Friday, September 15, 2006

Just a momentary interlude...

This is a blog about books mainly, so I don't want to get into major debate or anything, but I just wanted to take a moment to say that aren't school shootings scary? I am just amazed at the papers, they state that "A gunman with a Mohawk haircut and black clothing opened fire inside Montreal's Dawson College on Wednesday, killing one woman and wounding 19 others" (CTV news). Lots of people have mohawks and wear black, what a horrible way to start that article!

Anyways, Canada is not without its violence, and my university day was spent thinking about the 20 young adults, people around my age, that were shot at on Wednesday. I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the situation and say how horrible it is.

Montreal also had another bad shooting several years ago where 14 women were killed. The man that did it was mad because they got accepted into the engineering program and he did not. In other words, he had a low opinion of women. It's scary. People at school today were trying to think of reasons why these things happen and ways to prevent it, but what was going on 17 or so years ago is not the same thing that is necessarily going on today. The simple answer is, it is a tragedy. Now, I am going to stop before I say something that will get me in trouble.

Here's one article about it, I am sure there are many more: here

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:55 AM

    It is a horrible tragedy, isn't it? Some people are trying to say that the shooter was this person that played violent video games and watched violent movies and that these things contributed to why he did this. But barbarism is as old as humanity itself, and there have always been and will always be people with skewed ways of thinking and viewing the world, regardless of what they watch and read and do or who they associate with. There are just people who aren't (for lack of a more politically correct expression) right in the head. It's sad to know that and it's scary to think that people like that are very likely living nearby or passing you in the mall. No one at that college expected to go to school and face a shooter, just like I wouldn't expect one to walk into the library I work at. But it obviously could happen, and that's very very very scary. But what's scarier is that there is no solution. None at all. Everyone knows it, and so we just try not to think about it. Which is why when stuff like this happens, we're not so much shocked by it anymore as we are angry or sad that it happened. Again.

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  2. Yes, I agree with you. I was just more annoyed by all the excuses they were making for him. As far as I am concerned, he went in that school and shot those people for a reason, and the world is concentrating on his hobbies. And you watch, people are going to freak out about people with mohawks and black clothing, because that is what the media wants them to do. They are going to have a mess.

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  3. I was so sorry to see this happen again. I wish idiots like this would just kill themselves without trying to take others with them in the process.

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  4. Anonymous10:59 AM

    I spent most of Wednesday glued to my tv. I lived in Montreal for 7.5 years.

    There is no one thing that his behaviour can be blamed on. You can't blame it on video games (although I am very disturbed that there is one based on Columbine, *huge sigh*), music, a goth website. He didn't do it because of any of those things. You cannot blame it on any of those things even though the media is trying really hard. I'll be fair and point out that the "experts" are also pointing out that you can't blame it on any of that either.

    I don't understand why Dawson. He had no apparent connection to that school.

    And I think the thing that the media isn't picking up on is that this wasn't a kid. He was a 25 year old man.

    /rant

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  5. Anonymous6:53 PM

    A woman at work told me about this yesterday. I was in high school when the engineering students were killed, and that's immediately what I thought of. How awful and sad.

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