Anastasia De Sousa, Rest in Peace

Greetings,

It was another dark day for Canadians when Kimveer Gill decided to go on a rampage and shoot up Dawson College in Montreal. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few days, go here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dawson-college/

for the full story. I don't think I have to recap much. Alienated young man hates life and himself and decides to take out his frustrations on the rest of the world with his gun, then shoots himself in the head in a stand-off with police.

I think you can probably all guess what my opinion of random, senseless killing is. While I have all the understanding in the world for people who feel lost and alienated (being a bit of a loner myself), there is absolutely no excuse for that kind of behaviour. If he needed help, he could have asked. He lived in Canada. We have social programs for everything. I will go out on a limb and say that our system isn't perfect. I will even go so far as to say that sometimes life is difficult even with help, but that does not now and will never excuse killing as a cry for attention.

As I was watching all the news coverage (or listening to it) after the initial shock wore off and the actual emergency was over, the coverage focussed predominantly on how this could have been prevented. The news on Friday (I think) was highlighting the fact that he purchased his guns legally, and that the infamous gun registry failed. I don't think that this proves that it failed; au contraire, I think that it proves that it works admirably in showing that the registry was pointless in the first place. A gun registry is not going to prevent incidents such as this. What this shows is that this particular person was in need of serious help and didn't get it. This sort of thing is becoming all too frequent and is certainly indicative of a greater societal ill, but the gun registry is not to blame. (I believe the guns used in Colombine were also legal, but don't quote me on that.)

The point of this particular little rant of mine is that the news coverage was all too ready to focus on how we could have prevented this tragedy, and they were talking to security specialists, counselors, police and people on the street. They were all looking for answers and reassurance. They wanted to be able to pin the blame on someone, and since the gunman was dead, we couldn't really blame him any longer. That bothered me. Our society has come to a state where we have to find an excuse/reason for everything. I understand why they want the reassurance; they want someone to tell them everything's going to be all right and it won't happen to them. They want to know that their little world is secure and that if anyone does anything like this to them (or theirs), then they will at least be able to sue someone. They're looking for security in an increasingly insecure world. I get that, but what they don't get is that the harder they grasp, the more elusive it becomes.

The articles I've read included references to the US Secret Service and the findings from the review after Colombine. The bottom line is that this kind of violence really can't be accurately predicted, thus it can't really be prevented. Scary, but true. It's kind of like terrorism in that way except that there's no real message from the killer here.

Another thing I noticed in yesterday's news coverage was something Anastasia's mother said. She was being interviewed and she made an excellent point: this pathetic, sad little man will be remembered (albeit as being a crazy killer) and her daughter will be either forgotten or remembered as a sidenote. She was only 18 years old and the only reason she's dead is that she went to school on Wednesday. So I'm posting her picture, not his. There are pictures of him all over the web, but I can only find one of her (I think I got it from the CBC).

That's all I have to say for now peeps. Peace out,