Mass Shooting in Nova Scotia April 18/19, 2020: misogyny and gun violence

156 posts / 0 new
Last post
jerrym

travissmith wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

travissmith wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Yes Travissmith all of us would far prefer to be at the mercy of right wing assholes armed to the teeth without any training in responding to emergencies. Personally, I don't want you in my neighbourhood with a gun, and that's for fucking sure.


Why not make firearms education part of high school then?

For what purpose? Most of our children live in cities so WTF would they ever need a firearm for?


Have fun being powerless against tyranny then..

If our government does become a tryanny bent on destroying your freedom, any gun or collection of guns owned by individuals is not going to stop them from wasting you before you even knew what they hit you with, considering the arsenal that they possess. 

I don't want the tyranny of another Wortman or militia deciding my fate. 

travissmith

Quote:
3. Ever try to sit down and have a meal when you have a chest rig, magazines (and can't forget pouches and your IFAK) with an assault rifle strapped to you? Then people take that stuff off and leave it by their feet and your constantly tripping on it. You would also have people leaving weapons lying around, forgetting them in restraunt bathrooms, people shooting themselves or others by accident in public.

 

Ever heard of assault webbing and a sling? Leaving weapons at your feet should be an arrestable offence.

Quote:
If you are willing to share this...which culture do you identify with?  If you would be willing to reveal that-and I totally respect it if you don't-it would significantly affect how people would respond to what you are saying on this subject.

I don’t represent any culture but I’d only have full faith in the same men who liberated my Haifa.

Quote:
If our government does become a tryanny bent on destroying your freedom, any gun or collection of guns owned by individuals is not going to stop them from wasting you before you even knew what they hit you with, considering the arsenal that they possess.

Better to die fighting then.

 

Paladin1

travissmith wrote:
Ever heard of assault webbing and a sling? Leaving weapons at your feet should be an arrestable offence.

I have. The pouches on webbing are placed on a belt around the hips. By your hips and around back. Very uncomfortable to drive with and sit down with. Webbing is predominately used for long range patrolling and patrolling while you're wearing a large assault bag or rucksack.

Slings can attach the rifle in front of your body, which gets in the way and makes eating at a table near impossible. Slings also put the werapon on your back.  Good luck eating breakfast at Cora's with someone sitting next to you and you have bulging pouches on your hips and a rifle on your back sticking out the side.

What about using a tiny bathroom stall with all that gear? Hang a loaded gun and 30 pounds of gear on that tiny stall-door hook?

Quote:

Better to die fighting then.

No step on snek

Ken Burch

travissmith wrote:

I don’t represent any culture but I’d only have full faith in the same men who liberated my Haif

UH...YOUR Haifa?...with a name like that, I seriously doubt you're Israeli...and also, for the record, Haifa never HAD to be liberated-it was always a peaceful city where both of the national communities of Israel/Palestine co-existed peacefully.

Are you an evangelical "Christian" Zionist?

BTW...violence is not the only means of resisting "tyranny".   People around the world organize against, and sometimes overthrow dictatorial governments without firing a shot.

Violence is actually one of the least effective methods of liberating people.

BTW...in Canada-assuming you are Canadian-who, exactly, do you see as the would-be tyrants?  Who, if you were in command of an immense people's militia, would you rise AGAINST?

I'm thinking you wouldn't fight the rich, or the polluters, or the militarists, or the bigots.  It sounds as though, if anything, you'd fight the LGBTQ community.

epaulo13

kropotkin1951 wrote:

So I wish someone would change the title of this thread so we can talk about misogyny and other important issues instead of fucking gun control.

This song came across my FB feed and it moved me. Remember this conversation should be about this young woman and other victims and how to end the misogynist culture that gives rise to these women haters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywQoD8xtanw&list=LLGhMmnhlCEhybKqymjooIG...

..nice

travissmith

Paladin you’re clearly trolling at this point as you seek white christian hetereo-normativity re: weapons.
For the record, a single 3-4 mag pouch and 10.5” carbine is not an onerous burden for anyone to carry.
For those devoted to weapons, it is nothing and for those who don’t wish to they wont.

