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Shooting At Canadian Parliament
CBC reports that a man pulled up to the War Memorial in downtown Ottawa, got out of his car, and shot a soldier with a rifle. The Memorial is right next to the Canadian Parliament buildings. A shooter (reportedly the same one, but unconfirmed) also approached Parliament and got inside before he was shot and killed. "Scott Walsh, who was working on Parliament Hill, said ... the man hopped over the stone fence that surrounds Parliament Hill, with his gun forcing someone out of their car. He then drove to the front doors of Parliament and fired at least two shots, Walsh said." Canadian government officials were quickly evacuated from the building, while the search continues for further suspects. This comes a day after Canada raised its domestic terrorism threat level. Most details of the situation are still unconfirmed -- CBC has live video coverage here. They have confirmed that there was a second shooting at the Rideau Center, a shopping mall nearby.
Dont let your idiots in parliment go all panic mode like the Raving Morons we have running this place in Washington DC.
This was a rare incident by a insane person, nothing more. Put more money into public mental health.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's important for non-Canadians to realize that Parliment Hill is not the White House or US Senate. Parliment in Canada is a public commons. There is no security at all on the ground of Parliment and the space is routinely used for large scale public protests and demonstrations, less than a couple of dozen yards of Parliment itself. It's a different ball game.
Crazed shooters are totally our thing.
--America.
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The blurb is all over the place. The shooting is in Ottawa, Canada, Canada's capital. A man with a shotgun walked up to one of two soldiers posted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and shot one of the soldiers. He then ran off, got into a car, and drove to the gates of Canada's Parliament Buildings center block (you can't drive to the front door, not since 9/11). He ran in and shots were fired. The Seargent At Arms shot and killed the shooter, but there are more shooters in the building (RCMP and Ottawa police are all over it). The parliament buildings are about 2 blocks from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There is a large hotel about a block from Parliament, the Chateau Laurier. There was a shooter in there also, and there is also a large shopping mall about 3 blocks away "Rideau Center". There are shooters in there too. This all follows a 'lone wolf' Jihadist running over (with a car) two soldiers at an army recruiting center yesterday. He was later shot (and killed by police). Also yesterday 6 CF-18's left Canada to join the war on the ISIS (or ISAL or ass-hole, however you want to call them). Also, today Malala Yousafzai was to receive honorary Canadian Citizenship (she is in Ottawa).
We are in a total lockdown. No one gets in or out.
This is a War memorial! You can't shoot people here!
Gun free? LOL. We have one of the highest guns per capita rates in the world. We control guns, we don't ban them. And it works very well.
Ok i c....
So basically we should give up all our civil liberties, and live in a police state with harsher restrictions than sharia law WITH high tech tools to enforce it.
All in the name to "feel" safer? That is your solution?
I lived in Canada all my life. Do you know how many terrorists that wanted to kill me I have come face to face with? 0.
You know how many statistically speaking I am expected to come face to face with? 0
The probability of me being killed by terrorists in Canada is so close to 0, it might as well be 0.
If ever it happens, you know what, it's a tragedy, it sucks, I have the worst luck in the world, but at least I would die knowing he failed to scare us, he failed to take away the rights and freedoms so many others before me fought and died for.
For us to simply give them all up because we are scared due to a few crazed individuals is a disgrace to those who fought in WW1, WW2 and countless other conflicts, fighting against much more scarier threats....
Uh, no. You assume that making the country an even larger police state would help. But I'm sure the Canadians already had about as big a police state as it needed.
And the fuss over incidents involving two persons? Out of millions that live in and travel through Canada each year? Seems like their police apparatus is working pretty well from my point of view.
You talk as if we could bring an end to the threat of someone doing something nefarious, if only we just did something (think of the chil... soldiers). But you know what? We're doing enough. The actual count of terrorism deaths compared with just about any other cause should convince just about anyone of that. But when your argument is emotional, I guess facts don't matter (but still we try...).
So, no, neither Canada, nor the US, nor does just about any developed country need a bigger police, monitoring, border-controlling, etc. apparatus. They should probably try a bit harder to make sure that wealth and opportunity are distributed a bit more equitably and that people have a bit more say in what's being done for/to them and that might be a bit more cost-effective, but it's also a tangent along which I will not proceed further.
What is clear is that freedom is built on acceptable losses. You can debate acceptable loss levels, but the fact of those losses never go away. Talking about acceptable levels and what is needed to achieve those levels might generate a fruitful discussion but, somehow, I don't think you want to talk about things that way.
That is all.
It's 1, possibly 2 guys with long guns. Even if it is a "terrorist" attack, it's a rather pathetic and poorly organized/planned one. The "radicalized" Canadian was not a terrorist, he was a disturbed individual who latched onto the ideology on his own accord. There were no links to any terrorist organization, no indoctrination, etc - had he latched onto any other ideology (like aliens are real or the boogeyman is going to eat your children) and done the same the conversation would be very different.
How the hell can any attack against soldiers (of all people!) ever possibly be an act of terrorism? Having your soldiers get killed is certainly something to be justifiably pissed off about, but it's impossible for it to be terrorism. Even if a self-proclaimed "terrorist" does it, the act isn't terrorism. In conventional war (ask anyone, whether they grew up in 1200 BC or 1200 AD or 1812 or 1944 or 1971), soldiers are legitimate targets. The definitions didn't suddenly magically change in 2003 (or whenever it was) that US soldiers started getting picked off in Iraq.
If you're discounting what you claim the major cause of American gun deaths (illegally owned guns used by criminals) to be, you've got to do the same in Canada. In nearly every category Canada is better off, per capita, than the US in terms of crime.
Also, citation needed for the not counting gangland violence showing low murder rate. The closest thing I can find is a mis-cited report about Chicago that a US conservative site trotted out, sourcing a CDC report that shows nothing of the sort, via Reddit. Here's a well cited refutation of the idea that 80% of gun deaths are caused by gangs, not even after ruling out suicide is it close to true..
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Given a choice between real liberty and perceived safety, I'll take liberty, thanks.
The people trying to keep us "safe" by stripping away our freedoms are the ones I really worry about, no matter what political party they're from.
He was a soldier but he was not a combatant. Typically, terrorism is about targeting noncombatants, not non-soldiers (though non-soldiers are almost always noncombatants). Ottawa is not a warzone.
" Do you know how many terrorists that wanted to kill me I have come face to face with? 0.
Remove the "I have come face to face with" and that answer will certainly not be zero.
No, that answer will almost certainly still be zero. The answer to "Do you know how many terrorists want to kill a generic Westerner?" would not be zero, but who fucking cares? There's a few white people who would be happy to see a generic black person dead (and vice versa); there's a few Irish who would be happy to see a generic Englishman dead.
The relevant question is not whether there exist some people willing to kill your countrymen, because that will never be an empty set. The relevant question is whether those people are likely to actually kill more of your countrymen than moose, sharks, or bed sheets. The answer is that you should be much more frightened of bed sheets than either terrorists or sharks.
Mod parent down for lying. Soldiers are only legitimate targets for other soldiers or organized, uniformed (or at least "having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance") militia members controlled by a responsible commanding officer. I suggest you check Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention for the requirements of being a lawful combatant (there are many others beyond the couple I referenced). And let's not even go into the fact that the person in question is a citizen of the same country the soldier is of and there is not a state of civil war.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."