Behind a closed bedroom door in her home, alone with her family pictures, Selina Carter lets her guard down and cries. This is how she copes with the terrible loss that has become such a part of her life.

In the last 11 years her brother and her cousin were both shot dead in Halifax, and her grandson's father was shot and killed in Toronto.

More than almost anything she wants to see all the illegal guns yanked off Halifax's streets so no one else will have to suffer the same kind of grief.

"I hope that they find them all and just burn them," she said. "It's a great loss to me, it's a pain you can't heal."

Carter said the police need to do more to hunt down and dispose of illegal guns.

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It's a big job — in 2017 and 2018 police across the province seized 2,116 guns, according to data provided by the RCMP. Some were turned into police, but many were also seized from suspects arrested for crimes ranging from to robbery to weapons offences.

The most frequent types were rifles (1,136), shotguns (720) and handguns (251). The information from RCMP does not include brand names.

One machine gun was also seized, along with two submachine guns, according to data from Halifax Regional Police. The weapons are particularly dangerous because of their high rate of fire.

"That is the reason they are prohibited is because of the danger level, they don't feel they're required for the purpose of hunting or target purposes" said Const. John MacLeod, a spokesperson for Halifax Regional Police.

One of the submachine guns was stolen and then recovered by police, while the other two guns were handed to police by people who didn't want them anymore.

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But it's the number of handguns being seized that really worries retired Halifax police staff sergeant Jim Hoskins. He'd like to see them banned in urban centres.

"Handguns are built for one reason and that's to kill people," said Hoskins. "The basic reason for building a handgun is so it can kill somebody, whether it's sold to you to protect yourself or whatever.

"The less handguns we have on the street the less killing there will be in Halifax."

Halifax Regional Police seized 340 guns in 2017 and 2018. But that's just a small portion of the illegal weapons that are actually out there, according to Hoskins.

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