Clueless
A school shooting in Montreal--this time at a college campus.
Update: Sari Stein has more on the shooting here (Hat tip: Instapundit). What I found most interesting is that Canadians seem to have no realization that violent crime exists:
This same lack of awareness and realization of danger was apparent when a madman opened fire in the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique at the University of Montreal :
Maybe it's time Canadians opened their eyes and started providing instructions to students on how to respond in an emergency because sitting there finishing your lunch is as clueless as it gets.
Update: Here is a link to the killer's webpage at vampirefreaks.com. Notice on the page that his dislikes include "Animal Cruelty, anyone who supports the American Government, capitalists, Republicans, racists" and just about everybody else. I wonder where his life and mind took such a wrong turn to be so full of hate?
Update: Sari Stein has more on the shooting here (Hat tip: Instapundit). What I found most interesting is that Canadians seem to have no realization that violent crime exists:
Just to give you an idea of how uncommon it is to hear gunshots in Montreal, CBC is interviewing one student who said she was in the other cafeteria at the time when they first heard the shots, and that for about 10 minutes afterwards, people just continued doing whatever they were doing before, because nobody actually realized they were gunshots until someone ran into the room screaming at them to get out. She said everyone assumed it was a joke, or fireworks, or just a random loud noise.
This same lack of awareness and realization of danger was apparent when a madman opened fire in the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique at the University of Montreal :
Satisfied, the rampage killer returned to the escalator and went down. His next stop: the first floor cafeteria, where more than 100 people had gone for dinner. Students running through had urged them all to flee, but many had dismissed the warnings as last-day pranks. Those few who decided to leave did so quickly. Many remained and continued with their meal or indulged in the free wine offered that day to celebrate the term ending. Around them hung signs wishing them a Happy New Year a year that some would never see. For them, it would be their last drink.
Maybe it's time Canadians opened their eyes and started providing instructions to students on how to respond in an emergency because sitting there finishing your lunch is as clueless as it gets.
Update: Here is a link to the killer's webpage at vampirefreaks.com. Notice on the page that his dislikes include "Animal Cruelty, anyone who supports the American Government, capitalists, Republicans, racists" and just about everybody else. I wonder where his life and mind took such a wrong turn to be so full of hate?
posted by Helen at 4:45 PM
36 Comments:
Alright, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I know I'm to piss a few people off. That's not my intent; my intent is to see a rational discussion as to why my hypothesis is wrong.
These shootings were unheard of prior to about ten years ago. Yeah, there were murders, and there have always been nutcases like the sniper in Texas who started shooting from a bell tower sometime in the seventies. And there have been serial murderers along the way, too.
But these school shootings are different. These are virtually all young men, all shooting more or less at random, and all events occurring at schools. There's Lepin, Columbine, and a host of others. And they all seem, to me at least, to be lashing out at something they either can't identify or don't otherwise have the power to change.
Is it possible that these boys are feeling so overcompressed by the feminization of their environment that this is the backlash?
Now, I can hear the feminists here laughing and seething already. But go talk with any male high school or college student about some of the specific aspects of the environment they're compelled to yeild to, normal guys, not nutcases, and you'll find that they're quite dismissive of all of them. Ask them how they feel about things like "conflict resolution" and "diversity" and the repression of competitive activities. And while they're uncomfortable taking abou the specifics, if you take some time and dig a little, you can get them to be specific about it.
I'm not tryin' to start a fight or nuthin'. Just trying to get the discussion going for long enough to feel like the topic got a good examination.
Rusty
Thanks for the link.
I take your point about the danger of cluelessness, but most of us tend to see it a little differently. Rather than accepting the fact that we should learn how to deal with such incidents, most people here seem to believe that we shouldn't have to deal with them because we shouldn't accept that they happen in the first place.
This may not be the ideal solution, but neither is accepting violent crime as a regular occurrance. We reject the notion that we should "get used to it", and instead, we believe that we can take steps to, if not eliminate it, at least reduce it.