Ken Burch, Haifa was liberated by Indian (Sikh) soldiers and I don’t use my Hebrew name online.
Violence is a last resort and who exactly are queer people oppressing that they need to be overthrown as tyrants?

Ken Burch

I referenced gays because you had that line about Israel moving away from "family values"-I assumed you had an issue with the country embracing some very mild LGBTQ rights measures.

 

travissmith

No, I don't think gays have much of anything to do with people not having kids.
I do disagree with Western interpretation of LBGT based around dualism.
I'd lean more towards what they do in Iran where you have gender absolutism but sexual diversity.

I think that whenever there's a negotiation between 'corporations' and the 'people' they're always done in bad faith and never get anywhere.
One MAJOR reason for this is the power imbalance which results from corporations being able to hire the police as their own goons, while 'the people' are disarmed.

I think that a government which fears its people can then go on to love and respect them.

Ken Burch

Don't want to carry this discussion out any further in this thread-it could be the subject of a thread of its own-but my last things on this here are:

1) The state can't force people to have large families.

2) I know a lot of trans/non-binary people.  They are just living their personal truths and no good would come of the trauma that would be inflicted on them by forcing them to try and pretend to be their "dead genders".

3) To clarify for everybody else- if they didn't know-what "travis" was talking about, Sikh troops were in Haifa in 1918 during the liberation of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.  The reference had nothing to do with the events of 1947-48.

4) The reason I asked about "travis"s identity was that, from what he was saying, I thought he might be FN, Inuit or Metis.

travissmith

1. State policies definitely influence family size.
2. Sure, I don't tend to comment on issues I don't have skin in BUT, I don't think sexual liberation/edu is a net good.
3. Yes. I think their idea of every man being a sort of Philosopher-King is admirable.
4. No, unfortunately being from the GTA I had Sikhs/Afghans in mind and did not realize they had something similar.
Wonderful!

Churchill said of the Pashtuns: Every man is a Warrior, Theologian and Politician.
I'm of the opinion that increasing civic engagement fixes MOST problems because you have more minds put to it.
It's horrible when young people think they have no say or power in how things are run.
They're the future,
 

kropotkin1951

WTF does any of this have to do with the latest massacre by a misogynist that took place in  Nova Scotia.

travissmith

kropotkin1951 wrote:

WTF does any of this have to do with the latest massacre by a misogynist that took place in  Nova Scotia.


Gun control is in the title?

singh47

Quote:
 
so they need to be take away from us 

Have fun trying: https://youtu.be/Eb79GpJbAy8

ਚਾਰੇਜੁਗਕਹਾਣੀਚੱਲਗਤੇਗਦੀ||
The tale of the Sword will reverberate across the Four Ages.

Without weapons, How will we stop cow slaughter?

Paladin1

travissmith wrote:

Paladin you’re clearly trolling at this point

Travis, a single 3-4 mag pouch is going to bulge out and be lopsided.  And no manly man is only going to carry 3 or 4 mags. Nothng short of 10x to 15x  30-round magazines is needed for a trip to breakfast.  Tyranny isn't going to wait for you to go grab more ammo.

A 10,5" carbine isn't incredibly in the way, but it's still a 30" piece of 6 or 7 pound metal hanging off your body.

Quote:
as you seek white christian hetereo-normativity re: weapons.

No idea what that means.

 

travissmith

Paladin1 wrote:

travissmith wrote:

Paladin you’re clearly trolling at this point

Yes, I don't expect the cross-dressers in the CAF to oppress shit anytime soon, considering they had to run to their man caves to record memoirs after at most a few dozen platoon level assaults by the Taliban.

Paladin1

travissmith wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

travissmith wrote:

Paladin you’re clearly trolling at this point

Yes, I don't expect the cross-dressers in the CAF to oppress shit anytime soon, considering they had to run to their man caves to record memoirs after at most a few dozen platoon level assaults by the Taliban.

