I think it is about time to also mention the men who left the room so that the women could be killed. What kind of society have we created where men (or any other person) will leave a room knowing that those remaining will be killed?

I agree Maureen. Apathy is destroying our world.

I'm a little surprised to see such non-politically correct talk in the G&M.

That's interesting, Maureen. Would you have stayed behind to confront someone with a gun, knowing (as you imply) that all who stayed behind would be killed?

I recall a much more recent incident, on a bus, where everyone, of both sexes, scurried off the bus rather than confront a knife-wielding assailant. The chances of success in that situation were much, much higher.

Maureen, that is a difficult call. Personally I would not have left, but I am a pretty tough guy who has been in harrowing circumstances when I was in the RCMP. But I am trained in "conflict resolution" (which usually involved the effective use of either martial arts or a firearm). LOL

Those male students were largely just kids...It is distasteful that they would flee, but I find it hard to blame them personally. Situations like this happen so fast it would be virtually impossible for the males to organize a co-ordinated attack.

Well that is my take on it, anyway.

It is interesting how little has been divulged over the years about the prior interpersonal dynamics of the people who found themselves together in that classroom on the fatal day. Guess it would detract from "the message" of those who have taken political ownership of the tragedy.

I would argue why the "fight or flight" become just flight? I believe there is a cultural reality to why apathy is the considered the best course of action, knowing it is also the most cowardice.

We should treat the Montreal massacre as it was: a disturbed man from an abusive and clearly unsuitable home took his anger out on innocent people, period. To blame all men and insist on gun control is counter-productive and intellectually dishonest. All we've done with this day (as I initially suspected when it first happened) is give feminists a hobby-horse.
Just my thoughts.

At least it's being talked about in the MSM, as well as in the Blogosphere in a not foaming at the mouth fashion either.

Yep, it's a tough call to figure what to do. I guess that I'd like to think that I would have done something, but unless you were there at that exact moment, it's all By Guess and By God.

As someone, it might have been Mid Island Mike mentioned when I spoke of the restraint of the police officer that shot the guy that killed the 4 cops just recently, that he gave the guy a chance to give up. Mike correctly pointed out that it's all a matter of training.

Like I used to tell students, Train the way you will fight, because when you fight you will react the way you have trained.

Amen Pat...I cannot even count the number of times that conscious thought departed and training just kicked in. Training, I know for a fact, saved my life on a number of occasions.

Maureen...chivalry is dead and feminism killed it.

Lepine was wielding a Ruger Ranch rifle, a semi-auto rifle with a large capacity magazine. That all sounds pretty ominous until you realize a gun like that can only shoot in one direction at a time and even a semi-auto can't spray down everyone who charges. The thing is, it is very difficult to shoot even one person coming at you, let alone a few.

The real shame in Canada is that the government has regulated self-defense out of the public so much that even in an imminent danger situation most people will phone the police and wait the eight minutes for them to arrive. Even then, they won't endanger themselves to save you; the police sat outside l'Ecole for quite a long time before moving in. We have made the idea of self-defence repulsive to the masses so much so that it is even illegal to own a firearm for that purpose. We can legally own guns or pepper spray to defend against animals but not against the human-animals that prey upon us.

I was watching the SAR unit doing helicopter rescue at sea on the way over to Vancouver Island from Powell River and as I watched, some guy said "There's the Government wasting tax dollars" Well, by the time I got done with reaming him a new one he understood that I wanted those guys to be really, really good at what they do, as I might just be the guy in the water.

So I'm watching the CBC news about the Montreal massacre and a woman being interviewed about gun control claims that spousal homicides by firearms have dropped by 2/3rds since the legislation was introduced. She then goes on to say that the overall number of spousal homicides have remained the same, but gun related spousal homicides have decreased by 2/3rds. Victory!
What I'd like to know is how long did the cops wait outside before they stormed the building.

Well said,O. Kinyobe.

Dec.6 is also the date of the fall of Hong Kong,which saw hundreds killed and thousands captured to be abused in Japanese prison camps,where many more died.

It's also the date of the Halifax explosion in which over 2000 people died.

The "Montreal massacre" was a tragedy that should be put in perspective.

