Mass Shooting in Toronto

FUCK.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/22/toronto-danforth-pape-shooting-injures-several-people_a_23487321/?utm_hp_ref=ca-homepage

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Sunday, July 22, 2018 10:32 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hoping all the ilx Torontonians are safe and sound.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, July 22, 2018 10:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

CBC says police confirmed shooter is dead.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, July 22, 2018 10:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some people I met recently live v close to that intersection and I'm trying to get in touch

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Sunday, July 22, 2018 10:58 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God, I hope the child is going to be fine.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, July 22, 2018 11:04 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My family in the area is OK, thankfully, and slept through the whole thing.

This is literally a day or two after Tory's efforts to improve security. I think about this stuff when I go downtown now, something I never used to do.

Amara McLaughlin from the live updates on the CBC News website

'There was a lot of commotion'
Andrew Van Eek, who lives in the area, witnessed the shooting, which Toronto police have now characterized as a mass causality event.
Van Eek says he stuck his head out the window after he heard the gunshots ring out.
"There was a lot of commotion in the street," he said. "I saw somebody come just down the sidewalk and shoot into Demetres restaurant."
He described the suspect as a white male, in his late to early 30s, who was dressed in all black. Police have yet to provide a suspect description.
"It was terrifying," Van Eek said.

Coming closer to prayer than I have in many years. I hope all the injured pull through.

Praying

Little america

Dunno Canada is nothing like America

The centre of the world iirc

Lived in both places for a very long time

They’re a lot similar than canadians think

Don’t agree.

Man the numbers don’t add up. Way more shootings in the states

Ya for sure numbers are way low per capita

I mean the reasons for shootings are similar to the states

Which is why i said “little”

Fair

Anyway this is sad

glad you all are safe

increasingly convinced by the "we're the USA on a time delay" thesis

What do you mean Simon

lol

I think it might have something to do with the number of mass shootings in the USA

yeah, I'm mentally preparing myself for mass murder being on par with the US

Glad you’re safe

thx Ross

As sad as this is, the tragedy of events like this-- and the incel driver a few months ago-- and heck, the G20 kettling and mass arrests back in 2010-- is that Canadian identity is entirely coloured by a culture of safety. Events like this shake the way we view ourselves and the way we view others.

I try not to fall into fear-mongering ways of thinking when stuff like this happens because I think it makes the terror these individuals sought to inflict more successful. Toronto is a safe, expensive city and I'm not afraid to live here, and I don't feel afraid while walking anywhere at day or at night, and I don't think we need more police funding to deal with this crisis (and it wouldn't be an effective method of reducing gun violence, anyway).

I mean, safety is a bit of an illusion, isn't it? It's perfectly safe except for when it isn't. But I agree that extra policing won't help.

I'm glad everyone here is safe. And I hope these events continue to remain few and far between for y'all.

The shooting a few weeks ago that killed a couple of individuals in the entertainment district hit somebody very close to me-- one of the deceased was an ex of hers. It was extremely frustrating for her, and for me, to see John Tory circumvent any discussion with the actual racialized community in Toronto and discuss what would make things safer, and instead move directly toward "more police"

What separates Canada from the US-- aside from the disparate attitude toward CCWs-- is that our mindset is one that is free from fear. More guns-per-capita are owned in Canada than in the US, we have lots of them. But we don't see any need to arm ourselves. The safety is not an illusion, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some more (horrible) details are trickling in. Shooter was a 29-year-old white male.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4346833/danforth-shooting-what-we-know-about-suspect/

More guns-per-capita are owned in Canada than in the US, we have lots of them

What is a source for this? Aaron Karp's Small Arms Survey from June estimates 120.5 civilian firearms per 100 residents in the US vs 34.7 per 100 residents in Canada, as per Table 2 here: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf

do we really think the (seeming) uptick in mass murders primarily about guns? we literally just had an incel murder a bunch of people with a fucking van.

A nine-year-old girl, damn.

Desmond Cole taking notes on local-media bullshit as always

pay attention to the insistence that the danforth shooting "is different" from gang violence. that no amount of policing could have stopped it. that the shooter was a "lone wolf". that "gang violence" is recurrent but mass murder by a white man is, by definition, a one-off

— here for dafonte (@DesmondCole) July 23, 2018

the media's familiarity with the danforth means the narration of this shooting is deeply personal. "we've all been there" we tell the world. "if you've never been there, it's a great neighbourhood." media is unwilling or unable to say this about many parts of toronto

— here for dafonte (@DesmondCole) July 23, 2018

Fgti otm as usual

Canada is weird cuz you don’t even need to lock your door, it’s safe and I’ve felt that way for 8 years in my place.