Look for tougher gun laws to be tabled almost immediately, and for widespread public calls to get rid of the guns. And you won't see students arming themselves in "defence" either; most people will react to this with an enhanced aversion to guns and violence, if anything. As a psychologist, I'm sure you can understand this.
Sounds like Canadians are as oblivious to the realities of our violent world as many Americans, who insist that we can all just get along, peaceably, if we'll just try. Or maybe it's that those hurtful, awful things happen elsewhere, but not in our little corner of the world. I don't know, but if someone comes running through wherever I am yelling, "Shooter! Run" or "Fire!" I am not going to finish my lunch before moving.
During the early 70's I knew a graduate student who had been a student at the University of Texas when Charles Whitman open fired from the tower with a high power rifle.
Although he had been in the service, my friend, who was walking towards a doorway leading towards where people were being shot, initially thought the noises were firecrackers. Then he saw someone fall.
Sometimes unusual sounds just don't register mentally, especially if you haven't been around pistols, rifles and shotguns enough to know the distinctive sound they make as opposed to fireworks.
Looks like Kimveer Gill, the apparent shooter is this case has been hanging out in some particularly hard core Goth and Vampire websites.
http://vampirefreaks.com/u/fatality666
Do a google search for Kimveer.
I've cross posted this info on some other websites.
Mark Lapine, the École Polytechnique shooter, is a completely different animal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_L%C3%A9pine
On topic. As a Canadian, I recall, shortly after the first Montreal shooting a posting that was than making it's way around the "bulletin board" system (very hush, hush and muy romanitco) to the effect that the only gun control that would've been effective in that situation was a steady aim.
Much more at the Volokh Conspiracy. Info on a "Goth" website the killer frequented and posted to. Note the "Stop the Bullying" rant he and others on the website engage in.
Perhaps schools should talk a lot less about bullying? "Bullying" seems to have turned into an excuse to commit mass murder. Funny, it never was that in my day.
Even shooters often fail to recognize the sound of gunfire when it's outside of the usual context.
I was present at a gunshow when the staff guy at the door who was ziptying people's carry pieces fumbled, and accidentally discharged into the floor.
The sound was exactly that of dropping a large book onto the floor.
Only about third of the people around me visibly reacted, looking towards the sound, waiting to see what would happen next. (one gunshot's an AD, 2 or more is something else)
Another third noticed the first third reacting, and tuned in, and the last third remained oblivious.
Come on, if the first thing you assume when you hear gunshots is that there's an Emo Psychopath on the loose, then you're opening up yourself to a lot paranoia. Yes, there are times like this when you can be upset that everyone wasn't more aware, but in the end it's probably worth it to be a little bit naive, then to hit the deck everytime someone's car backfires.
Segacs, you are quite right - people should not have to live with gun violence, any more than they should have to live with rain pouring though the ceiling. And the only way to prevent either of those is to accept the reality of rain and the inherent violence of human nature, and to take preventive measures. People have violent natures; that does not mean they have to commit violent acts. Peace does not just happen, it is not the natural state of affairs.
jw, I wonder what the suicide rate in Canada is. There may be no connection, but I recall someone drawing a correlation between high murder rates in the US and low in Sweden and comparing them both to the suicide rates, and finding an inverse relationship.
Considering the ethnic basis of Canada, primarily Scottish, I would expect a lot more murderous violence, but I see that that isn't the case.
A lot of this violent behavior used to be let out with a good old fistfight! Now its jail time and law suits if even one punch is thrown.
I agree that the sound of a single shot, or a couple shots, can easily not be recognized. Identifying that the sound COULD be gunfire is the first hurdle.
At that point, behavior in such situations oft seems to consist of choosing the answer to a multiple choice question with the estimated relative probabilities of each identified potential answer the criteria for the decision. How likely is it really to be gunfire? How likely instead to be a prank?