A person’s reaction in this case is just something you do, not think about. Most heroes look back at the risk they took and say boy was that stupid.

Sorry, Battle of Hong Kong started on Dec.8, eight hours after the Pearl Harbour incident.

My memory failed me.

Heh...Western Canadian...a couple of times I forgot to duck, and accordfingly got shot.. And on one occasion I let a guy with a hidden knife get within 6 feet of ne...less than two seconds, he had me...too little time to draw and shoot.

Each time in hospital all I could think of how stupid I was. Heh.

One learns over time.

Global news mentioned the anniversary of the shooting in Montreal, but were careful not to mention anything about what may have been cultural causes of the man's anger. I suppose in today's world it is normal for a child to take its mother's maiden name?

maureen:

you are a mere 13 angstrom units from blaming the victim with that crack.

can you irrefutably and definitively say with 100% certainty that lepine/gharbi would not have turned his weapon on the young men as supporters and sympathizers of 'feminists'? give THEM a concealed firearm and THEN make your prissy comment.

Maureen @9:02 - I'm not going to quote Steyn or Shaidle here on SDA because that just seems too incestuous and echo-chambery (if you know what I mean), but of course you are right.

Oh, all right, just a little online incest, it is the weekend after all: Shaidle once said (and I paraphrase) that while no individual knows how they would react in a nightmare situation until it actually happens, it is nevertheless true that there is a terrible societal failure in making cowardice the default position, and only bad things can come of it.

Can anyone honestly disagree?

Maureen wrote - I think it is about time to also mention the men who left the room so that the women could be killed.

Really - Maureen? They left the room so that "the women could be killed". You say that as if the men were complicit in the killing. Sure - maybe the conversation went this way "hey - les boys - allons Y pour que les femmes peuves se faire tuees" Hey guys - lets go so the women can get themselves killed."

I suspect you probably agree with the editorial that puts the blame squarely on the misogynistic society that is Canada.

a different bob - speaking for myself, I put the blame indirectly on the castrated society that is the Canada the media seems to think should have prevented the massacre in the first place.

I don't think Maureen is being prissy or anti-male in her assessment of the situation, the modern "metrosexual" male is not the same as what men were when it was okay to talk of women as the weaker sex and of man's necessity to protect them. If that's sexist, too bad, and georgie boy can live with it or not.

The less hostages the better, is what I think. So the men should have left.

I believe one of them committed suicide later because of his guilt feeling.

The coverage of this tragedy has been unending in Quebec today. And never any mention that some Liberals are also in favour of dropping the long-gun registry.

larben - you certainly are entitled to your opinions however my comments were directed at Maureen. I absolutely did not like the tone of her post. It made the men in this situation complicit in the killings.

Maureen needs to answer to this on her own.

This incident has been played to the hilt by the femmi-nazis over the last 20 years and frankly I'm sick of it! A tragedy, yes... But I, and the rest of my gender had FA to do with any involvement, and I wish everyone would stop with the associations.
This asshole acted on his own, with his own prejudices, hatred and inadequacies.
I'm proud to admit my absolute caring and respect for the 'fairer sex'[can I even say that in this day and age?], but my sympathies end when we're relentlessly pilloried for the actions of this nutbar.

Pat said "I guess that I'd like to think that I would have done something, but unless you were there at that exact moment, it's all By Guess and By God."

You're right Pat. These things don't unfold like you think they will when you imagine it in your head. When you're unarmed and a crazy guy is waving a gun around there's not much you can do. Probably nobody got within 10 feet of the shooter. It has nothing to do with courage if it's a suicidal move to rush him.

You can't blame the boys for leaving when they were ordered out. They probably didn't know he was going to kill them. Once the girls figured out they were going to be killed did they rush the shooter? Probably not. You can't blame them for that either.

You've got scared kids and a crazy gunmen. It's too bad they have tried to blame all Canadian men for this tragedy. It really cheapens the kids deaths and diverts the focus from the real villains.

Black Mamba - how about putting the blame on the asshole who committed the murders. Not evey person who gets abused by a parent or parents turn out to be mass murderers.

