Canada recorded more euthanasia deaths in 2024 than US gun homicides

Canada recorded 16,499 euthanasia deaths in 2024, 1,135 more than the number of firearm homicides in the United States, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put at 15,364. The figures, reported by lifesitenews.com, have prompted debate over Canada's health care system and its relationship to euthanasia, and have drawn responses from American politicians and from groups opposed to the practice.

The issue gained attention after several individual accounts were published. The Daily Mail carried the account of a young Canadian woman who says her 83-year-old Christian grandmother was euthanized against her will. The case drew outrage from US Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, who called the situation "horrendous" and warned about the risks of combining assisted suicide with socialized medicine.

Another documented case involves a Canadian woman who traveled to the United States for medical care, seeing it as her only alternative to the euthanasia she had been offered at home. After receiving treatment in the US, she said she was relieved and contrasted her experience with what she had gone through in Canada, where she had been told she had a short time to live.

Medical practice standards in Canada require doctors to inform patients about assisted death as a treatment option. That requirement does not apply systematically in other countries where euthanasia is legal, and it has drawn criticism over how assisted death is presented and how it affects vulnerable patients.

Much of the debate has centered on the comparison of the two figures. Lee wrote on social media that "state-administered death is now more common in Canada than gun homicide in the US," and said the situation had not come about by chance.