I was thinking about this today because of the news in Boulder, Colorado (which likely will turn out to be nothing, hopefully).

There have been several high profile school shootings in the US, with high numbers of victims and injuries. However, something struck me as odd today.

Late last year, there was a school shooting in my city. I live in Montreal, Canada. You've probably heard about it...It happened at Dawson College which is a pretty big school in downtown Montreal with over 10,000 students and staff. Also there are many thousands of people all around the area.

The guman entered the school with a large rifle and opened fire. There were a few injuries but "only" one person was killed (excluding the shooter). Now, I say "only" because while even one is too many, at the same time it pales in comparasion to some of the other shootings. Columbine had something like 12 victims, and Virginia Tech had over 30.

Does nobody find it strange that a man can open fire with a high powered rifle in the most populated part of the school in the heart of a huge city and yet only kill one person? Especially when you consider that dozens of people were killed in similar shootings in the USA?

I guess what I'm getting at is why such a big difference? Am I thinking too much into it?

I could be, especially when you consider that 20 something years ago there was another school shooting in Montreal where I believe 13 women were killed...But in that tragedy the shooter simply entered a room where a meeting was held and killed everyone in there...So I don't know if you can compare.

Thoughts?

As horrible a topic as this is, my thoughts are thus.

I don't recall what kind of a rifle he was using. Was it large capacity assault type? Or a hunting rifle? I don't remember. Anyway the answer is probably quite simply rate of fire. The more bullets down range, the more hits.

Exactly.
Columbine: 2 men, multiple weapons, explosives.
Virginia: 1 man, 2 pistols, lots of ammo.
Your man: Rifle?
If it's one of those single shot manual reload rifles (in which you have to put one bullet every time you shoot), then it's more than logical.

Not to add, what was his intention? Was he skilled? eye-problems? (Myopia or w/e).

[edit on 10/5/07 by -0mega-]

He used some sort of assault rifle. They had pictures of him holding it in the newspaper. I'm not experienced with weapons but it looked to me like an M14 or M16 or something. It wasn't a hunting weapon, it was like an assault rifle from a video game.

His motive is cloudy, he was basically just mad at the world.

I would think we should be thankful that he was a bad shot then.

'course an m14 knockoff is a lot less wieldy than a handgun or tec9, or even a sawed off shotgun. That might also have been a factor.

Originally posted by seagull
I would think we should be thankful that he was a bad shot then.

'course an m14 knockoff is a lot less wieldy than a handgun or tec9, or even a sawed off shotgun. That might also have been a factor.

He also had a handgun. I remember reading that now that I think of it.

It might've been a matter of different execution (pardon the horribly unintentional pun, there). the Vtech and Columbine guys basically walked in and executed people at point blank. Headshots. etc. I'm thinking this guy probably was doing more of a random spray of bullets thing, which is more likely to injure a lot of people, but less likely to kill any single person who gets hit, since he's just kind of randomly letting off rounds.

There IS something fishy about all the school shootings, but in my opinion the kind of difference you discussed is more of a spray vs. execution style shooting issue.

chalk it up to good old fashioned american pride.

our psychopathic nutcase mass murderers are the best in the world.

Crakeur. Horrible topic, but I couldn't help but smile at that crack.

See? .

Maybe the one in Canada is the real deal, you know sick head case and the ones in the USA are people that are trained to kill, brain washed if you will.

They ( who ever they are) have got to get the firearms away form the citizens in some way.

Anyway that could be the reason of the low body count.

Roper