Every now and then one will go off the deep end and shit hits the fan. When it happens its big news and the media is all over it and everybody with a pen in his/her hand has their two cents worth to contribute as to why - why oh why did this happen.

Those who don't have a real clue will take the easy way out and throw enough shit at the blame wall that some of it is going to stick on someone.

Then, as if the gun were to blame, air heads are calling for a gun registry. Did that registry do anything in preventing the murderer in the most recent Montreal school shooting? No - not a damned thing. Yet even today the same tired calls are going out to the government from the same tired and clueless people who wanted the gun registry in the first place, to not scrap the registry.

The fact that the registry is a huge white elephant does not matter to these people. It gives them something to hang their hopelessness on. They really have no other solution to offer.

Is it that time of year again? I remember this Gharbi thing happening, although nobody reported his name as Gharbi. I also remember the candlelight vigils (which would have been appropriate except for the feminist garbage) and the 'all men are responsible' crap that went on. In fact there was a question on my high school english exam about this, which asked me to write about why all men are responsible. I probably would have done better on the exam if I could have stomached writing what the moron english instructor had wanted me to regurgitate.

perhaps Canada's first Muslim terrorist attack.

CanuckinMI - was the gender of yout teacher female or Liberal?

Was male, but I have to presume he was a huge liberal. Very few conservatives in the teacher's union.

"perhaps Canada's first Muslim terrorist attack."

In light of the Fort Hood murders, perhaps that would make sense.

After 20 years, some objective analysis of the killings in a MSM paper. The conventional femminist view that all Canadian men are responsible for Gharbi/Lepine is now being questioned. Commentators can't have it both ways: that Gharbi/Lepine represents all men, but that N. Hasan in Ft. Hood is a deranged killer representing only himself.

My better half's first reaction was 'if just one of those women/men would have had a gun and known how to use it - this would have been avoided or minimized'. It was a long time ago now and nobody can 'do over' that day. Like the Halifax Explosion (Trotsky was in that neighbourhood, that day...hummm) hindsight is always 100%.

The Prime Minister stopped to honor those who fought at Hong Kong. Just recently those men were recognized as WWII vets, with veteran's rights. Same for the Merchant Marines.

Amazing that the first post here tries to blame the men. If I remember correctly the Ft. Hood massacre was conducted in an army post where most of the victims, killed and injured, had military training. The only person to charge the gunman was a policewoman with a gun in her hand. Perhaps if someone in that room twenty years ago had been permitted to carry a concealed firearm the outcome would have been immensely different. When only the bad guys carry guns the outcome will always be horrific.

Sad...I well remember looking down the business end of a handgun many years ago.It was a totally unexpected shock in a totally unexpected situation where I was trying to help the perpetrator.
How I felt in that split second I can't recall...I only knew I had to do something and did by taking the initiative of wrestling the man for the gun.
No one else was immediately involved in the danger at this point...though my wife and kids were near enough to perhaps be in danger should I have fallen.
My lingering thought even sometimes to this day was/is one of violation.

My mind and focus became crystal clear at that instant of recognizing lethal danger and there was no doubt as to what I had to do,though I'm sure it was not a concious thought.

On looking back on this,I believe that I walked away from this experience with a better understanding of myself and certainly a wiser man as to the dangers that unexpectedly lurk out there in the so called netherworld of some other people's minds.

a different bob @11:13 - "how about putting the blame on the asshole who committed the murders"

Perhaps you'll notice that @10:41 I italicised "indirectly".

Every now and then one will go off the deep end and the shit hits the fan.... Those who don't have a real clue will take the easy way out and throw enough shit at the blame wall that some of it is going to stick on someone."

Now I absolutely agree that Lepine, half-Algerian as he was, was a random nut, an evil loser; his ethnicity and religion ("confirmed atheist") were no more significant than those of Dylan Klebold. Lepine doesn't really matter. We matter. The bullsh*t our media has been peddling in an orgy of sanctimony for two decades matters: The idea that this psychopathic lunatic was somehow emblematic of all men, of what they want to do to women. Because that line of thought leads directly to this: Take away all the guns and demand abject passivity.