Generally, folk have all seen or even been the butt of pranks in their life, but far fewer have been near gunfire. The probability of a prank is then judged far higher. When the gunfire is judged likely, folk far more often react. Otherwise, the downside of expected ridicule of having been prank-duped can be enough to offset the infinitesimally small (they think) risk to them of a gunfire event.
Human nature does not limit this reaction to this kind of event. After all, the first step in dealing with tragedy (grief) is denial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stages_of_dying
When one is attacked via other means, say, allegations or negative campaigns, the first two steps are to ignore and deny.
http://www.completecampaigns.com/article.asp?articleid=8
The more civvies are innocent and/or naive of such things, the better the sheepdogs have been and need to continue to be.
http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html
WRT the early post about this maybe having something to do with the feminization of the schools:
You'll note the school shooters have not been in competitive sports, much less the smash-mouth kind.
"J" said, above "it's probably worth it to be a little bit naive, then (sic) to hit the deck every time someone's car backfires."
Naive gets you dead.
I don't jump every time a car backfires, but I do paractice good situational awareness: I pay attention to people's mannerisms, hands and eyes, and look for things that seem out of place; whenever I enter a facility I look for the exits; I carry a small LED flashlight so if the power goes out I can find my way out; I maintain my vehicles so I'm not stranded someplace I don't want to be, and; I'm never, ever unarmed. Most of the time it's with a .45, sometimes a small 357, sometimes just a kubotan, but always with my brain and my wits.
I intend to not just stay alive, but prosper, and enjoy the company of my family and my friends into very old age. To accomplish that I need to not succumb to an early death, be it by disease or a deranged idiot bent on killing everyone in sight.
J, you might term Ed's and my outlooks as "opening you... [us] to a lot of paranoia," but it's not a lot different from maintaining fire insurance on your house, keeping air in your spare tire, or locking your door. I doubt you will ever understand people like me or Ed, above, which is fine. Your life belongs to you, completely, and it becomes what you make it, or what you allow others to make it into. Some of us intend to not let others make it into something we don't want, and on that list is not being injured or dead.
Christy, I'm with you. The little pop-pop-pop is sort of a lullaby. It's hard to get to sleep without it.
Wow, creepy to read the website. It made me wonder if it is preferable to be angry than it is to be hurt. As guys, the way we are socialized in this culture, I think that is part of the answer.
And that part has nothing to do with feminism, I think it has more to do with John Wayne and now darker music which glorifies violence and a hyper-masculine approache to life. It has been this way for awhile, before feminism became as important a force as it is in our culture.
I was talking to a guy just before reading this, about his 20 year journey with undiagnosed depression. He always thought that he was not tough enough. Honestly, he is having to be tougher now than he ever was before because now he can feel, and it is difficult.
So I guess I do not know why exactly, but I wonder about us as men preferring anger and attacking to hurt and crying.
Trey
I think most of the lack of reaction from the potential victims was because they were just not familiar with the real sound of gunfire. It's vastly different than the sound effects used on television and so real gunfire just doesn't register as a threat.
Segacs,
You are welcome for the link--thanks for taking time to post your up-to-date information.
As a psychologist who works with violent people--especially young people--you should know that as long as you have people living--you will have some level of violence. You should also know that you have some very angry young people in Canada. In 2000, when I wrote my book, The Scarred Heart, on teen killers, I did an internet survey of over 1200 kids--out of that--I had 41 Canadian youth whose data myself and a colleague analyzed. 32% of them fell into the violent category using the criteria of 1)bringing a weapon to school, 2) trouble with juvenile detention because of a violent offense and 3) expelled from school for a violent offense such as fighting or assault. 75% of the kids were angry enough to hit or harm someone. Mainly the Canadian kids who were surveyed said that they carried knives instead of guns but a full 87% said they knew other students who carried weapons with 50% mentioning guns. Researchers in Canada should look into why kids there are so angry--to focus on gun control, in my opinion, is a mistake, but if the country wants to feel better and not have to think about these problems, go right ahead--afterall, why should anyone have to live with these problems? Except they you do.