Now we're talking about the Canadian military and Afghanistan?

Travis you're all over the place. I can't really understand what the heck you're trying to say or argue. I don't think I'm alone either. Are you just trying to push buttons or get people going?

A domestic abuse case just turned in to one of Canadas largest mass murders in recent history. Just behind the Air India bombing by Canadian Sikh terrorists (329 killed) and the Blue Bird Cafe arson in Montreal (37 dead). Now with this pandemic, domestc abuse (along with online child exploitation) is on a rise.

It's serious stuff.

 

Hurtin Albertan

What the hell happened to this place?  Back in the day, we had GOOD gun control topics on rabble babble, goldarn it all anyways!

This......this is just sad.

And in my opinion, a pistol calibre carbine along with a sidearm that shoots the same ammunition is a pretty good combination.  As long as your PCC is a lever action with wood on it and your handgun is a six shooter, that is.

All the guns I want to own are Prohibited.  Life is suffering.

voice of the damned

Hurtin Albertan wrote:

What the hell happened to this place?  Back in the day, we had GOOD gun control topics on rabble babble, goldarn it all anyways!

This......this is just sad

Well, I think most of the derailment is being caused by our Jewish Sikh pro-Israeli anti-Zionist Hindu Nationalist friend, who people insist on engaging on some level beyond the comedic.

MegB

Thread title changed, so knock it off with the gun porn and stick to the relevant points of the topic. Travissmith, you're new here so I'll cut you some slack. Please read our babble policy,  a policy you agreed to when you requested an account with rabble.ca. This is a progressive site, so sentiments that echo those of paranoid anti-government white militia gun fetishists are not welcome here.  Lots of other places on the Internet where you can indulge, but not here.

NDPP

[quote=travissmith]

I don’t represent any culture but I’d only have full faith in the same men who liberated my Haifa.

 

[quote=NDPP]

Which men 'liberated' your Haifa from whom?

Ken Burch

NDPP]</p> <p>[quote=travissmith]</p> <p>I don’t represent any culture but I’d only have full faith in the same men who liberated my Haifa.</p> <p> </p> <p>[quote=NDPP wrote:

Which men 'liberated' your Haifa from whom?

It was a reference to the Great War, when Sikh troops took Haifa for the Entente(they were part of the British forces), putting the city under British military control as opposed to its previous status as part of the rapidly-collapsing Ottoman Empire.  "travis" characterized this as liberation-it could also be taken as simply representing the transfer of that city from one empire to another.

Sikhs played no significant role in the Arab/Zionist conflict of 1947-48.

You weren't the only one who was wondering what the hell "travis" was talking about there.

 

Hurtin Albertan

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-government-gun-control-friday-1.5549969

Doubleplusgood!!   Looks like 11 more guns innocent of any crime and likely rarely used in any crime will be added to the big bad Prohibited list.  I for one would like to thank Big Brother and all those hardworking comrades at the Ministry of Love for reducing Canadian gun crime by 73%!!!

Paladin1

Hurtin Albertan wrote:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-government-gun-control-friday-1.5549969

Doubleplusgood!!   Looks like 11 more guns innocent of any crime and likely rarely used in any crime will be added to the big bad Prohibited list.  I for one would like to thank Big Brother and all those hardworking comrades at the Ministry of Love for reducing Canadian gun crime by 73%!!!

I wonder how many lives would have been saved in Nova Scotia if police would have put a warning out sooner. Better ban X types of firearms to make it look like we're doing something.

 

Hurtin Albertan

And I suppose it never hurts to help firm up that Liberal vote out east, it`ll probably help Trudeau next time in Quebec.

Interestingly enough, it looks like the Mini-14 is finally getting some restrictions placed on it after 31 years of not being used in a mass shooting anywhere on the planet.  

They must be losing their shit over on gunnutz.

eastnoireast

Hand guns are made for killin',
they ain't no good for nothin' else.
And if you like to drink your whiskey
you might even shoot yourself.
So why don't we dump 'em people
to the bottom of the sea
before some ol' fool come around here,
wanna shoot either you or me.

lynyrd skynyrd, saturday night special

Paladin1

Resounding victory as 1500 models and variants of firearms are now banned for legal use.

