Posted 28 October 2014 - 06:35 PM
Should be interesting what the RCMP investigation finally turns up when they've had a chance to check everything out.
I mean, the press has gone around and interviewed people at the mosque the shooter went to, the homeless shelter he stayed at, and people who went to school with back in the day. There's evidence that he was accessing the (very limited and inadequate) mental health and addiction services in Vancouver, but of course, those people can't talk much because of confidentially rules. My initial impression is of a guy who started off with a reasonable advantage in life (Canadian-born. We don't appreciate it sometimes, but it's a huge advantage. Parents seem to have had enough money to send him to private school.) who went off the rails somewhere and was looking for someone or something to blame for his crappy life. I work in a nice, clean office with relatively few addiction issues and no homeless people now, but during training and early in my career, I did have to deal with quite a few people very much like that. They need help, but they are hard to help. They can be manipulative. They lie, they steal stuff, they can't keep their appointments or follow instructions, they abuse and threaten you. I've never been assaulted, thank God, but there have been times that I have been either seriously creeped out or I thought they would jump up and hit me. And the worst part is that for all your effort and the risk to your personal safety, you never feel like you are making any sort of difference at all. I don't even think this was about religion. The guy got kicked out of a mosque because he was acting crazy and spewing hate speech. Also stealing the keys and letting himself in at night. Strikes me more as anti-social. Guy like that gets on the internet and finds a forum that confirms what he's always wanted to believe, that everyone else around him is wrong and bad and he is special and right, and instead of conforming to present society's requirements of him, which in this case, were stop stealing, lay off the cocaine, quit acting like a jerk, and get a job, the best thing to do would be to bring down society. Too easy to manipulate. If he were white, it would be neo-Nazis or anti-establishment type of crazies. He's Brown, so he found that other bunch of crazies, and away we go. Good thing he wasn't able to leave the country, get training, get assigned a couple of buddies to help him out, then come back. It could have been worse, so someone did do his job there.
The problem I see is that there's so many guys like that out there. Some of them will be perfectly content to just complain to anyone who will listen, beat up their girlfriends, rob convenience stores and mug little old ladies, which is bad enough, but nobody cares. Some of them just might get the right help or have an epiphany and turn their lives around. When that happens, it's awesome. But there's always going to be the one that decides he's going to shoot up the company that fired him, the girl who rejected his advances, the doctor who refused to give him any more morphine prescriptions, or the police who keep arresting him. Or yes, even the living representatives of the country that he believes failed him. Your anti-terror bill is going to help that? I have my doubts. But I'm perfectly happy to wait for them to do their investigation and see what else turns up and what sort of recommendations are made. When we have a problem, we study it and make a report. It's the Canadian way. Then again, we've got Stephen Harper. He wants what he wants and he's going to do it, evidence be damned. His response was exactly what I expected.
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QuickTidal, on 23 October 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:
