Could a red flag law have helped prevent the mass shootings in Nova Scotia or help reduce gun violence in Canada?

Simon Sherry is a clinical psychologist and a professor in psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University, whose work focuses on “assessing, treating and understanding suicide.”

In a telephone interview, Sherry said he was “cautiously optimistic about the value of a red flag gun law.”

But, he explains, it’s complicated and there is still a lot we need to learn:

Canada already has public safety initiatives that resemble red flag gun laws. In other words, the public can alert the RCMP to someone who has a weapon, who represents a potential danger to him- or herself, or other people.

So a red flag gun law is going to be widening avenues for the seizure of risk-related firearms. … So a red flag gun law is an expanded and an expedited legal ability to seize firearms in an effort to prevent homicide or suicide.

Sherry says that about six months ago, he repeatedly called the RCMP to try to clarify the nature of red flag gun laws.

It was, he says, “a painful process that ultimately ended in defeat and no clarity.”

He points out that between 2000 and 2016, there were 13,168 guns deaths in Canada, and of those, 9,919 were suicides. So, he says, “Canada has a problem with gun violence and it is overwhelmingly to do with death by suicide,” and 96% of suicides by firearm are men.

And we know that Canadian men are roughly three to four times more likely [than women] to die by suicide. And that is, for the most part, because men select more lethal means in terms of selecting a gun.

Men choose guns for suicide attempts, he says, because they have very high lethality compared with other things.

He says that one strategy for reducing suicide could involve a red flag law:

…part of “means reduction” is taking out of the hands of suicidal people the means by which to die, by suicide.

And so a reduction in the number of guns is part of such a strategy. And a red flag law in particular is an effort to remove guns from the hands of people who are suicidal. Now, that’s a means reduction strategy, and means reduction has been highly successful in other areas.

For example, the building of a bridge barrier in Toronto or here in Halifax, another example would be reducing access to poisons.

“From a numbers-based perspective,” Sherry says, “the critical point here is that Canada’s gun problem is a problem of suicide.”

In his view, that makes this discussion particularly timely:
Canada and Nova Scotia are in the middle of a suicide crisis that will almost assuredly be made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. So to be actively thinking about and informing the public about suicide is very timely.