These guns are absolutely not used for hunting!  (except for indigenous people who might use them for hunting, and other select individuals who use them for hunting, but really they're not for hunting.  But they can keep them for 2 years or longer)

The guns are absolutely too dangerous to be kept in civilian hands. People in possession of them have 2 years to decide to destroy them, turn them in for cash, deactivate them and keep them or maybe be grandfathered and just keep the fully functional assault weapons in their basement until they die (where they could be stolen?). As I said, too dangerous to own.

Many guns no one has really heard of , strange variants or ones people agree no one even owns, are banned.

Not banned is the SKS rifle. A semi-automatic gun (a military weapon which the AK47 replaced, still in use in many militaries). The SKS was used in the 3 BC murders by 2 young men last year, Canadian Forces veteran who killed his wife and daughter, and a handful of other shootings. The $250 gun remains available at places like Canadian Tire.

Also not banned, the semi-automatic version of the Israel Army Assault rifle. I wonder what that's about.

(edited spelling)

Ken Burch

Paladin1 wrote:

Resounding victory as 1500 models and variants of firearms are now banned for legal use.

These guns are absolutely not used for hunting!  (except for indigenous people who might use them for hunting, and other select individuals who use them for hunting, but really they're not for hunting.  But hey can keep them for 2 years or longer)

The guns are absolutely too dangerous to be kept in civilian hands. People in possession of them have 2 years to decide to destroy them, turn them in for cash, deactivate them and keep them or maybe be grandfathered and just keep the fully functional assault weapons in their basement until they die (where they could be stolen?). As I said, too dangerous to own.

Many guns no one has really heard of , strange varients or ones people agree no one even owns, are banned.

Not banned is the SKS rifle. A semi-automatic gun (a military weapon which AK47 replaced, still un ise in many militaries). The SKS was used in the 3 BC murders by 2 young men last year, Canadian Forces veteran who killed his wife and daughter, and a handful of other shootings. The $250 gun remains available at places like Canadian Tire.

Also not banned, the semi-automatic version of the Israel Army Assault rifle. I wonder what that's about.

 

Ask NDPP.  He'll tell you.   And tell you.   And tell you.  And....

eastnoireast

https://nationalpost.com/news/n-s-mass-murder-shows-the-public-theat-of-...

A recent report also indicates that in more than half of U.S. mass shootings between 2009 and 2018, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member

Nova Scotia mass murder 'catalyst' highlights an 'eerily familiar' threat of domestic violence, experts say

Before blazing a trail of carnage across Nova Scotia, the man behind one of Canada’s worst mass killings attacked his longtime girlfriend — a story domestic violence experts say is eerily familiar.

“It’s not just an issue of violence against women. It usually suggests a much broader pattern of concern about the perpetrator.”

More than 99,000 Canadians aged 15 to 89 were victims of intimate partner violence in 2018, representing nearly a third of violent crimes reported to police, according to Statistics Canada.

The agency also recorded 945 intimate partner homicides between 2008 and 2018, nearly 80 per cent involving female victims.

Paladin1

The rate of firearms homicide by licensed individuals (analysing data from 1997 to 2010) was 0.60 per 100,000 compared to an average national homicide rate of 1.85 per 100,000.

Firearm licensed individuals are 1/3 less likely to commit murder than an average Canadian.

Using evidence based science, Hurtin Albertin and I are the least likely on this forum to commit murder.

For curiosity sake let me find some stats on domestic violence.

Misfit Misfit's picture

Paladin1 wrote:

I see we jumped to "more gun control!" before the bodies were counted.

NorthReport wrote:

Tighter gun controls are the best tribute to Nova Scotia's victims

https://www.straight.com/news/tim-louis-tighter-gun-controls-are-best-tribute-to-nova-scotias-victims

Are they?