That was Michael Moore's contention in Bowling for Columbine, that we don't lock our doors here.

I don't live in perpetual fear or anything, but I have never not locked my door. I've accidentally left my house unlocked overnight a few times.

Yeah Clemenza true re Moore

Honestly my biggest fear is homeless people who are crackheads, I wouldn’t say I live in fear but definitely I’m always aware of everyone around me and cautious. This comes from being assaulted by a psychotic homeless man

Recently millennials were said to fear the threat of danger more than boomers who would be quick to report it. My take is lots of younger people are so sheltered the perception of any violence is crippling. Once you’re in a fight it changes how you see everything

Yeah, idk, Michael Moore talking about "Canada being safe" and using "they don't even lock their door" as a metric for that, like, putting the requirement on "safety" as having to do with the safety of one's material possessions, that's weird to me

I always lock my door, but I never protect my PIN

I've tried to discuss (without success) why Canada feels safer-- despite having a high civilian guns-per-capita rate-- which sund4r correctly points out is lower, not higher, than the US, I don't know why I had that false fact in my mind--

It's really hard to describe, especially to people who've grown up within a gun culture. But most Canadians haven't even ever seen a gun, or held a gun, and would be extremely weirded out to learn that somebody in their neighbourhood had a gun, or was carrying a gun. Even when I see guns on police officers, I feel weirdly mystified. Seeing semi-automatic-toting security officers in French or Italian airports is even weirder. It does not occur to my Canadian brain that anybody would be bearing one of those instruments, and so it never occurs to me that I ought to, in turn, bear one myself.

Americans I've spoken to, they seek to disarm the police force (in lieu of disarming civilians). They see police violence as being independent. I don't see it that way. I think American police respond with unnecessary gun usage as a result of "the possibility of an armed civilian"-- that it is straight up protection-of-self, a fear-based-response, far far far more often than it is any deliberate desire to enact violence on civilians.

This is why I am less afraid of being shot on the Danforth, and more afraid of subsequent reporting and legislature following a shooting of this nature. I worry less about being shot at and worry more about living in a culture where people are cowering in fear.

booming post fgti

Great post fgti

I don't know if it got any mention on ILX, but a week ago we had that incident (or non-incident, as it were) where the police got what they thought was a credible tip on another one of those vehicular mass killings in the CN Tower area. I was on my way to the Lightbox that night, and supposedly there was a major police presence downtown during the afternoon (my movie was late, so not really detectable by the time I got there).

They actually used the "vehicular incident" term? When I was following it they were giving no details at all.

That's my phrase (don't know what else to call such incidents), but as I listened to 680 on the way in, they kept referring to a police memo that spelled that out--a memo that the police said was just a draft version. And they were reporting that the tip may have come from a car-rental agency.

I don't know why I had that false fact in my mind--

It gets repeated quite often. Michael Moore again: https://globalnews.ca/news/1354803/fact-checking-michael-moore-does-canada-have-more-guns-per-capita-than-the-us/

so i live two blocks from this. everyone is freaked the hell out. my neighbour and good friend missed being right in the centre of this by 30 minutes (they were getting ice cream)

Frinkin' Michael Moore again

Wow, Thermo, that's scary. Glad you're okay.

Yesterday's death was an 18-year-old; the 10-year-old girl died today.

RIP

why the fuck we manufacture handguns

Whatever you think of Tory, he asked exactly the same question today: "Why does anybody in this city need to own a gun?"

Don't know much about him but I liked his response to this.

The cops said it was "not random" so they obviously know something and I wish they'd come out and fucking say it already

Possible explanation, if I'm understanding the CBC correctly: there are two investigations going on, the shooting and an SIU investigation, and the latter puts strict limits on what can be said publicly.

I see.

This is 18-year-old Reese Fallon, a recent grad of Malvern Collegiate. She was out with friends when she was gunned down on the #Danforth. @globalnewsto #TorontoShooting pic.twitter.com/TZJFKg7Gt3

— Shallima Maharaj (@ShallimaMaharaj) July 23, 2018

The only reason to buy guns is to kill all the other people who own guns, take their guns, and melt them

never had Tombot pegged as a cop killer but it shows what I know

So apparently the gunman had a long history of mental health issues.

The stigma will continue, unabated.

Aaaaaand Doug Ford wants mental health funding diverted to the police

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/07/23/council-postpones-meeting-gun-violence-reduction-plan-debate-after-danforth-shooting.html

Fucking hell.