Which is in fact the attitude that enabled Lepine.

Look, it's easy: This is about sane people applauding men (and women) who act like men - or even just "citizens", that works for me - and about deriding a culture which encourages men to act like sheep.

Now do you really think that constitutes, on my part, or (Antenor @11:58) anyone else's, blaming "the men" for the Montreal massacre?

And I wish just one student in that classroom had been carrying a concealed weapon.

Has anyone ever checked out the memorial to the deaths at the Polytechnical Institute in Thornton Park in Vancouver? It is as cold and impersonal and bloodless as the feminists who use it so effectively; it is almost perverse in its misuse and politicization as it is in its design. It is gross and totally unsuited to its location where it is the first thing seen by incoming tourists at the train and bus terminal.

When I went through university, which was around the same period as the massacre, every thing I read and saw on campus was anti-male, and often anti-white male. It was depressing at times I must admit, but I tried not to let it bother me too much.

Then along came this devil Lepine, and the anti-male sentiment only got 10X worse.

It was then that I realized that feminists had a deep-rooted hatred of men. They were not after equality, instead they wanted men to become irrelevant.

Unfortunately this relentless hammering by feminists and the politically correct class has affected society, and we are witnessing an interesting period where many young men are becoming sissies, with little drive or ambition.

The problem manifests itself in all sorts of ways. For example at my son's school two young boys were playfully wrestling outside during break and they got into serious trouble for it. Heaven forbid they should show any competitive drive or boyishness.

So whenever I hear about the massacre, while I feel terribly sorry for those killed, my mind quickly turns to the depressing fact that the event is repeatedly used each year to embolden the anti-male movement.

The real shame in Canada is that the government has regulated self-defense out of the public so much that even in an imminent danger situation most people will phone the police and wait the eight minutes for them to arrive.
~The Ra

The average police response time is over 20 minutes.

Maureen....14 women died that day.
Those women thought they were so equal to men that they were in engineering school, a traditionally male vocation.

Why didn't those 14 women rush Gamil Gharbi and save themselves?

"as cold and bloodless and impersonal as the feminists who use it..." - Larben

Hey look, more misogyny, the likes of which led to the tragedy in the first place! Yay!

"Those women thought they were so equal to men that they were in engineering school, a traditionally male vocation" - Oz

Yeah, they shouldn't have been there in the first place, right, Oz?

"Why didn't those 14 women rush Gamil Gharbi and save themselves?" - Oz

That's right - blame the victims!

Personally I believe that this silly debate about why all the 'hairy chested men didn't rush into rescue the damsel in distress as plain silly. There have been any number of psychological studies as to why people react the way they do on hostage situations. Why did the Jews not rush and kill the Nazis when they so vastly out numbered them in the internment camps etc etc etc. The only blame to go around rests solely with the guy behind the gun. It was not his parents' fault. It was not his religion's fault, it was not the lack of gun control's fault, it was not the victims' fault and it was not the classmate's of the victims fault. One evil, twisted, selfish little man decided that this was what he was going to do and did it.

Eh bien, je trouve l'histoire de Mr Lepine/Garbie difficille a comprendre. Mai ca n'me derange pas trope parc que cet n'ettai pas mes amis.

Phou!!
En tou cas, pas mon affaire, fini d'trouble.

That would about sum up the QUEBEC male students attitude. Anyone for another Fwench PM?

Hey look, more misogyny, the likes of which led to the tragedy in the first place! Yay!
~bleep

So, you're a misandrist then like Maureen, eh bleep.

Yeah, they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
~bleep

What a dispicable thing to say bleep, you hate women too?!
Otherwise why would you say such a thing?

Do all you commies think that way?

The fact Lepine was born Gamil Gharbi was noted in the aftermath of the tragedy, so it isn't news. And frankly it isn't relevant either. What's relevant is that he was an abused child. I strongly doubt he would have done this had he been raised in a normal loving home. I presume abusive parents can arise under any religion.

Also, the fact he targeted women is another marginal aspect; that he wanted to kill a bunch of people is by far the most important issue.

