Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:22:01
Bowling for Montreal
(Originally posted at Moorewatch)
Another senseless American Canadian murder story.
The gunman who went on a shooting rampage at a Montreal college Wednesday apparently left an online journal with chilling comments and photos of himself brandishing a rifle.
Kimveer Gill referred to himself as the ‘angel of death’ in an online diary.
Kimveer Gill was the author of an online diary posted at the website vampirefreaks.com.
Gill, 25, was dressed entirely in black, wearing a trench coat and armed with a rifle when he arrived at Dawson College on Wednesday afternoon.
One woman was shot to death and 19 people were injured, at least six of them critically, in the rampage that followed. Montreal police said the victims ranged in age from 17 to 48.
On Thursday, police identified the dead student as Anastasia DeSousa, an 18-year-old from the greater Montreal area, who was a business student at Dawson College.
DeSousa was shot dead inside the building, said Montreal’s ambulance agency.
Police said the gunman died during the shootout. Preliminary autopsy results released Thursday showed Gill died of a self-inflicted wound, Quebec police said.
Clearly the answer is more Canadians leaving their doors unlocked and banning guns...uhh...more. Than they already have. They should outlaw murder too, that would certainly stop these kinds of things from happening.
OK, enough being flippant. First of all, gun control is a failure. Every time something like this happens, it puts the lie to the idea that taking guns away from the population will stop criminals from getting and using them. It’s Prima Facie...at first view the truth is plainly evident.
Furthermore, this is actually a senseless tragedy and not something that should be jeered at or about. That’s the problem with idiots like Michael Moore and the nitwits who follow him: They don’t respect or understand the crime or the criminal.
That’s right, I said respect the criminal. Not the way you respect your dad or your wife or your local grocer...I mean respecting the threat that the criminal brings. Respecting the threat means that you have to take it seriously and not cloud the issue with a lot of nonsense like, say, Lockheed Martin or what a bank does for promotional purposes. It means you have to dig deep and find out why the criminal has done what, in this case he, has done.
That is, if you really want to help. if you are actually interested in improving society, and you’re not just interested in lining your pockets off the blood of the dead.
Why did Kimveer Gill do this? Was there anything that could have been done last year, five years ago, ten years ago to intervene in this kid’s life? Was it bad wiring in his brain? Were there signs? Were those signs ignored? Was anyone in his life engaged with him about his life? At that age, he should know better, 25 is adult. But how did he get to where he was when he shot himself? How did he go from an innocent infant to a murderer who tried to be a mass murderer?
None of these questions can be answered by men like Moore. Nothing about Bowling For Columbine will go one iota toward preventing something like this from happening again. In fact, if you trust BFC, you would believe that this couldn’t happen in Canada.
It can. It has, and it will again. Gun culture is not the problem. Heavy Metal is not the problem. Lockheed Martin is not the problem. Leaving children to fend for themselves emotionally is the problem. Forcing kids to make adult decisions is the problem. Exposing them to the seedy underbelly of the world and walking away is the problem. Kimveer Gill was an adult, but Kimveer Gill was also made. Someone fell asleep on the job when that kid was building his way of looking at the world. The press is touting his “stable, middle class” family life. Let me tell you something right now: Do not be fooled by that artificial construct.
The middle is a myth. Normal is a myth. Average does not exist. EVERYONE has a story, everyone’s life contains trials and hardships no matter how great it looks on paper. The “stable middle class” is a breeding ground for emotional abuse. People like Kimveer Gill did not have stable, middle class upbringings. They had the appearance of stable, middle class lives.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that all the really nasty serial killers and mass murderers of the 20th and 21st centuries are from these so-called “stable, middle class” lives?
Going forward, I urge you to ignore any and all aspects of this story that don’t involve finding out why. Anything else is absolutely useless and designed to sell papers or get ratings or sell movie tickets and DVDs.
Let me clarify one thing now that I’m sure some of you reading this have misinterpreted: I am not excusing Kimveer Gill’s actions by saying it’s not his fault ‘cuz his mommy & daddy didn’t love him enough. At his age, it is his fault. He chose to act. Goth style didn’t make him do it, Marilyn Manson didn’t brainwash him, the vampirefreaks.com website did not pick up a gun and put it in his hands. What I am saying is that to prevent another Kimveer Gill, another Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold, another Luke Woodham - In Canada, the U.S. or anywhere else - we have to know why. We have to know what went wrong and how we can try - maybe we can’t succeed, but we can try - to see the signs before it gets this far the next time.
I can offer this piece of advice that I know for a fact can help: If you are involved with a young person - as a parent, teacher, guardian or relative - get in that kid’s life. Find out what they do, what they think, how they feel. Learn as much as you can about them, and for God’s sake listen to them. Don’t lecture, don’t yell or demand or expect: Listen. Kids want to talk to you...it’s when adults stop listening that kids clam up and turn inward.
And for the love of Christ, don’t ever feel like you can’t look around a kid’s room. There’s privacy and there’s letting your kid build pipe bombs...you see what I’m saying?
Get involved.
Posted by JimK at 12:22 AM on September 15, 2006
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Categories: Michael Moore(on), Things To Ponder, Crime and Criminals, Guns - 2nd Amendment
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