Motherfucker is completely untethered from reality and basically admits as much with his "bias" statement.

People say "stigma" a lot but it's the wrong word. I think people need to start looking at mental health issues the way people look at chronic physical illness. Friends who are depressed or in hospital because of mental illness need to be brought soup and watched movies with and supported and cared for. There is a handbook about how to help your friends with cancer, but not a handbook for how to help friends who are experiencing mental illness, especially something as scary as psychosis.

And caring for your mentally ill friends is exhausting. One of my friends, right now, is in an extreme state of psychosis, going on and off their medication, checking themselves out of the hospital whenever they get a window and escaping, hiding, and showing up when they run out of money and hope. This friend has almost no friends left-- really, just their ex-partner, me, and their worried-but-exhausted family. I spent much of Saturday calling alternative institutions to the mental hospital for my friend to exist in, places that allowed for more social freedoms instead of just a shared room and a hospital bed. It was agonizing-- wait-lists for years, dead phone lines, not the right resources. Even when I found a perfect place, my friend-- at once amenable to going there and checking in-- got cold feet, had an episode, and was taken back to the mental hospital.

It's not so much "stigma" as it is, like, a full-time job. To protect myself, and my own sanity, I had to bow out of the care process.

When the shooter's family posted that stuff about how hard they'd been working to try and help him, with medication and therapy, I felt that. When the shooter's proxy-brother had trouble reconciling the upbeat person he knew with the crime he committed, I felt that too. And the scary part, too, about having to open up to a mental health professional about violent urges, is that as soon as any plan is described, the police are involved. There is so much work to be done to prevent this sort of shit from happening again

Yeah, I've already seen posts from local mental health professionals (a couple of them friends of mine) describing the woeful mental health infrastructure here and this is only going to get worse based on what we see are Ford's priorities.

Goon I believe we are discussing two different things here, not that I was clear in the beginning but I agree with you. I was talking about the reality of mental health patients/survivors on a macro level. Yes, there's the day to day difficulties people face with their loved ones and I am not denying anyone's courage to face the burden here, it's something that saved my life and now drives me personally.

Besides that there is the long term trend that point to a situation where mental health is seen as the exact same as it was 60 years ago. I'm talking more about stuff like the lack of funding for care, medication and recovery; or the near impossibility to take those mental health issues to the public without social pushback (especially at work); many sufferers are still blamed by their own families for their ills, etc. Pointing out the lack of handbook for how to help friends in that condition is the societal problem I'm talking about when I say 'stigma'. I was basically expressing that after an incident like this, the very crucial notion that mental health issues is just like any kind of health issues is going to be met with more pushback than we need right now, that there's going to be even more stigma to deal with.

There is so much work to be done to prevent this sort of shit from happening again

How about first we take the shooter, with all his complex and intractable problems, and remove the gun, and we have done quite a bit to prevent that shit from happening.

that just sounds complex and intractable

xp to VHS, yep, I didn't disagree with you at all! I just had a thing to get off my chest :) Good post, too

How about first we take the shooter, with all his complex and intractable problems, and remove the gun, and we have done quite a bit to prevent that shit from happening.

Canada already has comparatively strict gun laws. There might be ways to improve them, if you have specific suggestions. Unless you are suggesting that the US tighten up its gun laws, since a lot of guns are still coming across the border.

I personally would love to see the dialogue in the states regarding "stricter gun laws" be less about stricter background checks and what-have-you and be more about the higher rates of gun-related deaths, by state, and over time, related to the availability of concealed-carry permits. The statistics are pretty convincing that the easier it is to legally carry around a gun, the more likely you are to get shot (or shoot yourself accidentally). Bringing the dialogue back round to "we need better background checks" just reinforces dumb notions of good guys and bad guys and American Exceptionalism and so on. Statistics say that easy CCWs cause more gun violence. SCOTUS continues to block state-by-state legislation to restrict availability of CCWs. Sorry to soapbox but I just can't comprehend why the dialogue drifts-- except perhaps for deliberate misdirection of the dialogue by NRA propagandists.

My feelings on this, sure, they're informed by "the drift of guns across the border into Canada"-- the same way that single-payer health care in the States would be great for Canada, as we might start to see US medical incomes become less preposterous, and we might keep more doctors and nurses at home instead of having them go south to get paid ridiculous incomes-- and many other similar secondary benefits-- but mostly my thoughts about Gun Control In The States is worry about my American friends and relatives, worry about them getting shot at, and worry about the long-term psychological effects of living in a society that is constantly living in fear of being shot at