Biggest gun bust in Canadian Border Services history made at Toronto airport

Between the ongoing protests against anti-Black racism, the pandemic, and everything else that's happening right now, other Toronto news items have taken a bit of a back seat.

As evidenced by the two shootings that took place in the city in the last 24 hours, our gun violence problem still looms, even amid two public health crises and relative lockdown.

And, despite all this and border restrictions, people are apparently still trying to ship illegal weapons into the country.

According to details released the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) on Tuesday, officers intercepted a total of 65 illegal firearms that came through the Toronto Pearson International Airport at the end of last month — the biggest single bust of its kind on CBSA record.

News release: 65 prohibited firearms seized @TorontoPearson by the #CBSA Firearms Interdiction Team. Read more here: https://t.co/Ivq8pN4Qfc pic.twitter.com/Io1juXISWy

— Border Services GTA (@CanBorderGTA) June 9, 2020

All of the guns were seized by authorities from a warehouse in Brampton, where two related shipments from the U.S. were being investigated due to suspicious customs declaration info.

The 65 revolvers were found hidden in hard plastic cases among the shipments of declared starter guns, which fire blanks and are used to start races (and can also be easily altered to shoot real bullets).

The CSBA is getting a little bit of flack on social media for choosing to feature the starter guns in photos of the bust (alongside the real firearms), leading some to believe that the agency may have erroneously considered them to be actual weapons.