On June 11, Const. Marc Pinizzotto entered a North York apartment with a search warrant. He was there as part of an investigation into a wave of high-profile shootings in Toronto linked to a gun-for-hire network, including an incident months earlier at the U.S. consulate and several shootings targeting synagogues and Jewish schools.
Upon entering the apartment, Pinizzotto, a 25-year veteran of Toronto’s police force, was met with gunfire, sustaining a fatal wound. The 43-year-old would not return home from work that day.
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw later confirmed that neither of the firearms recovered during the operation originated in Canada, rather they had, in fact, originated from the U.S.
This is a story that’s all too familiar to law enforcement at Canada’s border. According to figures Toronto Police provided to Ricochet Media, 364 crime guns have been seized so far this year. Between 2020 and 2024, at least 73 per cent – and in some years as many as 88 per cent – of the crime guns the service has seized and traced to a source came from the United States.
Now, in an attempt to hold the U.S. accountable, a Canadian lawyer is turning to the courts.
The case that sparked change
For Paul Miller, the Toronto trial lawyer leading the case, the news of Pinizzotto’s death became a call to action once he understood the scale of the problem.
“[Initially,] I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fact it was potentially a trafficked gun,” he said. “It was just incredibly sad.”
After a phone call with Jonathan Lowy — a veteran American gun-violence lawyer who founded Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV) — Miller decided it was time to join the movement calling for accountability for gun violence.
“I just have this belief that lawyers who work in my area of law have an obligation and a duty to try and make changes for the better,” Miller added.
Now before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Miller and GAGV have launched a lawsuit that they believe could do what a nearly identical case brought by the government of Mexico could not — hold American gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers legally responsible for deaths caused by their illegally smuggled products in Canada.
The issues of community safety and well-being played a key role in elections across the country, particularly in Toronto’s municipal election. Polling on Torontonians’ concerns ahead of a tightly contested mayoral race showed that “public safety” is front of mind.
Nationally, gun crime fell in 2024, according to the latest Statistics Canada data, with the rate of firearm violent crime dropping 4.2 per cent. During the same time period, Toronto area rates moved the other way: police recorded 2,843 firearm-related violent crimes, rising 12 per cent from the year before to its highest level in 15 years.
According to the latest data from the Toronto Police Service, total shooting and firearm discharge events are down to nearly half the number in 2024.
Lowy hopes that Canada is just the start of a wave of global action. It offers the best chance of success – “the most likely… because of the scope of this problem and the commercial relationship between countries.” Miller’s involvement, he added, is itself significant — “a really powerful pairing that I think negligent actors in the gun industry should be concerned about.”
An unidentified victim — holding the key?
The lawsuit that Miller hopes will spark change is not about Pinizzotto. Instead, it is built around a different victim, who has not been publicly identified: an innocent bystander who was shot and killed at a party in Ontario, with a gun GAGV and Miller believe was trafficked from the United States.
Statistics Canada data shows how often shootings reach beyond a single target: in 2024, more than one in five firearm-related violent crimes involved more than one victim — more than double the share for violent crimes without a gun. And in about half of cases where police identified a suspect, the victim did not know the person accused
“I don’t think Canadians — and I include myself in this, until very recently — realized the scope of the issue”
A claim has been filed in the case, although it is yet to be served. Miller said the claim was filed quickly to stay within the statute of limitations – the legal deadline for bringing a lawsuit, generally two years in Ontario. “A statement of claim was filed to ensure that we protected the limitation period, because they came to us very close to when they could no longer sue,” Miller said.
According to Miller, the person who allegedly supplied the gun had purchased a large number of firearms around the same time. “Why does anyone need to buy… 15, 17, 20 guns at one time?”
It is a question likely considered by lawyers in a similar case in 2025, in which the Mexican government brought a lawsuit against American gun manufacturers. The case was ultimately unsuccessful — the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against it, citing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a 2005 U.S. law that shields gun companies from most civil liability.
