There are times when we must risk the consequences and tell a friend that he or she is doing wrong. Canada has reached one of those times.

It’s time for Justin Trudeau, the prime minister who falls in love with every microphone and camera he meets, to tell U.S. President Joe Biden to get aggressive and take real action to end his country’s gun insanity.

Mind your own business, Biden and other Americans likely will say.

Unfortunately, it has become our business. The U.S. gun obsession is pouring hundreds of illegal guns into our country where they are being used in crimes. Crimes in which Canadians are dying.

Ontario police data shows that 73 per cent of guns used in Ontario crimes come from the United States. 

Toronto, which had more than 300 shootings last year, is a major destination for guns smuggled from the U.S. 

“Our problem in Toronto [is] handguns from the United States,” Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw told Canadian parliamentarians during hearings on gun violence in February 2022. Eighty-six per cent of crime handguns that were able to be sourced were from the United States, he said.

Just a week or so ago police busted a gun smuggling ring and seized 173 firearms, many of them handguns. Most were being smuggled from the United States.

Three of the firearms possessed by the man who shot and killed 22 Nova Scotians in 2020 were smuggled from Maine in the back of his pickup truck.

Guns from the U.S. often are smuggled by trucks or boats, but innovative ways of transport also are being used. Last year police in southern Ontario recovered from a tree a drone carrying 11 smuggled handguns.  

Statista Research reports that in 2021 the U.S. gun industry manufactured 13.8 million new firearms. Some were sold to other countries, some were smuggled into countries like Canada and the rest stayed in the U.S. where roughly 40,000 people a year are killed with guns.

Already this year, which is not yet four months old, there have been 13,000 gun deaths in the U.S., almost 10,000 injuries and 162 mass shootings. Those are not up-to-date figures because people are shot and wounded or killed almost every hour in the U.S.

American politicians have been unwilling or unable to legislate strict controls on firearms, including semi-automatic assault style rifles that shoot bullets capable of piercing body armour. They won’t act because too many of them fear losing their seats, although a majority of Americans say they favour stricter gun controls.

Fear is what drives America’s obsession with guns. They feared “Indian attacks” during the almost 400 years it took to colonize a continent owned and occupied by Indigenous peoples. They feared uprisings and attacks between opposing forces during and after the 1860s civil war.

Today Americans fear being victims of street violence, so they arm themselves with more guns. Almost one-half of Americans own at least one firearm, and not because they enjoy hunting or target shooting.

Many Americans own and carry a handgun because they feel they need to protect themselves against fellow Americans. 

Many do not have enough firearms knowledge and training to handle anything more than a cap gun. Several hundred a year accidentally shoot themselves. 

Take the reported case of the Georgia guy who shot himself in the leg while holstering his pistol as he dressed for an outing. The outing? He was going for an hour or two of relaxation at his favourite cigar lounge. 

Why anyone would need a SIG Sauer P320 pistol on his belt to go to a cigar lounge is beyond comprehension.

Suggesting Trudeau complain to Biden about lack of action on American gun insanity is probably not a great idea. Even if followed it would not achieve much.Some Americans are suggesting that one way to get action is to boycott school attendance. Stop sending kids to school until lawmakers pass effective gun control laws.

Boycotts? Now there’s an idea. Maybe boycotting American products, visits and other contact is something for Canadians to consider as a way of protesting how U.S. gun production is killing Canadians.

 It’s been a while since I’ve gone shopping at a gun store, but I found myself in one last week.

A target shooter was having trouble finding ammunition and asked me to check a gun store near my place. A clerk at that store said he had some of the shells I was looking for, but not all. 

“How about some .410 shotgun shells?” I inquired.

He looked at me and laughed. Then he said the store had got in 380 boxes of those shells and sold them out in 48 hours.

Four-ten-gauge shotgun shells are commonly used for small game hunting – like rabbits and partridge. But the small game season is long past in most places so why the run on the ammunition?

“Hoarding.” The clerk answered. “People are buying ammunition by the case.”

A bit of research confirms the clerk’s statement. Canadian and American gun enthusiasts say they are experiencing “the great ammo” shortage that worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shortages had been developing for several reasons, including more ammo production directed to the war in Ukraine and fear of even more firearms restrictions in Canada and the U.S. 

The pandemic disrupted production and delivery of materials used in making ammunition. Ammunition imports to the U.S. fell 34 per cent during the pandemic.

But a key factor in ammunition shortages is fear. People are worried about what’s happening in their world. Will growing tensions between superpowers lead to world war? Will Covid worsen or be followed by a more severe virus? Will increasing violence cause governments to impose even more firearms restrictions? What’s happening with the world economy?

These fears have been driving up U.S. gun production and sales, which have doubled in the last two decades.

Panic buying is not limited to toilet paper and cough and cold meds during a pandemic. Runs on other items are common in times of uncertainty.