What disgusts me about this whole event is how it was used as the excuse to pass bill C68 and create a vast number of paper criminals in Canada which did absolutely nothing to prevent a future occurrence of a repeat mass killing of strangers and actually made it more probable. One interesting statistic in Lott's? study of multiple homicides in the US was that they were statistically much more likely to occur in a state where concealed carry is prohibited. Having appropriately trained citizens in large numbers carrying concealed firearms is the best way of preventing another Gharbi from racking up an even higher body count.

I don't think that anyone can predict how they're going to react in a situation like that until they've been there. My guess is that probably none of the men there had any martial arts training and the chances are that none of them had been in a fight before that day.

When I grew up school fights were common and ignored by the teachers. It was left up to us to settle our differences. I was into kickboxing as a university student and we spent many hours hashing out various scenarios of how best to respond if one was attacked in various situations. Knowing my state of mind at that time, if I'd been in that situation and behind Gharbi or close to him I would have gone for him if I felt I could take him; one of the things about youth is that you feel invulnerable. If I'd been too far away to take him I would have run and then tried to surprise him once I thought safe.

One of the exercises we used to do was to go into a room and look around for anything what could be used as a weapon and what we'd use if we had to fight from the position we happened to be in. Surely in a classroom there are chairs, heavy books, coffee mugs, tables and all manner of objects which can be lethal if one has done mental scenarios of this type of situation before being involved in it. I should also note that for the last 40+ years I've never been without a couple of knives on my person (unless I'm in that ultimate "gun free zone" past airport security and in the air where I feel most defenseless) and we also did lots of exercises to see how fast one could draw a folding knife out of a pocket and unfold it with one hand as well as throwing knives at random targets. For a while I was good at knife throwing but have gotten out of practice. I make sure that my wife has a can of mace or pepper spray in her purse at all times and that she practices getting it out on short notice to see how long it takes.

For someone that has no martial arts experience, they haven't the slightest idea what to do when confronted by a gunman. Unless you've had intimate experience with physical violence (which is getting less and less common in todays society) there isn't any point in trying to fight because if you have to think about what to do you're likely going to end up dead. As Bruce pointed out, training is essential so one can react quickly in a situation like this.

The situation in Montreal suggested to me that there was a serious deficiency in martial arts training in the general population and the the easiest way of preventing such a situation in the future would be to allow concealed carry of firearms. It would have taken just one shot from an armed student to have stopped Gharbi but the university was undoubtedly a "gun free zone" (AKA a target rich environment for those who have no intention of obeying laws).

I have nothing but contempt for the so-called feminists who use this anniversary to bash men every year. Not one of these feminists would have the guts to take on an attacker personally, but use the state to do their dirty work for them.

A bus driver in Edmonton was almost beaten to death by a drunken bum. The passengers did nothing.
If you ask me its to a certain extent the Police & security that have told us all for years to do nothing. That has been at least partly at fault. All to keep their jobs secure.
Where not allowed to defend ourselves. Where to immediately look for their help not our own when it could be critical.
As well any masculine traits have been so denigrated by Man Hating Women. That most males today are now forced drugged Ritalin in school. Hence the huge high school dropout rate, & lack of men going to University.
Men have had their testes ripped out, by fanatical female Utopians socialists.
JMO

Ah yes Norman. He still hasn't apologized for libeling me at The Shotgun.

Mark Steyn has been making the point about this guy's Muslim dad/name for 8 years. Thanks for coming out, Norm.

And yes, the men who did nothing were wimps. That only one of them killed himself in shame is telling. 100 years ago they all would have rushed the man without pause, or been humiliated as cowards for the rest of their lives. Songs would have been written about how cowardly they were.

Nobody used the expression "Well nobody knows what they'd do in X situation" in those days, because everybody did, or at least had had drummed into them the ideal scenario response since childhood.

That expression is of very recent vintage, and a convenient preemptive excuse for wimpiness. **** what "psychological studies show." More postmodern excuse making.

Bravery was the default setting. Now cowardice is, and we call people heroes who were just doing their job, like the cop at Fort Hood, because we're so shocked that someone would risk their life. Once upon a time, that was taken for granted, esp. where women's lives were concerned.

Touche, Kathy Shaidle.