Miller’s team isn’t worried that they will be using a similar approach as the Mexican government. Speaking at a GAGV media briefing on the report in September, Lowy said the law “does not apply outside of the U.S. So, if you bring a lawsuit in Canada, for example, there is no defence that allows us to get out of liability even if we’re negligent or reckless, and so there is this great opportunity for accountability, fair accountability in other countries.”
Nevertheless, the team will have to convince a Canadian court to accept jurisdiction over an American manufacturer.
“They will fight us, no doubt, on jurisdiction,” Miller said. But there is precedent for jurisdiction being granted in Canada. In 2025, the Ontario Court of Appeal certified a class action brought by victims of the 2018 Danforth Avenue mass shooting. Among the 15 shot that night was 18-year-old Samantha Price.
Following the tragedy, Samantha’s father, Ken Price, was one of a group of family members who founded Danforth Families For Safe Communities. The group’s lawsuit — filed against Smith & Wesson, seeking at least $150 million in damages — alleges the company failed to install “smart gun” technology that would have prevented the weapon’s unauthorized use.
However, the handgun used on the Danforth was not trafficked from the U.S. – it had been stolen in Canada. Miller’s case goes after something different: the cross-border pipeline itself.
The numbers behind the pipeline
Figures provided by the Canada Border Services Agency paint a concerning picture. The agency said it has a policy to trace 100 per cent of firearms seized at the border, and that more than 90 per cent of firearms seized at the border originated in the U.S. in the first half of 2026. The CBSA’s Ontario Firearms Smuggling Enforcement Team led 48 complex firearms investigations between April 2023 and March 2026.
When asked where in the U.S. the guns traced in Ontario were originating from, the RCMP declined to answer, saying that doing so “could reveal patterns in tracing activity, investigative priorities, capabilities and gaps, and facilitate the commission of an offence.”
However, a new report issued by GAGV in September — titled “U.S. Gun Policy, Global Harm: Cross-Border Gun Trafficking from the Great Lakes Region” — identifies Ohio as the single leading U.S. source state for crime guns recovered in Canada, accounting for 15 per cent of all traced weapons recovered in Canada between 2017 and 2021, according to ATF data. The report attributes this to a combination of factors: Ohio requires no background check for private or gun-show sales and no permit to purchase a firearm.
The report highlights specific cases illustrating the pipeline. In United States v. Kone and Griffin, a gun purchased at Lev’s Pawn Shop in Columbus on June 4, 2023, was recovered at a Toronto crime scene just 19 days later — what the report calls a typical sign of illicit purchases by traffickers.
In response to the figures, Price said: “We are grateful when we hear that the CBSA and TPS are successful in intercepting illegal guns, and we generally agree that published facts and studies indicate that many crime guns are illegally smuggled into Canada from the US and often recovered in Toronto.”
“Crime guns that cause harm in Canada also come, however, from domestic diversion and theft of firearms in Canada, as happened in our tragedy,” he said, in reference to the Danforth shooting.
‘You have the ability to make something good out of a horrific tragedy’
There is a long and uncertain road ahead for Miller and his team. “The issue in this case is going to be: did this company owe a duty of care? Did the distributor and the seller owe a duty of care? And did they breach that duty and cause the death of a person?” he said.
Yet, for Miller, it is less about a single payout than about using litigation as a strategy — the same tool he’s used for decades against drug and medical device manufacturers — to force a change in how guns are made and sold. A fingerprint-based system that could prevent a stolen firearm from being fired by anyone but its owner is a basic safety feature the U.S. gun industry has resisted for decades, even as pressure mounted in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook and Marjory Stoneman Douglas tragedies. “The chance to change it from abroad is a great opportunity,” he said.
“I don’t think Canadians — and I include myself in this, until very recently — realized the scope of the issue,” he said.
The pair hope that Canadian families affected by gun violence are made aware that litigation options exist. “Maybe we get a stream of people who come in and decide they want to commence actions, and suddenly there’s three or four or five cases, and now the gun manufacturers, distributors and sellers are starting to pay attention,” Miller said.
“You have the ability to make something good out of a horrific tragedy.”
