BC’s Gun Violence Law Sat Unused for Five Years While Gangs Ran Wild

In March 2021, the BC NDP government passed the Firearm Violence Prevention Act — a piece of legislation based on recommendations from a 2017 task force on illegal firearms and gang violence. It was designed to give police new tools to crack down on drive-by shootings, illegal firearm transport, and gang-related gun crime.

Then they put it on a shelf and left it there.

For five full years, the law sat on the books but was never brought into force. Police couldn’t use it. Prosecutors couldn’t invoke it. Communities dealing with gang violence had a law designed to help them — that the government simply hadn’t activated.

This week, BC Public Safety Minister Nina Krieger announced the act would finally be implemented “later this year.” The government framed it as progress on public safety.

Experts who’ve been waiting five years called it something else entirely.

What the Law Actually Does

The Firearm Violence Prevention Act was built around several key provisions to address the specific gang and gun violence patterns plaguing Metro Vancouver and other BC communities:

• Drive-by shooting crackdown: Targets anyone discharging firearms from vehicles, with fines and potential jail terms
• Illegal transport: New tools against those illegally transporting firearms in vehicles, including seizure provisions
• Imitation firearms: Bans sales of BB guns, pellet guns, and airsoft weapons to anyone under 18
• Harm prevention: Allows professionals to notify police if they believe a client poses a firearms threat to themselves or others

In other words, it was exactly the kind of targeted, practical legislation that anti-gang advocates had been asking for. And for five years, it simply didn’t exist in practice — because the government that passed it never turned it on.

Five Years of Gang Violence BC Could Have Acted On

The timing of the inaction is staggering. During the five years this law sat dormant, Metro Vancouver experienced:

• A sustained extortion crisis targeting businesses, particularly in South Asian communities, with hundreds of victims across the Lower Mainland
• Continued gang-related shootings in Surrey, Abbotsford, and Metro Vancouver
• Multiple high-profile gang murders in broad daylight
• Persistent pressure from police and community groups for new enforcement tools

Independent MLA Elenore Sturko — a former RCMP officer and now the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, one of the communities most directly impacted by gang violence — was direct in her assessment:

The Real Problem: Crown Not Laying Charges

Grosspietsch, who spent 15 years on the RCMP’s National Weapons Enforcement Support Team and was on the 2017 task force that originally recommended this legislation, pointed to a deeper systemic problem that the Firearm Violence Prevention Act doesn’t solve.

Much of what the act covers is already addressed under Canada’s Criminal Code. The issue isn’t a lack of laws — it’s that BC’s Crown prosecutors frequently decline to lay charges related to firearms offences even when police present solid cases.

This is the accountability gap the NDP has studiously avoided addressing. Passing laws is relatively easy. Ensuring the justice system actually enforces them — starting with Crown prosecutors who pursue firearms cases — requires the political will to hold the system accountable. That’s something this government has consistently shied away from.

The Pattern: Pass It, Don’t Enforce It

The Firearm Violence Prevention Act isn’t an isolated case. It fits a disturbing pattern in how BC’s NDP government handles legislation it doesn’t actually want to enforce:

Drug decriminalization: The NDP piloted decriminalization in 2023 with great fanfare, then quietly reversed it in 2025 after public backlash and the catastrophic toll of the overdose crisis. Billions in harm reduction spending, a bold policy announcement, and then a retreat.

DRIPA: Passed in 2019, spent years asserting it was working perfectly, then scrambled in 2026 when courts applied it in ways the government apparently never anticipated — suggesting the legislation was signed without anyone fully thinking through its consequences.

Firearm Violence Prevention Act: Passed in 2021. Implemented in 2026. Five-year gap during which communities were left to deal with the consequences of a law that existed only on paper.

There is a cost to this kind of governance. Real people in real communities — business owners facing extortion, families dealing with gang violence, residents who watched their neighbourhoods deteriorate — were promised legislative action in 2021. They got a press release. The actual enforcement tools didn’t exist for five years.

Announcing Old Work as New Work

What’s perhaps most telling about Minister Krieger’s announcement is the way it was framed: as a proactive step, a government “taking action” on public safety. No acknowledgment that the law was passed five years ago. No explanation for why it took half a decade to implement. No accountability for the gap.

Just a press conference announcing a 2021 law as if it were news.

British Columbians have been watching this pattern for years. The NDP passes laws, makes announcements, holds press conferences — and then somewhere between the announcement and the action, things just... don’t happen. The law isn’t enforced. The funding doesn’t arrive. The hospital doesn’t get built. The guns stay on the street.

Until five years later, when the government holds another press conference about the same thing.