Hoarding ammo makes sense to a lot of people. It is relatively easy. As easy as stockpiling canned goods. Ammo doesn’t go bad and eases the mind of anyone worried about some catastrophic event.

Yes, stockpiled ammo might help save your life during a catastrophe. It also could save avid shooters a lot of money during shortages when prices go through the roof.

There is good reason for concern – outright fear for some – of government seriously restricting the ownership and use of firearms. Politicians in Canada and the U.S. are being screamed at to do something to stop rising gun violence.

Gun-related crime in Canada has increased by 42 per cent in the last 10 years, mainly because of gang crime in Toronto. Already this year there have been 9,000 gun deaths in the U.S., including about 120 mass murders.

Some Canadians say more firearms restrictions, or even bans, are needed to stop the violence. Canadians seem to prefer tackling tough problems with restrictions, bans and punishments. That’s not the approach needed to solve problems related to guns.

Violence is a manifestation of social unrest, which is being seen increasingly in mass demonstrations, attacks on police and other nasty civil disorders. We won’t stop violence of any kind until we clearly identify all the reasons behind social unrest and begin to fix them.

And, will never see effective fixing until we begin to produce effective leadership. We just do not have that at the federal or provincial levels.

We have a lot of nice people in politics. People tied to their own brands of politics, parties and interests. We don’t have the dynamic, independent leaders we desperately need today.

We need new leaders willing to listen to many voices. Willing to shape their leadership from what they hear and see, and have the ability to pull people together into collective leadership.

That type of leadership once existed here – long before Europeans arrived. Most Indigenous groups had collective leadership systems that focused on community and common good rather than individual desires and needs.

This is the type of leadership we need today. If we can find it, perhaps we will stop hoarding out of fear for our futures. And my target shooting friends will be able to find the ammunition they need.

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Without change could this be our future too?

And so it begins; the second American Civil War.

It is not like the first American Civil War (1861-1865) with uniformed armies shooting at

each other, but there are frightening similarities. The first civil war started when the political system failed to resolve differences over the spread of slavery.

This one is civil upheaval resulting from a political system unable to reconcile the differences between two distinct populations of citizens with different values. The differences have hardened into hatred infecting the two main political parties, the right-wing Republicans and the leftist Democrats. The centre seems to have disappeared.

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This second civil war has been a long time developing, most notably since the divisive Viet Nam War of 50 years ago. All the signs have been obvious but ignored because this could not happen to “the greatest nation on earth.”

When a country’s institutions deteriorate, when citizens begin rejecting authority, and when a political system can no longer bring people together, civil war begins.  In the U.S., the Congress is frozen in a state of intolerance for other political views, the justice system has been weakened by the country’s own leaders, and the Supreme Court has become politicized, rendering it less respected, and less effective.

Critical issues such as climate change, global migration, health care and collapsing infrastructure are not being addressed and will not be solved in a country at war with itself. Also, there is a danger that countries such as Russia, China and North Korea will find advantages in the weakened U.S.

The actual start of first civil war was easy to pinpoint. Soldiers of the confederacy of pro-slavery states attacked and captured Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina in April 1861.

Identifying the actual start of this second civil war is not so easy. My guess is that July 23 just passed is when this one officially began.

On that day, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived in the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. ICE is the federal agency that has been rounding up thousands of undocumented immigrants and holding them in makeshift prisons.

They were trying to get a man and his 12-year-old son, who had locked themselves in a van. The ICE agents planned to grab them when they left the van to go into their house.

However, neighbours gathered and formed a human chain around the van, allowing the man and his son to get out of the van and into their house

ICE had called in the local police, who just stood and watched, saying they would not get involved unless fighting broke out and they had to keep the peace. When citizens form up to stop federal law enforcement officers, I call that a sign of civil war. When local police refuse to be involved, I call that a sign of civil war.

Another sign is refusal of many victims of recent mass shootings to meet the president who came to visit them.

Even if you don’t believe civil war has started it is hard not to believe there will be one soon. Recent polling shows that roughly one-third of Americans expect civil war within the next five years.

Supporting that are rising gun sales, which increased 3.8 per cent over the last year. There now are believed to be 400 million firearms in the hands of Americans.

All those guns – more than one for each American man, woman and child – are not being used for hunting and recreational shooting. Many Americans you talk to will say people are buying them for protection against increasing violence and the possibility of civil war.

Hate groups continue to grow in the U.S., not just the white supremacists of the right but loosely-organized Antifa (Anti-Fascist) groups, which have been showing up more prominently at high-profile public rallies to protest, sometimes violently, racism and hate.

There is a lesson here for Canadians, particularly the politicians seeking election this fall. They need to stop the nasty, vindictive politicking and talk about how they can respect each other and work together to give ordinary citizens the things they need to have better lives.

If they won’t, and continue to work on behalf of their parties instead of the people, we can turn our gazes south and see our future.