RevnantDream: "As well any masculine traits have been so denigrated by Man Hating Women."

Yesterday morning at church, a young man held the door open for my sister and me. She turned to him and said thank you, mentioning that he was a gentleman, something she was very happy to see. He demurrred, so I simply said, Hey, it's OK to be a gentleman, really it is!

The young man seemed cowed and ashamed that we had complimented him on his gentlemanly behaviour. He must have been thinking that it wouldn't gain him any brownie points with his more loutish friends. On the other hand, what was he thinking? Why did he seem to be embarrassed?

Being passive and obeying the psychopaths with the weapons wasn't what the heros did on Sept. 11th.

nv53: your equality nonsense is just that. I grew up in a very different Canada, where public—and, generally, private—civility was very much the norm. E.g., The most impolite word heard—and not often—at my downtown, busy high school in a big city was “shut up”. There were no police officers in the halls and no high school massacres.

Apparently, according to you, the fact that this young man was the son of an abusive father from the Middle East, where misogyny is ingrained in the culture, a trait this man seems to have internalized and passed on to his son, has nothing to do with this tragedy. Shake your head to make room for some logical thinking!

batb,

"....brownie points with his more loutish friends". "Why did he seem to be embarrassed?"

You really don't know? Check with Shaidle. I'm sure she'll have the answer. Then we can all sleep better tonight.

The men in the situation did have a responsibility to stop it - as did the women - there were no tables, desks, chairs, books, pieces of chalk, purses, - the room was just completely empty - nothing that could have be aimed at the guy? My point is that we have allowed our society to become passive and wait for 'some official' to take charge - usually too late and with an inadequate response!

The MSM have made this into a feminist issue and men's hate towards women - I see it as an individual responsibility issue that extends to how we interact in our community. What if four or five or six people (men and/or women) said NO!! we will not allow you to this!

I'll give an example closer to home - the other day I was waiting at a red light in my car along with a male companion. A group of teenage boys were crossing at the light on their way back to school from lunch and a couple of them casually threw away the paper plate their were eating their slice of pizza from. I rolled down my window and yelled at them to pick up their trash and not be such pigs - you know what they did - THEY PICKED IT UP and took it to the public trash bin on the other side of the street. You know what the response of my male companion - I shouldn't have done that because it was embarrassing and the boys might have confronted us. Yes, the degree of threat was different, but the concept is the same. Stand up and be counted.

"Lepine was wielding a Ruger Ranch rifle, a semi-auto rifle with a large capacity magazine. That all sounds pretty ominous until you realize a gun like that can only shoot in one direction at a time and even a semi-auto can't spray down everyone who charges. The thing is, it is very difficult to shoot even one person coming at you, let alone a few."

Posted by Ra.

Too bad you are even wrong about that. Gharbi tried to modify his rifle to fire on auto. In the processm he screwed it up, and turned it into a single shot. After every round, he had to cycle the bolt by hand. That takes alot of time.

More than enough time to do somthing about Gharbi

An animal, once it is caught by a predator, just gives up. It freezes, resigned to its fate.
In nature you are either predator or prey.

"There is always an excuse for a lack of courage" - Albert Camus. I have confronted young men on the SkyTrain late at night, and although many threats were made, nothing physical actually happened. Usually by belittling them and wondering that their fathers must be proud of them (especially Hispanics) is enough to make them back off. It is always dangerous, and in every occasion there were bigger guys than myself present who looked out the window attempting to pretend nothing was happening. I once told 2 rather rough looking hulks to watch their language in front of the women and children, and though they told me to F**k off, they did quit swearing. Of course this may not be courage or even stubbornness, possibly it is stupidity on my part.

But Kathy you cannot blame the men per se, because feminism and political correctness created who they are today.

See my earlier post about boys getting into trouble at school for playfully wrestling.

When I was a young lad if you shook a man's hand you always gave him a firm handshake and looked at him in the eyes. I honestly cannot recall the last time a boy or young man has given me a firm handshake or looked at me when doing so. My nephew's handshake is so weak I feel like I'm shaking the hand of a corpse.

