Gunman Wounds 20 at Montreal College

MONTREAL A gunman in a black trench coat and sporting a mohawk haircut opened fire Wednesday at a Montreal college and wounded at least 20 people _ six critically _ before he apparently was killed by police, witnesses and authorities said.

Scores of panicked students at Dawson College near downtown fled into the surrounding streets after the shooting broke out at the school of about 10,000. Some had clothes stained with blood.

Police spokesman Ean Lafreniere said there was just one gunman at the school and the search for any others was over.

Although police initially suggested the gunman had killed himself, Police Director Yvan DeLorme later said at a news conference that "based on current information, the suspect was killed by police."

CBC-TV showed police with guns drawn standing behind a police cruiser as a SWAT team swarmed the 12-acre campus. A bloody body covered in a yellow sheet lay next to a police cruiser near an entrance to a school building.

Montreal General Hospital said 11 people were admitted, including six who were in critical condition. The other nine were taken to two other hospitals.

Witnesses said a man wearing a black trench coat entered the school cafeteria and opened fire wordlessly.

Derick Osei, 19, said he was walking down the stairs to the second- floor cafeteria when he saw a man with a gun.

"He ... just started shooting up the place. I ran up to the third floor and I looked down and he was still shooting," Osei said. "He was hiding behind the vending machines and he came out with a gun and started pointing and pointed at me. So I ran up the stairs. I saw a girl get shot in the leg."

"I saw the gunman who was dressed in black and at that time he was shooting at people," student Michel Boyer told CTV. "I immediately hit the floor. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life."

"He was shooting randomly, I didn't know what he was shooting at, but everyone was screaming get out of the building," Boyer said. "Everybody was in tears. Everybody was so worried for their own safety for their own lives."

Raamias Hernandez, 19, said he had just finished his class when he saw everybody starting to run.

He said the gunman was dressed in a black jacket and had a mohawk haircut. Hernandez said he started to take pictures on a camera cell phone with his friend and the suspect saw them and started shooting.

Student Devansh Smri Vastava said he saw a man in military fatigues with "a big rifle" storm the cafeteria.

"He just started shooting at people," Vastava said, adding that he heard about 20 shots fired. He also said teachers ran through the halls telling students to get out.

"We all ran upstairs. There were cops firing. It was so crazy," Vastava said. "I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody. I just got out."

A SWAT team and canine units were dispatched to the school, going floor by floor to look for victims, Sgt. Giuseppe Boccardi told CNN.

Canada's worst mass shooting also happened in Montreal. Gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic on Dec. 6, 1989, before shooting himself.

The 25-year-old Lepine roamed the halls of the school firing a rifle, specifically targeting women whom he claimed in a suicide note had ruined his life. Nine other women and four men were wounded.

That shooting spurred efforts for tighter gun laws and greater awareness of societal violence _ particularly domestic abuse. Canada's tighter gun law was achieved mainly as the results of efforts by survivors and relatives of the victims.

Another shooting in Montreal occurred in 1992, when a Concordia University professor killed four colleagues.

Dawson College was the first English-language institution in Quebec's network of university preparatory colleges when it was founded in It is the largest college of general and vocational education, known by its French acronym CEGEP, in the province.

Things have been very hectic, so I haven't updated recently, but here's some news.

Canadian gun owners are *kicking ass* on this issue. :) We have OWNED the letters columns of all the major dailies since this thing happened.

In an earlier posting I mentioned the very left Toronto (Red) Star. Well, it seems the constant barrage of blame-the-criminal-not-the-gun, pro-firearm, anti-gun-control letters is having an effect -- even on the most liberal of newspapers.

The following was printed in the Star on the 17th. This is an article, not a letter!

Kimveer Gill's weapons were registered, but it did not stop him from killing, says Rondi Adamson
Sep. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM
RONDI ADAMSON
I have to admit, I've been wrong about the gun registry in the past. I always thought that it should be scrapped, for the simple reason that criminals don't obey the law.
It turns out, however, that the registry is useless for another reason. Some criminals do obey the law, dutifully registering their guns before using them to slaughter people.
On Wednesday, at Montreal's Dawson College, Kimveer Gill used three apparently legally registered firearms to kill (as of this writing) one person, and injure and traumatize many others.
In one sense, at least, he was law-abiding. But given what he was able and willing to do with his registered weapons, how can it be argued that the registry is anything but a misuse of funds, time and energy?
Even had Gill's weapons not been registered, what difference would that make? It isn't paperwork that will prevent the kind of violent crime Gill committed. That kind of crime can probably never be completely prevented.
Mandatory sentencing, tougher bail and parole legislation, while laudatory initiatives in terms of other crimes, would not have stopped Gill.
He had no police record. Hiring more police officers, while also a good idea, would most likely not have stopped him.
And even sounding the alarm at the sight of his nihilistic web profile might not have helped.
Were we to scrutinize every young male who posts similar ramblings (an impossibility), there would be few police left for anything else. Not to mention the crucial matter of freedom of expression, be that "expression" disturbing or not. All of this is tragic, but no less true for that.
The registry of long guns, and more talk of gun control in general, came about, in part, as a reaction to the 1989 Montreal massacre.
But, if anything, one could argue that the 1989 tragedy and Wednesday's events, would more likely have been stopped earlier on, if not prevented, by supporting the right to bear arms.
Had all, or many, students and faculty at L'École Polytechnique, or Dawson College, been armed, Marc Lepine and Kimveer Gill would have been taken out quickly.
I'm not suggesting Canada should be like Tombstone, Arizona. I'm arguing that it is fatuous to insist these rampage killings would be stopped by stricter gun laws.
We should, after incidents such as this, ask questions. We should look for solutions, or at least improvements.
But the inevitable political manipulations that take place in the aftermath of the Lepines and the Gills are dismaying.
The reflexive reaction on both sides — the latte-drinking, pro-gun control urbanites, vs. what the latter view as assorted loners, rubes and crazies, is not productive.
But as a latte-drinking urbanite, who has no interest in owning a gun of any kind, I see no societal benefit to making rubes, crazies, or anyone else, register theirs.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto-based writer. rondi.adamson@gmail.com.

