Tragedy strikes again

This week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech has reopened wounds that were just beginning to heal. Life was back to normal at Dawson, at least for the majority of students and staff members, and now the dreadful news from the U.S. has brought everything back.

Once again, members of our community are looking over their shoulders, eyeing strangers with suspicion and recoiling in shock at any loud noise.

And why shouldn’t they? After all, for some twisted reason Montreal seems to have had more than its fair share of campus shootings over the past 18 years, with the Ecole Polytechnique, Concordia University and Dawson College murders. Considering the huge number of educational institutions and the relative rarity of these incidents, what are the odds of three such tragedies taking place within a mile or two of where you’re sitting right now, reading this newspaper?

Incidents like this always rekindle outrage at our lax gun-control laws, but it seems obvious that government initiatives such as the federal Liberals’ ill-fated and grossly over-inflated gun registry program are not the answer to this dreadful phenomenon. Anyone who wants a gun badly enough will get one. An outdoors enthusiast who follows all the rules and obtains a properly licensed firearm through all the legal channels can still snap one day and use that weapon on humans. Remember, Kimveer Gill filled out all the right forms and ended up with an assault rifle—then everyone stood around, scratching their heads and wondering how such a thing could happen. Given the current state of affairs, we can only be thankful that it doesn't happen more often.

Is living in a police state the answer? Would these terrible shootings stop if we succumbed to the Orwellian urge to post guards at every entrance to every school to physically check every bag and overcoat of everyone entering the building? No, because that would be far too costly.

The bottom line is that we can never be completely safe. All we can do is go about our daily lives and hope that nothing happens. The odds are overwhelmingly in our favour, of course, but try telling that to the families of those innocent victims of this violent society.