The shooter did not have a gun licence and obtained the rifle and shotgun he used illegally. It's looking like from the US.

The "Canadian" pistol that he obtained appears to be from the dead RCMP officer.

Please eplain how tighter Canadian gun controls would have prevented the shooter from using illegally obtained firearms from the US and stealing a police officers handgun.

 

People who commit crimes don't use registered guns. They use a gun that is not going to have a serial number that can be traced back to them. They don't want finger prints, a serial number or anything that can link them to their crime. They use illegally smuggled in black market firearms instead, ones that directly circumvent the legal process.

When I was little in the early 1970s, my uncle had a hand gun that was registered to him. He could not carry it across the road from his farm yard to another part of his property because it was illegal in Canada to carry a hand gun even for a brief few seconds on a grid road which is considered to be public property. 

Before the massacre at L' Ecole Polytechnique in 1989, Canada already had very strict gun laws. All they had to do was crack down harder with the existing laws that were already in place.

Governments enact gun control laws for the optics. It creates the impression that they are cracking down on crime and making it safer for us when they really are not. They are just cheap theatrics that they use to boost their popularity in the polls which end up doing nothing to reduce gun related violence.
 

Take, for instance, teenage kids in large urban centres who carry hand guns to school, they have black market guns that have been smuggled in from the United States. These kids also don't have the necessary safety training and screening that regular Canadians must have in order to gain a licence to operate and own a firearm. They don't want anyone to know that they have a gun, and it is these people who intend to use their guns for illegal reasons who are your main concern, but the laws do not curb this kind of possession just like drug crime laws have never stopped people from getting heroin in this country.

These gun control laws give governments the opportunity to say that they have done something to tackle gun related violence during elections but in reality provide very little benefit to the public in reducing actual crime.

Paladin1

Also not on the banned list, the semi-automatic version of the Chinese Army assault rifle. I can still buy one at my favorite gas station.

I see a firearms petition going around has 82,000 signatures in just over 24 hours. I don't think Trudeaus "4 out of 5 Canadians" lie is going to go very far.

Bill Blair is doing some hard core back pedaling after lawyers reviewing the OIC are saying it appears the wording means that many hunting shotguns will be banned too.

So some hunters can keep their semi-automatic assault weapons for hunting while hunters with hunting guns that weren't a threat (apparently) appear to fall on the banned list. Ouch.

MegB

Why is this still about guns and not about misogynistic lunatics who kill en masse because they hate women? Why? Please, I'd like to know.

Paladin1

Moving threads

eastnoireast

Paladin1 wrote:

The Prime Minister made the April 18/19 attack about guns and not women.

 

as did the this thread title, originally.  

i see that misfit has just opened a spankin' new gun ban thread, so howsabout that's where gun stuff gets talked about now, not here.

Paladin1

eastnoireast wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

The Prime Minister made the April 18/19 attack about guns and not women.

 

as did the this thread title, originally.  

i see that misfit has just opened a spankin' new gun ban thread, so howsabout that's where gun stuff gets talked about now, not here.

Hi Eastnoireast

It wil be interesting to see a thread about a mass shooting, mysogony and gun violence not discuss guns but lets see where it goes. I'll move my response to Meg for you ;)

NorthReport

‘Pandemic of violence’: Calls mount for recognition of misogyny in Nova Scotia shooting

https://globalnews.ca/news/6868709/nova-scotia-mass-shooting-femicide/

NorthReport

A group of Nova Scotian feminist activists wrote a response to the lack of feminist analysis and the failure to name the shooter's actions as misogynist violence. Please share.

https://twitter.com/johannamayblack/status/1253735799247572997

kropotkin1951

I would have applauded Trudeau if he had used this occasion to do something positive, instead he chose t posture as a feminist.  He could have announced a roll out of an abuse hotline like 911 and a program to use unused hotel space as transition houses for the women having to flee their homes during the pandemic.

kropotkin1951

This article highlights that the RCMP is a big part of the problem. If what this women says is correct then this mass murder should never have taken place. I think she should have told the RCMP he was planning a blockade of an oil facility and had illegal weapons. It would likely have got their attention unlike domestic abuse or murdered and mising women.

t began, Boe said, around 2004, not long after GW bought a house in Portapique.