Here's a column from the Montreal Gazette, probably the next most liberal-left newspaper to the Toronto Star.

This is mind-boggling. It's astonishing that the Gazette would print this. I'm doing my happy dance. :D

PUBLICATION: Montreal Gazette
DATE: 2006.09.25
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial / Op-ed
PAGE: A21
BYLINE: LIONEL ALBERT
SOURCE: Freelance
WORD COUNT: 767
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gun control is not the issue in the Dawson shooting: Some studies show allowing people to own guns freely actually cuts crime
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Beverly Akerman ("The solution is simple: No more guns!" Opinion, Sept. 19), I am closely acquainted with members of the Dawson College community.
Does the recent shooting episode teach us anything? The simple answer is that gun control did not help at all. It neither saved Anastasia De Sousa's life nor prevented the injuries to 20 others. The killer had acquired all three of his weapons properly and had complied with the stringent federal gun-control system.
In all the 700-odd words of Akerman's article, this fact is not acknowledged. She does, however have a solution, namely a complete ban on guns. That this would not be any more effective than the complete ban on cocaine does not concern her. Nor should it, as we are dealing with an argument from emotion rather than logic. Indeed, that is where the writer is most convincing. She tells Prime Minister Harper, "If you persist in your intended dismantling of the gun registry instead of making it harder for people to own guns, there will be hundreds of thousands of us marching in the streets of Montreal."
Why do people ignore the evidence against gun control? One answer is that they are ill-informed. For example, there are many studies showing that allowing people freely to own guns decreases gun crime (mainly because potential perpetrators fear that potential victims might be able to fight back). There are opposing studies, but those who cast doubt on gun control are rarely reported or are presented in a very negative manner.
Interestingly enough, when reality breaks through it is often accurately reported in the local media. The Gazette quoted Dawson College security guard Vince Pascale, "the gunman had carte blanche. There was no one near to stop him and he was fully loaded with weapons. ... Who was going to stop him? Nobody is armed over here, so he could have done what he wanted."
Pascale's insight did not make it into the national media.
An American example of manipulation in the national media occurred in 2002. On the campus of the Appalachian School Of Law in Grundy, Va., a disgruntled student opened fire, murdering the school's dean, a law professor and a student. As reported locally in the Charlotte Observer, the regional daily newspaper, two men who helped bring the murderer under control were ASL students Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges, both North Carolina law-enforcement officers.
The report stated, "Gross ran to his car, parked about 100 yards away, without dropping the gunman from his sight, grabbed ... a gun from under his front seat. While the man pointed his gun at fellow students, Gross and two others ran toward him from different directions. One of the others ... also had his gun ... When the gunman saw them ... he put his weapon down and his hands up."
A Lexis-Nexis search revealed 88 stories about those murders and only two mentioned that Bridges and Gross were armed. On the NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw noted Virginia State Police were crediting law students "for preventing further loss of life, saying they overpowered the gunman and held him until police arrived." No mention that two of these students were armed. The CBS Evening News noted only "students tackled the suspect." Again, no mention of any students being armed. And Public TV's News Hour said nothing about students doing anything, reporting only "the suspect was captured."
In a lengthy interview on CBS' Early Show, co-host Bryant Gumbel spoke with several people - including Tracy Bridges - regarding the ASL murders. All Gumbel said was that Bridges was among a group of students "who took the gunman down," who "helped pin him down." No mention of Bridges having a gun. In a story of almost 1,000 words on the ASL murders, the Washington Post reported, "three students pounced on the gunman and held him down until help arrived." The Post noted Bridges and Gross "helped subdue (the murderer) until sheriff's deputies arrived." Again, no mention that Bridges and Gross were armed.
Gun control is part of the culture of helplessness. May the students who marched back into Dawson be given information sufficient to match their determination.

Lionel Albert writes on a variety of subjects. He lives in Knowlton. lionel_albert@hotmail.com

Wow.

And these are not the only pro-ATC articles to be printed, these are just the ones in the über-left papers. The more balanced papers are also carrying similar articles. And the letters columns are full of pro-CCW mail.

Ok, I'm now officially predicting CCW in Canada within five years. (The permit, called an ATC or Authorization to Carry, already exists in Canadian law, has for years, but they never actually get *issued*.) It's just a policy change -- not a legislative one.

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