Homicides by rifle and shotgun in Canada have mushroomed to levels not seen since the long-gun registry was being established by Jean Chrétien’s Liberals in the 1990s, Statistics Canada data show.

The registry was subsequently dismantled by the Harper Conservative government.

Homicides involving rifles and shotguns climbed to 62 in 2017 from 34 in 2014 — an 82-per cent spike over four years — after gun violence had been declining steadily until 2013.

The incidence of long-gun homicide for 2017 was nearly half — 43 per cent — the number of homicides involving handguns.

Archived data available on Statistics Canada’s website show there were 61 homicides involving rifles and shotguns in 1995, the year the Liberal legislation establishing the long-gun registry passed through Parliament and became law, with 81 long-gun homicides the next year and 77 homicides by rifle and shotgun in 1997.

The number of long-gun shootings declined significantly after the 2003 deadline for compliance with the new registry, leading to a low of 30 homicides involving rifles and shotguns in 2011.

Homicides involving long guns jumped to 39 in 2012, the year the Conservative government of Stephen Harper ended the registry for non-restricted rifles and shotguns, but fell back to 30 deaths in 2013.

Homicides involving handguns totalled 145 in Canada in 2017, up from 103 in 2014 and 90 in 2013. Prince Edward Island was the only province that had no homicides in 2017, for the second year in a row.

Advocates of gun control say the recent rise in homicides involving rifles and shotguns should spur support for a government bill that, among other controls, would reinstate mandatory records for rifle and shotgun sales, and strengthen gun-licence screening.

The legislation, Bill C-71, has been bogged down in the Senate since September, and will likely not clear the Senate and become law until next February at the earliest, after Parliament reconvenes following its winter recess. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale introduced the bill in the House of Commons last March.

Gun-control advocates and the Independent senator who has sponsored the legislation in the Senate argue the Statistics Canada data for 2017, released on Nov. 21, show Conservative senators and MPs have been wrong to oppose the bill on the grounds it doesn’t address a rise in handgun shootings and gang violence.

“This was entirely predictable and preventable,” said Wendy Cukier, who co-founded the Coalition for Gun Control following the 1989 shooting deaths of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique engineering school.

“All firearm deaths, not just homicides with rifles and shotguns, fell precipitously with the increased controls over rifles and shotguns,” Cukier told iPolitics in a response to the data findings. “We saw dramatic declines in murders of women and suicides, both of which were more likely to include rifles and shotguns.”

Heidi Rathjen, a coordinator of the PolySeSouvient (Poly Remembers) gun-control advocacy group founded after the Montreal massacre, said looking back at the decline in long-gun homicide under the registry shows the new Liberal legislation is needed, even though it doesn’t focus on the high-profile issue of gang and handgun violence.

“The problem is that opponents constantly try to pit one set of circumstances against another,” said Rathjen.

“Overall gun violence has increased, dramatically, and every part of that is important,” she said in responding to the longer history of Statistics Canada records. “The focus is on illegal guns and gangs, because that’s the spin the gun lobby wants to put on the whole issue of gun violence: to say that legal guns are not a problem, legal gun owners are not a problem.”

Independent Sen. André Pratte, the bill’s Senate sponsor who kicked off debate on the legislation on Sept. 27, said the continued increase in rifle and shotgun homicides over the four years following the 2013 low in gun violence demonstrates the bill’s significance.

“This isn’t just a couple of years; this is a trend,” he said. “The Conservatives, and some stakeholders (gun lobby groups), have been saying that C-71 does not address the issue of gangs and it’s a useless bill. Of course, C-71 is not the solution, but it is part of the solution.”

Suicide by rifle, shotgun and “other unspecified firearms” rose almost every year through the five-year period, from 494 in 2012 to 549 in 2016; the numbers far exceed homicide deaths by rifles, shotguns and handguns. Long-gun suicides totalled 2,694 over that five-year period. Suicides by handgun during the same period totalled 184.

While the Statistics Canada report on 2017 homicides reinforced evidence that handgun shootings related to gang violence happen mainly in urban areas, it revealed that more than two-thirds of homicides involving rifles and shotguns — 66 per cent — take place in rural areas.

Follow @timnaumetz