If I Said It Once...

I have said it a hundred times. If a psycho wants you dead, you're dead. This is likely to get rambly, so hold on... Kimveer Gill obviously had some very serious issues with the world. He didn't want to be a part of society, didn't like the way the government was run, and didn't much trust most people in general. Hey - he's a lot like me. The difference is that I'm not about to and never will go and shoot up a school full of kids. At least I hope not . Anyway, he was a social misfit and an outcast, or at least that is what he portrayed himself to be online. Some part of him obviously felt that way... and the line between reality and fantasy became more and more blurred over time. This wasn't someone you would be able to reason with or reach out to. This wasn't something you could predict. Yet, as always, there are the usual chorus of idiots... the typical coalition of morons... who think that everything like this is preventable, or that someone needs to get sued, or that someone was not doing their job. Or that we should put metal detectors in schools and institute "Zero tolerance" polices. Sorry, morons - you know who you are - "Zero Tolerance" has absolutely NOTHING to do with what happened yesterday. Metal detectors would only have accomplished anything if they also had armed guards, and even then "Trench" the vampire freak would likely have just gunned them down before they could move. Saying it was preventable just isn't true. We live in a supposedly free society. That means that people are free to make their own decisions and suffer the consequences. Kimveer Gill suffered the consequences - he was shot dead by police. Had he lived he would have gone to jail or a psych ward. He CHOSE to break society's rules, whether his mental state dictated making that a rational choice or not. Criminals choose to break the rules on a regular basis. We can't police people's thoughts and live in a free society. All that can be done is what is done - make things like walking out and shooting people completely taboo, and hope that the stigma works to prevent it in most cases. I know how some people would answer this (they would be the other extreme of the borderline fringes) but - if you had a choice between taking the risk that 1 in 30 million people once every 10 years loses his mind and tries to shoot people or checking with a government official every time you wanted to wipe your ass or write in your blog, which would you rather? Oh, and Jack Layton, you are an ASSHOLE. In comments yesterday he asked "Was this an illegal gun?" WHAT THE FUCK difference does it make? Legal or illegal, he got his hands on a gun and killed people. Hell, even Stephen Harper didn't try to jump on politicizing the shootings so fast. Layton, who grew up in Montreal, was among the first national-level politicians interviewed and he could not resist trying to lay the groundwork for another of his borderline psychotic attacks on all government, any government, anywhere (ironic that he is a part of the government). So, if it was a legally registered weapon, it is the former Liberal government's fault for not implementing it right, and if it was an unregistered weapon in is the Conservative government's fault for trying to dismantle the gun registry... yeah, you know, that's pretty transparent, Jack. Off. Amazing to me is the fact that the incredibly heroic actions of a couple of mainline Montreal police officers are seemingly being downplayed. I don't know whether it is fear of negative publicity or not, but the Montreal Police Chief should have come out fully with what was written all over his face - his officers did a fantastic job, possibly preventing a lot more killing. They put themselves in harms way to save lives, and that's what police should be doing. We have a real hero on our hands and no one seems to even know who he (or she) was yet. I am not talking about United 93-type "heroism" - I am talking about risking your neck for others. It doesn't matter whether the guy ran out of ammo and they shot him or some other extenuating circumstances - this was a guy out to kill people and get himself shot by police and obliging him was the best thing to be done under the circumstances. Yeah, not exactly a huggy-bunny buddhist sounding philosophy, is it. Sorry. There are situations where you can negotiate and there are situations where you have to act. Maybe if someone had talked things over with Kimveer a couple of years back... maybe if his Mom had given him more hugs... maybe if his Dad had praised him when he built his first model M16, we wouldn't be here today. Realistically, though, nothing could have prevented this from the moment Gill decided he was going to take weapons and shoot people except if police had spotted him a few minutes sooner and shot him then. In our modern world, the law of the jungle is don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you can figure out how to predict that, I will happily award you with the Johnny Smith Medal of Honour. UPDATE: Turns out Gill shot himself after being shot by the police. I reiterate - the police did a great job.