School shooting in Montreal... (Page 1 of 2)

I used to live in Montreal, not far from the location of the shootings (I now live on West Coast). A friend just phoned to say that he was walking on the campus and a guy (the shooter) carrying a rifle and wearing a trenchcoat walked right up to him and looked him right in the eyes-my friend looked away and kept on walking a few paces. He turned around and the guy was speaking with someone else.
You understand, that a man with a rifle on a street in Canada is an almost unheard of event (unlike, say, any city in the USA) - evryone thought it was a prop for a play/drama.
The shooter walked a few more paces and then started shooting. My friend ran to a mall and tried to phone 911-it was busy. All the kids were calling 911 on cell phones.
I feel strange about the whole situation - why didn't anyone recognize the threat and respond in a way to neutralize it? Why didn'y my friend do something? What would I have done? What would you have done?
All those in the school scattered - male and female. Where were the brave men to take out the threat - after all, men of that age (19-25) are currently in Afghanistan shooting Taliban (and the more than occasional villager). Where was the heroics, the valor?
Someone could have given their life in this situation and saved at least two - and perhaps more, lives.
Is there STS to the degree that we look only to our own skin at all times. Would giving your life to save others qualify as STO?
Difficult questions for a difficult time. A similar event happened years ago in Montreal (just down the street) where a misogynist male gunment killed 10 women at an enginnering college. He entered a classroom with a rifle, ordered all of the females in the class to the front, and told the men to leave. They did, and he shot the women. Where is the valor - the STO in the world.

Sadness again in Montreal.

   Have you ever been to a city in the U.S.?   I've lived here for 31 years and have NEVER just seen people walking around openly toting rifles on the street.   

It's funny to read other people's perceptions of what America must be like.

This is probably a good place to mention to the forum the story of when you and I first met in person. 

So there we were, montalk, morningsun76 and myself, walking through the downtown mall (it's a street that's closed off to traffic, with shops, restaurants and local merchants selling their wares)  We're heading to the Mudhouse Coffeehouse to meet up with treehugger.  But you know how it is in America.  It's impossible to tell anybody apart....you have to look at their guns.   It's the only way we Americans know how to recognize each other.   So we get to the Mudhouse - fully loaded down, packin' heat - and we see what we guess may be treehugger outside on a bench.  We don't know it's her for certain though til we zoom in on the uzi she has lying next to her on the bench.  THEN we know.

"TREEHUGGER!"  we yell with glee.  We pile over to her, and all four of us excitedly pull out our weapons and pass them around, ooohing and ahhing.   I fire off a few rounds in the air just to make sure it's a decent, high quality uzi.   A passing bicycle cop cruises by and gives me a wink, and a big thumbs up, then pulls out his 9 millimeter and holds it up in the air for us to admire as he rolls past.   Then we all head on into the Mudhouse to get our coffees.  It was mayhem in there though....everybody randomly firing guns and stuff.   

America....gotta love it.   

I knew that the dig at American use of firearms would bother Americans, but I did not expect members to make light of it - especially Lyra. Google search with 'firearms'  + 'america' + 'street' yields 33,600,000 hits. Americans are so jaded about firearms - note the lighthearted responses. Ony one soul 'transient' was compassionate in his reply.
Lyra, I have been many, many times to USA, as well as around the world (even Colombia 3 times, where its almost as dangerous as USA). My friend is a cop in Seattle, and I have been many times on raids and actions with his team. I  know of the dark underbelly.
Have those who made lighthearted comments ever travelled putside USA (no, trip to Mexico to get drunk hardly counts). Maybe you are one of the lucky few (20%) of Americans that has a passport.
Review the following article on firearms in USA.

Trading guns on America's streets
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/progr … uns1.shtml

"There are more than 200 million guns in private hands in America. More than all the guns of world's armies put together."

While its true that firearms are less frequently carried in the open, they are concealed, or hidden in car, house, purse, ...

Really, what did you find offensive about my post. The violence in the incident was offensive. Why did you choose to respond to one sentence? Odd.

p.s. Remember to keep those weapons clean - your country needs you in Iraq (soon).