Young men today are indoctrinated not to have confidence or be competitive, and it is in large part thanks to the relentless hammering by feminists, and the implementation of endless anti-male policies in schools.

Worse, many yuppie parents happily go along with it.

batb: "On the other hand, what was he thinking? Why did he seem to be embarrassed?"

He was extending a courtesy - he was expecting at most a "thank you" or a nod to which he could have replied with a "you're welcome" or a nod. He wasn't prepared for a conversation, he didn't want one, and he saw no need to have one.

Try this some time - at the dinner table start gushing over someone because they passed you the potatoes.

what I thought strange was the parade of feminists loudly "beating on" drums.

I thought they could go for a kinder gentler symbol - maybe hug a seal pup.

CFRA Polls.

"On the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, family members of the victims and other gun control advocates said it was shocking that the government was abolishing the gun registry. They point to statistics that show the number of spousal homicides involving firearms has dropped dramatically.

1. They are right that the gun registry was working and it's an insult to the memory of the victims that it's being abolished
8.56%

2. While I have sympathy for the victims' family members, the gun registry was a waste of resources and hasn't accomplished anything
89.9%
3. Other
1.50%"
http://www.cfra.com/

Good one 'cal2'

Thanks, cal2, for the advice.

I'll pass it on to my sister.

It saddens me to hear people condemn the men as cowards. For those who are, unless they have been in such a situation themselves, they should not speak.

Also, when the men were being separated from the women, many of them believed at first, that the women were being spared...and THEY were to be the target of Lepine's warped anger.

I would imagine by the time reality kicked in...such a chaotic atmosphere would not allow all the wisdom of afterthought. I also imagine, this all happened at the speed of blur.

Okay, I'll say it again ... and again ... and again.

When Judeo-Christian values were the default in Canada -- until fairly recently, until Pierre Elliott Trudeau's championing of radical feminism, his party's dumbing down/skankization of our social standards, and their strident social engineering programs designed to empty homes of the civilizing influence of full-time moms -- men weren't afraid to be men and women weren't afraid to be women.

Our society, until Trudeau's Tyranny trampled it, had no problem accepting the naturalness of what we saw every day with our own two eyes: "boys will be boys" and, by extension, "girls will be girls." No one ridiculed a girl who played with dolls or tried to make her play with a PlaySkool carpenter's tool set; no one dressed a boy in pink or expected him to play with dolls.

We have feminized boys to death, and I see it in the classroom and playground every day. I often apologize to young boys who are rough housing, TJ, but point out that the rule is "hands and feet to yourself." If I didn't enforce this rule and something got out of hand, I would be held responsible by the admin and the parents. I tell them to wrestle off school property after school or at home.

What we have bred in Canada with the feminization of our society and the I'm-not-to-blame-it's-not-my-fault-it's-his/hers, is a bunch of wimps, male and female -- and, most important, we have no set of mores or values, except the lie of "equal rights," to pull on to get us out of our moral morass. The majority of us USED to have moral and ethical values based on the Scriptures from which we fundamentally understood that I AM my brother's/sister's keeper, that I AM responsible for my behaviour and that I AM accountable if another person is in trouble and I decide to do nothing to help them. In fact, we had a word for this type of cowardly inaction -- and still do if we are practising Christians. It's called sin, but we seem to have chucked that concept, too.

We also understood the story, the moral of the story, of living sacrificial lives. You couldn't go to church week in, week out, without having the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ seep into your pores, psyche, conscience, by osmosis. The idea of sacrificial living was a reality for a majority of Canadians until it all started to unravel in the '60s with, BTW, increasing ridicule and contempt of and scorn for Judeo-Christian values, and those who still hold to them, in all of our public institutions.

We shouldn't be at all dismayed that we are now living in an ethical wasteland and that many Canadians are moral pygmies, especially when most Canadians now seem to worship at the alter of secular humanism which stresses no G*d and every person for themself as they pursue material success and excess.

The moral cowardice and pass-the-buck mentality we're seeing now is nothing other than the logical consequence of having trashed the faith of our forefathers and mothers, a fact that too many Canadians don't want to deal with.

