Handgun ownership in Canada soared between 2012 to 2016 after the former Harper government’s high-profile destruction of the federal long-gun registry.

Handguns registered to individuals climbed 38 per cent from 485,801 in 2012 – the year the Conservative government’s Ending the Long Gun Registry Act took effect – to 673,201 in 2016.

Although there is no link between the increase in registered handguns and the end of the long gun registry, and it might even seem contradictory, the legislation bringing an end to the system also relaxed mandatory licence checks for long gun sales, prevented any record of licence checks if retailers sought one, while Conservatives and the supporting gun-owning community gave firearms and their use for target sport and hunting a new image.

During roughly the same period, from 2013 to 2016, police-reported firearm-related violent crime grew by 33 per cent while police-reported violent crime unrelated to firearms declined by four per cent, a new Statistics Canada report reveals.

In 2016, there were approximately 7,100 victims of violent crime where a firearm was present, the report says, below the 7,300 victims in 2009 despite the increase over three years.

There had been a steady decline in the rate of violent crime where a firearm was present up to 2013, when the rate began rising.

If a weapon was used in a violent crime, it was more likely to be a knife or blunt instrument. Only three per cent of all violent crimes in 2016 were firearm-related.

But firearms were the cause of 32 per cent of deaths among victims of violent crime, six per cent of major injuries and one per cent of minor injuries.

More than half, 60 per cent, of firearm-related violent crimes involved handguns, followed by shotguns and rifles at 18 per cent, four per cent involved fully automatic weapons or sawed-off rifles and shotguns, with the remainder involving firearm-like weapons such as pellet guns or flare guns.

The handgun ownership data is from a special RCMP breakdown of gun ownership that was more broadly reflected in an annual report on the federal Firearms Act Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tabled in the House of Commons in May 2017.

New handguns stocked by gun shops, retailers and importers mushroomed by 73 per cent to 94,338 in 2016 from 54,559 in 2012 as sales boomed, says the RCMP breakdown,

The data sought by iPolitics suggests the debate over a handgun ban ignited by a mass shooting in Toronto July 22 could grow to a full-fledged confrontation: Sport gun owners and politicians on one side, ordinary citizens and other politicians on the other.

The combined number of registered restricted and prohibited handguns and rifles in Canada climbed to more than one million for the first time in 2016 – to 1,022,628, the 2017 firearm report says.

At the same time, the number of licences to acquire and own firearms, including non-restricted, restricted and prohibited, grew to just over two million.

The number of guns owned by each registered owner had been growing to an average of four guns per owner even prior to elimination of the long-gun registry, previous RCMP reports show.

Data for 2017 is not yet available.

Goodale did not table an annual end-of-year report from the RCMP commissioner on the Firearms Act and the Canadian Firearms Program before Parliament adjourned for a 12-week summer recess last June.

The RCMP’s national media branch referred questions to Goodale’s office about timing of the annual tabling, while Goodale’s office referred a reporter back to the RCMP.

“We have not yet received the Firearms Act Annual Report,which is why there hasn’t been any tabling date,” Hilary Peirce, a communications and issues manager in Goodale’s office, said in an email exchange last week.

Under the Firearms Act, the RCMP commissioner is obliged to submit a report on the Firearms Program to the minister “as soon as possible after the end of each calendar year.”

The delay could be due to a change at the top.

After former commissioner Bob Paulson retired from the RCMP in June 2017, an interim commissioner was in charge until the federal cabinet last March named assistant commissioner Brenda Lucki as the first woman to lead the national police force as its commissioner.

Toronto Mayor John Tory kicked off the debate over a handgun ban the day after the Danforth shooting that left 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis dead, when he questioned why anyone needs a gun “at all” in Toronto.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, after laying flowers in memory of Fallon near the scene of the attack, signalled his government will be cautious, but deliberate.

“People need to be safe and we need to take the right measures to do that,” Trudeau said.

He added: We’re looking at things that have been done around the world, things that have been done in other jurisdictions, looking at the best evidence, the best data, to make the right decisions to make sure that we are ensuring our citizens, our communities are safe into the future.”