They weren’t even in that house for a year when [GW’s partner] ran over to my house one day saying that Gabriel was beating her up and she was scared. She wanted to hide somewhere because he had blocked her car with his truck so she couldn’t get out. But she managed to get away from the house.

Boe said she told GW’s partner that she needed to get help, that there were “a lot of services” and “a lot of places” that would keep her safe. Boe said she was unable to convince her, because, according to Boe, GW’s partner said that there was no way, because he was going to kill her.

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/he-was-a-psychopath/

MegB

Paladin1 wrote:

eastnoireast wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

The Prime Minister made the April 18/19 attack about guns and not women.

 

as did the this thread title, originally.  

i see that misfit has just opened a spankin' new gun ban thread, so howsabout that's where gun stuff gets talked about now, not here.

Hi Eastnoireast

It wil be interesting to see a thread about a mass shooting, mysogony and gun violence not discuss guns but lets see where it goes. I'll move my response to Meg for you ;)

My apologies for being late to respond. Compartmentalizing the elements of a complex issue doesn't really lead to nuanced discussion. How about a discussion that balances misogyny and mass shooting (which covers gun violence). It's not that a conversation about guns is bad, it just needs to  be balanced against the importance of discussing men killing women.

Misfit Misfit's picture

CBC Radio's As It Happens interviewed a woman who once lived in the house next door that he burner down. She claims that she was forced to sell the house and move because of his violence. She went to the RCMP about him and they did nothing.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5567781

 

This is her interview with Carol Off

 

She told the RCMP that he had illegal firearms. They did nothing.

NDPP

Like so many bad things no surprise to find out most of the murderous firepower the killer used came from Amerikkka.

Paladin1

NDPP wrote:

Like so many bad things no surprise to find out most of the murderous firepower the killer used came from Amerikkka.

Nor is it a surprise.

It's too bad we're consumed by irrelative information like what kind of gun he used and not why didn't the police act on credible complaints sooner.

And how are police uniforms and vehicles available to the public?

NDPP

I have previously commented on those aspects also.

Misfit Misfit's picture

I read a book called Defending Battered Women on Trial by Elizabeth Sheehy. In the book she devotes an entire chapter to the failure of our police and legal system in protecting women who are trying to flee violence at home.
 

She uses the case of Bonnie Moody to prove her point. She was a woman who was assured by the police that if she charged her boyfriend with assault that she would be guaranteed protection. 

He was charged with assault and sentenced to three weeks in jail. She received a restraining order against him. While she was in the hospital he entered her room and got through to her by using some other person's name as his own. She dotted all her "i's", she crossed all her "t's". She persistently went to the police for help. They failed her at every turn.

He ended up shooting her female best friend and shooting the arm off her six year old daughter before taking his own life as her final punishment for leaving him.

According to the book, women who have children and have had to change their identity can be easily tracked down because their children are in the school system. Either their children receive no education and suffer because of reduced future opportunities or the women suffer because men are given liberty to terrorize women with little societal deterrence.

This is why I am angry with Trudeau's order in council. It was a cheap optical stunt to avoid having to tackle the deeper and more pervasive issues that women have very little protection and few options who need to safely flee violent men in their lives.

And it is like the men who drink or consume recreational drugs and then assault. In the Supreme Court decision of Daviault, severely intoxicated men have been granted constitutional rights to be held criminally not responsible for their actions when they assault while severely intoxicated. The Liberal government with Allan Rock as the Minister of Justice back in the 1990s, quickly enacted a section in the criminal code which made assaulting while intoxicated a criminal offence due to the public outrage at the Supreme Court decision. They knew that it would not stand up to constitutional scrutiny but they enacted the law anyway in order to make it look like they did something.
 

