Police have long been concerned about guns illegally making their way across the Canada-U.S. border, but a recent rise in gun crimes in B.C. is shedding light on a different weapons source: legal gun owners in Canada.

Police suggest some licensed owners have been legally buying guns and then illegally selling them on the black market, with some of these weapons ending up in the hands of drug dealers, gang members or other criminals.

Police call the practice “straw-purchasing,” and Sgt. Lindsey Houghton says “there’s a lot of money in it.”

Legal gun owners can buy firearms for hundreds of dollars, Houghton told CTV News. Then “they’ll then sell them for thousands of dollars.”

Last year, police charged a B.C. man with 24 criminal counts -- including four counts of possession for the purposes of weapons trafficking and four counts of weapons trafficking -- after police seized almost 200 firearms from him.

Gerald Kirby, a 65-year-old living in Tatla Lake, B.C., was licensed to own guns and purchased most of the weapons legally.

Kirby is not the only person to have legally bought guns with the intention of illegally selling them, Houghton said. In other parts of British Columbia and other places in Canada, including Ontario, straw-purchasing is a serious concern.

On the other end of the transaction, one former drug dealer says it’s easy for criminals to find and purchase illegal guns.

“It’s just like ordering a pizza, if you know the right people,” the former dealer, who asked not to be named, said. “If you know the right person, just pick up the phone and have the money."

But Houghton warns illegally selling and buying weapons can have serious consequences -- especially in a province that has seen a spike in gun violence this month.

Two men were injured in a shooting in Surrey, B.C., on Thursday night, and another man was shot in broad daylight in a Burnaby, B.C. parking lot on Friday.

A string of shootings earlier in the month alarmed Surrey residents and sent the RCMP looking for multiple gunmen.

“With the high reward comes very high risk. Involving yourself in firearm-trafficking; it’s probably the blackest of black markets,” Houghton said. “You could be yourself the victim of gun-related violence.”

Editor's note: This story has been edited to remove a quote referencing automatic assault rifles; fully automatic firearms are prohibited in Canada.