Canada?
Monday: One member of the Canadian Defense Forces was killed and a second injured on Monday by a hit-and-run driver outside their station near Montreal, Quebec. The police gave pursuit and finally ended up shooting the driver.
Tuesday: In Winnipeg, Manitoba the bodies of 6 dead babies were found in a storage locker. The police have arrested the woman who rented the locker.
Today: In Ottawa a soldier was shot and killed while guarding the War Memorial, Canada’s equivalent of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The gunman then went to the Parliament and was killed in a shoot-out with the Parliamentary Sergeant-at-Arms and police.
This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in Canada. Canada is supposed to be polite and dull.
3 comments
In the Ottawa incident the death toll would have been much higher if the gunman had been armed with a semi-automatic weapon. He wasn’t, because they’re virtually impossible to buy in Canada. He was armed with a good ol’ fashioned double barrel shotgun. And BTW, I was amazed that the Sergeant-at-arms of the Canadian parliament is actually, well, armed. In most countries that’s a purely ceremonial office and if someone decided to shoot up Parliament the Sergeant-at-arms would be hiding under a desk like everybody else. I guess Canadians are a bit, well, different ;).
The Sergeant-at-arms is a former RCMP officer who has worked as bodyguard for politicians since leaving the Mounties. There was an incident in the Parliament a while back with the attacker having two submachine guns that resulted in a lot of deaths and injuries, so that is probably why they hired a professional, rather than a political flunky.
You can buy hunting weapons in Canada without a lot of hassle, but they don’t go in for all of the worthless toys they sell in the US.
The shooter was apparently a crack addict among other problems, and that doesn’t do anything good for your mental health.
Yeah, and that’s the same here badtux. Since John Howard banned semi-automatic weapons in ’96 (one of the few good things he did, and he was a raving neo-con) we haven’t had any mass shootings. We banned assault weapons, collected the guns and destroyed them. In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings – but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. Former deputy prime minister Tim Fisher has spent years talking to US politicians about gun reform. Even John Howard and others petitioned Obama after the insane and tragic Connecticut school shooting where 20 children died, and got nowhere. They are all more afraid of the NRA than innocent children being murdered.
There is an interesting ABC News article from 2012 here:
US urged to consider Australia’s gun laws example
It’s insane.