I take issue with the idea that these students were "clueless". There is a BIG difference between "violent crime" and mass murderers. These people weren't at a bar or in a sketchy part of town. Hearing a loud noise when eating your lunch, in a cafeteria, is not a reason to panic. No one instinctively knows what a gunshot sounds like. It is a loud bang just like any other. It could be any one of a dozen things, in a busy area like a school campus.
Also, the idea that this happened because the victims were Canadian makes my blood boil. The same thing could have happened to Americans. Canadians are not all ignorant and docile cattle, just because handguns have to be registered. Jeez. We have to be the most similar nations on the planet, almost, and today there is a whole bunch of bloggers ready to condemn us as pathetic sheep, just because our political spectrum leans lefter than Americans.
Sorry if this seems snarky. But this is about the fourth blog I've seen today where someone is self-righteously condemning these TEENAGERS, for being confused in an insane situation.
Some commenters say you would have charged the shooter instead of running away. That is not the question. The question is, would you have done that when you were 16 years old? Or would you have been confused and frightened, like these poor kids?
As an Architect I can tell you that modern buildings are very capable of dampening the loudest noises. The insulation factor is often hard to believe. I watched four F-18's take off from El Toro Marine Base while standing in a building I worked on years ago and didn't hear a sound. It was more than a little disorienting. The fact that most television shows don't use authentic sound effects also is a factor. The first time I went shooting the reports from the pistols didn't sound "real".
Nice. Reeeeal nice. These people don't have the experience with rifles to recognize the sound of a gunshot. They were terrorized by a madman with a rifle. And you're calling them clueless.
God, you're pompous.
As an expat Canuck, I can relate to both ends of the issue.
I'm surprised nobody is nothing in Gill's writings the overarching dominant theme: entitlement mentality, gone to its ultimate end.
That's the essence of the whole "it's the world's fault I'm so screwed up etc."... the emotional root of that idea, is the perceived betrayal of a promise to be taken care of. Notwithstanding the fact that Canada is a sparsely populated country with a lot of "frontier" living conditions, self-reliance is not something taught in the schools. It is the entrenchment of second-hand living which has resulted in this kind of hyper-aggressive, self-righteous dependence. If we keep telling our children from birth that we are our brothers' keeper, it is inevitable that some of them will take it to heart and demand their "rights", even at gunpoint.
When I was younger, I had severe issues with bullies, felt unprotected and abandoned by the "system", and eventually started carrying a hammer to school. I even pondered building a bomb using the easily available ingredients for gunpowder, but gave up for lack of a testing venue... who knows where I'd be if I lived in the suburbs.
After trying to threaten one of the bullies and failing in humiliation (a weapon means nothing if you don't have the will to use it, and I didn't), I "snapped" in a good way; I decided then and there that I had to deal with the problem myself, by whatever means I had. Nobody was going to save me. So I abandoned the system, just as I felt it had abandoned me; I force quit school and completed my education by alternative channels. Eventually, I discovered the works of Ayn Rand, which gave me the foundation I needed to validate and sustain a self-made life.
Having done that, knowing just how the system in Canada fails its children (and that it has only gotten worse since I left) and having visceral experience of being a misfit, I have limited empathy and NO sympathy for creatures such as Gill. The level of entitlement mentality and spoiled-brat syndrome we see in his writings passes beyond sick and enters the realm of evil.
But few, if any, in Canada will even notice let alone acknowledge, any of that; they will simply focus on the guns, not the shooter, and they will lament his passing as a victim equal to those he murdered.
Gill's successors will certainly be taking note of that.
correction: the above should read "who knows where I'd be if I HAD NOT lived in the suburbs."
