Inside Alberta's battle against the rise of 'ghost guns'
CBC
For the last three years, Alberta police services have been grappling with a new trend in illegal firearms: A surge in guns built using privately manufactured or smuggled parts that make them untraceable.
Those firearms are often referred to as ghost guns.
"It's becoming a massive problem for Canadian law enforcement and the public," said Sgt. Richard Kurina.
He's an officer with the Lethbridge Police Service who also monitors southern Alberta and its border crossings as a member of the RCMP National Weapons Enforcement Support Team.
Privately manufactured firearms (PMFs) fall into one of three categories:
Canadian firearms laws regulate the receivers, which is where information like a serial number is stored. These privately made guns exclude any regulatory information — causing challenges for investigations, prosecutions and proactive operations.
"PMFs in our crime gun picture has gone up, it's probably doubled or tripled," said Acting Staff Sgt. Ben Lawson of the Calgary Police Service's firearms investigative unit.
Calgary police said they seized 31 PMFs last year, including 16 3D-printed guns. That's about six per cent of all crime guns seized in 2022.
They seized one each of the 3D prints in 2021 and 2020.
The force also recently conducted two major operations targeting 3D-printed firearms. One of those investigations seized three printers and five completed handguns, resulting in 66 charges against two men running the gun printing and trafficking operation in Calgary.
Edmonton police recovered seven 3D-printed firearms in 2022. The force only just started keeping statistics for them last year.
In southern Alberta, Kurina said he was aware of a handful of cases last year involving 3D-printing operations, including in small rural communities.
That part of the province has also been seeing more Polymer80s — mostly assembled gun kits from the United States that people can finish with unregulated parts.
"In the last several years, we've had an uptick or increased presence of privately manufactured firearms," he said.