Well, sorry if I offended YOU. Im 49yrs old, have lived ALL over the USA, have lived outside the USA, (and no, that doesnt include a drunken stay in Mexico) and know quite a few people (sorry folks, this is going to be a run-on sentence!) in the military, law enforcement etc. I can honestly say, the only person in that whole group that I know has a gun (not even my freind the cop has any guns except the one firearm he uses for work, and that is under lock and key when he's home) is my son-in-law. He has a handgun, much to my daughters consternation.  The only other people I can think of that had guns when I was a kid were in upstate New York, and they used those for deer hunting.  So sorry, you have a big misconception about the "GENERAL" population.  Yes, there is a seedy underworld in the US, but its no worse than anywhere else. I could say the same about Canadians. I grew up just across the border from Canada, and used to go their in the summer with friends. A lot of the people who owned cabins up there had guns. So am I supposed to assume because they did that everyone  in Canada is a gun-toting Canook? C'mon. We responded to that one sentence because you made a generalization about America that we found ridiculous.

Oh definitely......even here within America, people are detached from other parts of their own country and have weird assumptions or totally ignorant cluelessness about what other states are like.  Let alone making assumptions about what other countries must be like!   When I first moved to Orange County, California from Connecticut in highschool I soon discovered that the kids in my classes - who were all supposed to be these smart, high honors super achievers - had no clue about Connecticut.  Didn't know where it was on a map.  Had trouble pronouncing it.  Kept confusing it with "Kentucky."  The best question I got was, "Did you guys have MTV?"   

Yeah, and we done had electricity and indoor plumbin' too.     Man alive.  So yeah, it definitely goes both ways, and then some.  !

Have to admit though I don't watch the Simpsons, so I'm totally at a loss for what is going on in those pics!    Okay, we have the flag of England, and a picture of the Queen in the background of some people sipping tea.   But what in the flippity flap is Homer doing in that flag pic??  What's the message??  Anybody??   

Reminds of the trench coat mafia killers in Columbine, Denver.

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Two killed, 20 injured in Montreal school shooting

Associated Press | September 13, 2006

A gunman sporting a Mohawk haircut and a black trenchcoat opened fire with an AK-47 rifle at a Canadian college, killing at least one person and injuring 20 before police shot him dead, officials, witnesses and news reports said here.

The gunman entered Dawson College, an English language school in downtown Montreal , and opened fire at 12:45 pm (1645 GMT), city police chief Yvan Delorme told reporters.

The incident paralyzed downtown Montreal as terrified students fled in droves and police blocked off streets, even closing a metro (subway) station that directly accesses the college.

Delorme said authorities did not know of a motive for the shooting, but said there were no indications that it was an act of terrorism or was motivated by racism.

"For now, I will only say there is one suspect who is dead following the arrival of the first police on the scene," said Delorme.

Police killed the shooter, Delorme said. "I cannot confirm that there is another suspect," he added, giving no further details.

After the press conference, Radio-Canada reported that a 20 year-old woman died of her wounds. Police had not yet confirmed her death.

Delorme said 20 victims were hospitalized following the shooting, at least three with serious injuries.

"At 12:41 pm (1641 GMT), an individual penetrated the establishment and opened fire in different places," said Delorme. Police showed up three minutes later and quickly took control, Delorme said.

Authorities evacuated an adjacent commercial skyscraper and its retail center, in which witnesses said they heard the gunfire, television networks reported.

"We were in class. We heard gunshots, a couple of gunshots. We heard a bunch of girls yelling," student Daniel Harrosh, 17, told AFP. "I opened the door, I saw a bunch of people running, I closed it, then the teacher came. He locked the door and then said something major was going on in the other room. At a certain point, the lights went off. We heard several gunshots, a dozen maybe."

Another witness, Michel Boyer, told CTV television that he "saw the gunman who was dressed in black and at that time he was shooting at people. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life."

Hours after the shooting, groups of students still shocked by the incident sat near the police perimeter surrounding the campus, hugging each other for comfort. Curious onlookers flocked to the site as helicopters circled above.

Student Roxanne Michaud, 19, told AFP that she locked herself into a classroom with four other students and two professors for two and a half hours when the shooting began. "We listened to the radio and checked the Internet to find out what was happening," she said. "We couldn't call anyone because the portable telephones did not work."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper described the incident as "a cowardly and senseless act of violence."

He added: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their loved ones, and to the students and staff of the college who are all victims of this terrible tragedy."

Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay described the incident as a "very unhappy event," but also one that was "isolated."

Quebec Premier Jean Charest said that the whole province was "distressed" by news, and expressed "deep sorrow for the victims, the families, (and) for the parents who have children studying at Dawson."

The shooting recalled the so-called Montreal Massacre on December 6, 1989, at Montreal's engineering school Ecole Polytechnique.

In that incident, a gunman, Marc Lepine, killed 14 female students before killing himself.

And in August 1992 a professor at Concordia University in Montreal killed four colleagues.