Anonymous 3:51 and others:
I am not responding simply to the fact that the students did not know that a gun was being fired--few of them heeded the warning to get out and finished their meal etc. and did not leave when someone told them there was trouble. It would be better to have some plan in place, that explained in advance to students and faculty what to do--whether that be a lock-down, leaving the areas, etc. An advance plan is always smarter than nothing. I do not blame the students in anyway for what happened--they were victims of a madman--I understand that--but at the same time, some planning by schools should be done and a program put in place for what to do in the event of a school shooting or intruder in a school. To say that nothing should be done or that, no further action should be warranted and go back to business as usual until the next shooting, is, in my opinion, a mistake.
Tyree, to take your comments one step further, not only do building dampen noise but with gunshots, the sound tends to bounce around when you are in a group of buildings. Standing on a street corner around here you can't really determine where shots were fired unless you are really close.
Knucklehead, you might be interested to know that upon careful reading of the murder tally in my city on a weekly basis, black males are definitely the ones who are the most likely murder victims but the age range seems to be creeping upward from that 10-29 group to more of the 25-40 in the last couple of years.
And, Americans, don't feel so smug about 5.5 per 100,000, that is for the entire US. Here it was 43 in 2004. 2006 will be much higher. We had a brisk week last week with 11 murders. If a rich white kid gets capped it makes headline news, murdered poor black males don't even make the papers.
My elementary school kids are always practicing "lock-downs" which apparently involves herding all the kindergartners into the bathroom or having the fourth graders sit against the wall in the cafeteria.
While this is great for head counts, I don't understand the point. If I'm a psycho with a gun, my targets have all just been rounded up for me.
And Ed, I annoy me teenager all the time by giving advice to movie/tv characters--don't go with the guy, have him shoot you where there are witnesses, don't run up the stairs run out, etc.
You know, those two shootings were 17 years apart.
So while I agree with the idea that an emergency plan is needed, well, I wouldn't say that it means Canadians are clueless. I don't think the school was negligent here. I definitely don't think people were deliberately avoiding planning for a conceivable emergency. I mean, come on. I'm sure there's plenty of high schools in the States without a good plan in case a non-student comes in with a rifle and starts indiscriminately shooting. I mean, what do you do? Would it be much different from a fire drill? What if the killer is in the path of your selected egress route? Kinda tough to plan.
"Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Where is Abel your brother?' He said, 'I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?' And He said, 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground.'" (Gen. 4:9-10)
Two things most struck me about what you report. One that the murderer was notably against Cruelty to Animals, which, in this context, suggests that he felt his regressed or difficult to express feelings, where he was like a (defenseless) animal, had extraordinary rights of vindication. The other is that the normal person said of the victim, to those leaving, 'Don't Look.' Is this, in part, to imply once you have passed out of the government protected sphere, possibly from being mortally wounded, you should not be considered, not serving our uses? A cultural gap from Genesis also apparently seen in Russia where removal may still be accepted.
To all the people who claim that having more guns or more people armed and willing to charge the shooter would've helped, I wonder if you have really thought about it.
I'm writing as someone who has never owned or fired a gun, hates the idea of guns, never wants anything to do with a gun. But even to those of you who are gun-owners and who take your guns to target practice regularly, I have to ask:
Imagine you were 17 years old, eating lunch with your friends, and someone burst in with a rifle and started shooting.
Do you really think you could have pulled out a weapon in the middle of a crowded school, with your friends all around, and started shooting?
Do you really think it would've helped matters if you did this, risking hitting innocent bystanders and upping the death or injury toll even more?
There were armed police on the scene within 3 minutes. They had the shooter cornered almost immediately and he was dead within 15 minutes.
The police are trained to respond to such emergencies and by all accounts they did their job, and it prevented even worse tragedy.
A bunch of hot-headed teenagers walking around the hallways of Dawson - or any other school - with handguns wouldn't have done anything to make yesterday's situation better, and probably would've made it worse. Not to mention the general increase in unrelated violence that would surely come from them having weapons around all the time.
It's easy to talk tough on an anonymous web forum. It's easy even to buy a gun and practice shooting it at a paper target. But when you have split seconds to react instinctively to something, and firing a gun could wind up hitting not the shooter but your best friend, I daresay many of you would've thought twice. Or at least I like to hope so.
