The murders of eight people, including some children, on Dec. 29 by a handgun-wielding killer who subsequently took his own life in Edmonton, Alberta, was cited by gun rights activists as more proof that strict gun laws do not prevent such crimes.
Canada has far stricter gun laws than the United States, with the possible exception of states including California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois. Yet a man identified as Phu Lam by the Edmonton Journal murdered his eight victims at two different locations, before committing suicide at a restaurant with which he was associated.
In its exceptionally detailed reporting, the Journal touched on Canadian gun laws and the history of the 9mm handgun that Lam used in all of the killings. The newspaper reported that the gun had been “legally registered in British Columbia in 1997. Nine years later, in 2006, the gun was stolen in Surrey, BC. It is not known if the gun changed hands since 2006.”
Surrey, a Vancouver suburb, is hundreds of miles away from Edmonton, and in a separate province.
But since the gun had once been stolen, and it may have changed hands more than once illegally under Canadian law, the kinds of laws proposed to stop gun-related crime in the US would not have prevented the Edmonton slayings, had they been in effect north of the border.
That goes not only for background check laws, but magazine capacity limits. The newspaper noted in an interview with a gun shop operator that, “In Canada, such handguns are legally limited to 10 rounds. In the United States, such weapons can hold 13 to 16 rounds in many states. They could be illegally modified to hold more, though.”
