but it's just, yeah, not something that anybody should, like, kind of go through. Do you think the music reflects the violence, or is it driving it? When there's violence behind music or whatever, when it gets tied together, it's like, it's the real life stuff first. The music is after.

The real life stuff is already happening. What do you mean by real life stuff? It's not like someone's making a song, and then violence is happening after that. They're making songs about stuff that's happening in real life. Do you find there's an unfair connection between sort of hip-hop and violence that when people see hip-hop videos, music they automatically are like okay well there is a connection these shootings for example that shooting is not an anomaly it's not a one-off I don't know I guess a little bit but it's understandable music should just be entertainment like it's an

entertainment business at the end of the day I can tell when the music is secondary to someone and the real life is first and I can tell when some people are just like yeah I'm just making some cool music for some people yeah I'm saying certain things but I don't live like that there is this stereotype that there is a sort of a connection to violence and hip-hop. Does hip-hop and music have a violence problem? I don't think so. I think what the issue is, because if you look at the lyrics, right?

So are those lyrics provocative or in other ways conveying threats or insults that then is going to raise the stakes? So that's where it is, not necessarily the genre itself. It's what you choose to use it for in terms of conveying things that could. cause a problem. As someone who works directly with youth, how much of this conversation and the problems here is really about a lack of opportunity for youth? This is all about a lack of opportunity. I teach part-time in a police foundations of public safety course at one of local colleges. One of my students, 18, 19 years old, came to me and said, sir, I just put out 40

resumes looking for a job and I can't land a part-time job. Youth unemployment? Youth unemployment 100%. And the point with him is, He's in college. He's exercising the right decisions and options and he can't. And what he said to me is that I understand why these kids carry guns or sell drugs. It's the only job you don't need a resume. You don't have to subject yourself to an interview and you're always a successful candidate. That to me was profound. How do you turn that negativity into positivity? That's just me naturally. I'm just like naturally a positive person. I like to help people

And I want the entire economy of our Toronto music scene to go up. Obviously, there's a lot of young people who are eager and hungry. They're in this space working on music. What could this scene potentially look like? Around 2016, we must have had at least like 15 artists that were like touring around the world and doing a bunch of crazy stuff. And they're all like upcoming people. It's like I feel like that's about to happen again right now.

Toronto hip-hop was looked at a certain way before, just like how everybody else knows it. And now it's like, it's a real like positive group of people that all mess with each other. And it's just like, it's the new Toronto. There's a bunch of young kids that are like making some noise and they're all performing at these big shows and like meeting big artists and like, yeah, a bunch of kids doing cool stuff. And if you've got some type of pull in the music industry and you want to get involved in something really cool before it kind of takes off and you just got to watch. Like, come see what's going on in the city. I love my city, man. I love this city to death.

I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What topics would you like to see us tackle? Send us your suggestions at rundown at tbo.org, or you can always leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, I will see you tomorrow.