Now, today, we have men who are assaulting while intoxicated and some are being acquitted because of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that overlooked the reality that women should have a constitutional right not to be assaulted by intoxicated men. And Elizabeth Sheehy has shown that some judges are not properly educated on properly maintaining the Supreme Court's standards and are letting some men off the hook for assault when stricter standards should have been in place to determine extreme intoxication.

In an excerpt from her here on pages 603-5, she refers to a Stephen Allan Compton who was acquitted of sexual assault where the court records did not indicate that any outside professional testimony was called upon to prove that he met the threshold which was legally required to establish lack of responsibility for his actions.

In an Alberta case R vs Blair, Sheehy writes to the that the judge assessed a  lack of responsibility of the accused's part due to a two day drinking binge. The Supreme Court ruling of Daviault placed a burden of the balance of probabilities on the accused to prove the very high threshold was met by bringing in collaborative evidence like blood alcohol test results and qualified expert testimony to justify the argument of extreme intoxication. A judges own assessment based on a two day drinking binge would not sstisfy that legal requirement. 

I want to know how to fix laws that stick, that don't intentionally violate the constitution and actually does something that takes violence seriously?

I am sick and tired of cheap political theatrics.

kropotkin1951

Good post Misfit. Our "justice" system is like society as a whole. It is full of people in positions of power who are misogynist and they need to be removed.  We need a cultural shift and Trudeau shifting the dialogue to gun control was not helpful in promoting that discussion. I do admit that I cannot listen to the man anymore. When he opens his mouth all I hear is hypocrisy, dripping from his every word.

Misfit Misfit's picture

I made an error in post 96. Her name was Bonnie Mooney. It was her twelve year old daughter who had her arm nearly shot off.

Elizabeth Sheehy in her book, Defending Battered Women on Trial, talks about how Mooney tried to sue the police and the federal and provincial Attorneys General who are responsible for the police. All but one of her attempts to hold them responsible for their alleged negligence were unsuccessful. The lawyer for the police and the Attorney General suggested that she was responsible for the violence because she didn't leave. He also argued that her boyfriend was a psychopath and therefore fell outside the norm of what is considered normal for men. Therefore his actions fell outside the scope of the police department. Pp 56-7.

Sheehy states that these two arguments "work together to insulate the police, lawyers, judges from legal responsibility for failing to protect women and to encourage us all, collectively, to look the other way..." p. 59.

She also writes, "Ann Jones argues that the question why a woman does not leave 'is not a real question but rather a judgment.' It transforms an immense social problem into a personal transaction and implies that 'help is available to worthy victims.'" p. 60.

Elizabeth Sheehy pointed out that Bonney Mooney was blamed for not leaving even though she actually did leave. It was the direct result of her leaving Kruska that he commuted his violent murder suicide rampage. Despite her many attempts to formally hold people in positions of authority accountable for failing to protect them  she ultimately failed to convince anyone that it was their job to prevent a man from being brutally violent.

The message of the rest of the book is, when the police do fail women who need help and women do kill, the police seem to automatically charge them with first degree murder. They fail to acknowledge the extreme torture these women endured and they fail to see any hint of self-defence or justifiable homicide in their actions. Converseley, men who kill their woman partners are often charged with a lesser sentence like second degree murder. It is as though police officers, many of whom are men, perceive the murder of women as being less a murder than the murder of a man. 

One such example that I am familiar with was a young woman who was killed by her fiancé in Saskatchewan. She was from my home town. People close to the father of the woman knew that she had phoned him twice that day pleading with him to come and get her because he was going to kill her. He got a call later that night by the RCMP telling him  that her daughter had been killed. According to the testimony in court, she suffered blunt force trauma to the head. He rolled her body up in plastic. He placed her body in behind the furnace. He fled the scene and was arrested on a bus heading out of province.  According to another article, he had a prior conviction of assault causing bodily harm on a 23 month old child. Article. He was charged with second degree murder and pled guilty to manslaughter.