Segac, We have the concealed carry law in Texas precisely because a woman had a gun in her purse but did not bring it into a restaurant, it being illegal, and many people were killed when the one willing to be an outlaw came into Luby's and killed a number of people. You are advocating a society were only those willing to be outlaws will be armed in a confrontation or, rather, slaughterhouse shoot. The anthropological book The Origin of War takes the position, with evidence, that it was the analogous situation with the invention of the bow and arrow that led to organized aggression. Before that, there was too much parity between attackers and defenders which posed too great a risk to potential aggressors.
One thing these types of shootings show is that many people in our culture now value fame more than accomplishment. Note, for example, the multiple magazines you see on the rack concerning celebrities who really have little importance in the world other than their fame. And by having actors, rather than experts, testify before congress concerning any number of subjects. These kinds of killers sometimes get their pictures on the front of celebrity magazines.
The shooter's website places great importance on his feelings of the moment and his attitudes toward the world. Because he has become a killer, we now pay attention to his website, his feeling and attitudes. And he didn't have to "become someone" the old-fashioned way order to get us to pay attention. It reminds me of a small child's tantrum, greatly amplified in its destructiveness.
We need more grownups.
JW:
I think you are right--that young men do need more attention and time. I used to see so many in my practice who felt similar to the young man in this case--angry, alienated, frustrated and unsure where to turn. Young men direct their anger, hurt, pain and humiliation outwardly, moreso than women and this is when you can see acts of violence that are disproportional to the wrongs they feel others have done to them. I have found through my work that you can often reach these young men--at least to the point where they will not harm others. However, with all of the emphasis on girls and not enough on the true inner workings, thoughts and needs of boys in our society, the problems will likely continue. Luckily, shootings are still rare, but the feelings of anger, despair and hopelessness are not. Hence, the fairly high rate of male suicide.
Shootings are still rare??? We already have a dead Blockbuster manager and it is still early in the day. I don't think anger management classes on a grand scale is going to have an effect. You are fighting a mindset, a way of life, and kids that simply don't care about how they spend their future. You might be able to reach some of the kids on a one-on-one basis but most of these kids aren't going to heed any well-meaning advice.
I'm curious to know if the shooter was medicated. The default position these days is to give a troubled person of any age medicine and then leave him on his own.
The medicine is convenient for everyone but the child. The meds indicate that his brain is the problem--heaven forbid issues with his parents, the school administration bullies, or most importantly, him, actually be dealt with.
Very few people are taught conflict-resolution skills and diagnoses, ironically, can get in the way of behavioral intervention. Even here, Borderline Personality Disorder was discussed. Shrugged shoulders. Not much can be done.
A gunman, like a terrorist, will always have the advantage--he knows his plans, others have to guess if he's a threat or not. An armed student or teacher could have brought him down sooner, but damage would still have been done.
Dr. Melissa wrote an excellent post in which she typed "The meds indicate that his brain is the problem-." Well, I think it usually IS the brain. See, brains don't work right. Think of the brain as a computer. If it were, we would ALL exchange ours for one that works. Brains are too glitchy. Imagine if your computer's spell checker was inconsistent and let many spelling errors slip through (dyslexia) or the monitor was black and white when you paid for color (color blindness) or the sound card sounded awful (poor pitch) or you could not read the output from the printer (dysgraphia) or the computer kept switching from running your work spreadsheet to running Everquest II (ADD.) You would buy a new computer, one that worked!
In my practice, people feel releived (damn dyslexia) that it is their hardware, not their character that is at fault. It is still our responsibility to figure out the workarounds for the faulty hardware, but it is a HUGE thing for ADD client's to understand that their brain is different rather than that they are worthless, lazy human beings.
Trey
His mother provided some answers:
Mother of killer feels sorry
'It's not our fault'
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=689b60e6-7ded-447c-b9b9-3d6ff521107b&k=89135
His former friends
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=efdf211f-394d-4680-bf92-96bd5c9bd909
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