We clearly see that battered women have little formal protection. Thr police seem to ignore violence against them. They downplay acts of violence against women. They trivialize their deaths when they are murdered by their male partners. It is as though women are solely responsible for the abuse that men inflict on them.  They seem to forget that women are people.

pages 86-87, Sheehy writes:

"Sherri Lee Guy attempted to secure police aid in Ottawa in 1995 before her common law partner shot and killed her." 

"Brenda Moreside in Alberta made desperate 9-1-1 calls in 2005 when her ex tried to break into her home. The police refused to attend even though Stanley Miller had a record for serious violent offences including manslaughter, 'because he was breaking into his own home.' Moreside was found murdered in her home in High Prairie."

"Lucie Gelinas reported in 2001 to Laval police, Days before she was murdered and her three friends injured, that her ex-boyfriend Jocelyn Hotte, an RCMP officer, was stocking and threatening to kill her. Her complaint was 'unfounded' and no report was even filed by the officers whom she contacted."

"In Calgary in 2003, Belarus Feteke repeatedly contacted the police in fear to report that her former husband was threatening to kill her and her three-year-old son. Her complaints were characterized as a chronic nuisance and no action was taken. Mother and son were both murdered by the husband who then killed himself."

"Sheila Amero, Gayle Hull, and Wynn Russo survived deadly attacks by their former partners and initiated civil suits against the police for failing to respond appropriately to their calls for help in the face of grave danger."

Now, with Nova Scotia, we are hearing the very same thing.

1. He was a psychopath-an exceptional deviation from the norm.

2. Why didn't she just leave?

3. The RCMP were simply unable to do anything. This was beyond their scope and ability to intervene.

Beyond the shock of the rampage and the number of people that were killed, and the odd peculiar nature of the imitation police cruiser, etc., this is going to be considered an oddity and an exception to the norm. The RCMP will claim that nothing could have been done. Some band aid measures will be out in place that won't ever be enforceable, they will be just guidelines for the RCMP to follow which don't legally bind them to any wrongdoing in future failures to protect women from violence.

I don't expect to see any real social awareness about any real and meaningful institutional accountability to result from this.

MegB

My ex was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive and police refused to offer protection or even a deterrant (this was many years ago). He came to where I was staying with our infant daughter and backhanded me in the face with an ashtray as I was trying to feed her. I called the police. They said they could charge him with property damage (he put a fist through a window after I locked him out) but apparently assaulting a woman holding a newborn got a free pass - they refused to lay assault charges. Law enforcement and the legal system are both systemically misogynistic and so long as they remain so women will continue to be at the mercy of violent partners. It deeply saddens me that more than three decades after my experience nothing has changed.

Aristotleded24

"A man comes to work and shoots 15 co-workers. And what does every news reporter say? 'He just cracked and went berserk! He snapped!' I am here to tell you that never, ever, has happened. That is a process coming to that kind of violence that is as detectible as water coming to a boil"-Safety Consultant Gavin De Becker.

We've heard horror stories in this thread like those posted by Misfit and Meg. I'm seriously scratching my head about why these things continue to happen. A classmate of the 2 boys who shot 3 people before shooting themselves in Northern Manitoba last year said that they had been joking about killing since they were 13. Before the Ilsa Vista shooting in California, the shooter's parents and social worker called law enforcement but law enforcement didn't do anything.

We know the red flags, and we have increased surveillance of the population. How are these kinds of incidents still falling through the cracks and being allowed to happen?

kropotkin1951

Aristotleded24 wrote:

We know the red flags, and we have increased surveillance of the population. How are these kinds of incidents still falling through the cracks and being allowed to happen?

It is all about police training to begin with. Decades ago I took some courses in Crisis Intervention at the Justice Institute in BC which trains police and others in the justice professions and was not impressed with the whole feel of the place. The course itself was not as good as I had hoped and the atmosphere was not that inviting for many in the class. Then later one of the JI instructors who was teaching  courses to police in the proper use of force went drinking with some officer/students and beat up a paper delivery person for being brown and trying to ignore them.

The depth of the misogyny and racism in our justice system is unfathomable if one has not seen some aspect of it personally.

Pages