If you don't correctly diagnose the illness, the patient gets sicker and dies. If you don't diagnose the cause of the moral and ethical degradation of our society, then it's a steady slide down the slippery slope.

cal2, re my post at 12:40: Sorry. That comment should have been directed to ∞².

All of that may be true...well most of it at least. But I maintain, calling a person who is staring down the barrel of a shotgun a coward, should only be done by those who have confronted it and who have lived to tell.

It's all so easy to assess, while your blood isn't racing to your head, your heart isn't beating up in your neck and panic isn't reaching into the limbs that support you. But while a person is IN IT...all kinds of common sense could likely go out the window. And if you believe that has anything to do with feminism, then I think your theory has a few flaws.

No shortage of arm chair warriors on this subject.Ten years of para leaves me wondering{hoping}that I would react heroically,but who's to say without a crystal ball at hand.I do agree with the sentiment that Trudeau was responsible for the pansification of the average Canadian male,damned Liberals.

Wait a sec... For all those people, benefiting from 20 years' hindsight, blaming the boys in that classroom...

If a gunman comes into your place of work and says, "I want the women to stay in the room and I want the men outside," in the heat of the moment, I don't know about you, but I'd assume THE MEN are the ones about to get shot.

That's what usually happens when you seperate men from the women and children, right? Whether it's a rescue operation or an attack of some kind, Women and children tend to get a break before the men do.

And that's apparently what went through some of these guys' minds: The gunman's going to spare the women and start shooting us.

Only that never happened. Sadly, as it turns out, the guy was even sicker and angrier than they'd imagined.

One of those men wound up committing suicide months later. Then one of his parents did.

All this to say, I don't think it's fair, 20 years later, to say, "Here's what I would've done in their shoes." Because you weren't there -- and you weren't in their shoes when, at the age of 19 or 20, they were given a split-second to make a life-or-death decision, under the barrel of a gun and not knowing what the killer had in mind.

batb, I love it when you get angry! Well said!

Kathy Shaidle is correct, cowardice has become the default position. I won't comment on Lepine,enough has been said,and while I have my fantasies about what I would have done in that classroom, they ARE strictly fantasies.

Regarding the subject of default cowardice; we had an incident here on the West Coast a few years ago where a fishing boat, the Cap Rouge, overturned and four people were trapped inside.The vessel was upside down on the surface of Georgia Strait.

Coast Guard rescue personnel were on site in a very short time,and on board were two well trained S & R scuba divers.

They made no attempt to go down into the boat to try and free any survivors,and waited until further help came. When they DID go down, all persons in the capsized boat were dead.

I turns out that the reason the S&R scuba divers did not go down is that there is a Federal regulation that requires THREE scuba divers in a rescue situation.

At the inquest it was determined the people in the upturned boat had lived in an air pocket for about thirty minutes,plenty of time for the TWO S&R men to have attempted a rescue. BUT,that Regulation called for THREE men, not two.

When the story was reported on the local CTV station, newsreader Tony Parsons looked embarrassed as he read,"the two divers were prevented form going down by a Federal regulation requiring three divers in rescue situations".

I watched Parsons on later broadcasts as the story continued for days. Each time he repeated that phrase,he seemed to become more comfortable with it, and soon there was no sign of any embarrassment at all.

One of the S&R techs CTV interviewed almost cried on camera as he said,"I have nightmares about this",regarding the then new evidence that the victims had still been alive while he and his partner stood on the hull above them,prevented from going down by a Federal Regulation.

One of the S&R senior officers lamely said that it was dangerous down there and they did the right thing,but he didn't sound very convincing.

That story, more than anything I've heard, convinced me that as Kathy says,"cowardice is the new default position".

I was so upset I wrote a letter to the editor of the Province,and to their credit,they printed it in whole, no editing.

B.C. had commemorated WW 2 Victoria Cross awardee Ernest "Smoky" Smith at about the same time of the Cap Rouge incident. Smoky's uncommon courage and valour was lauded by all who spoke at the ceremony,as it should have been.

When I wrote the letter to the paper, the difference in the generations came home to me loud and clear. Smoky's generation lived through a Depression, and fought a war. Courage,valour,caring for your fellow man was part of their makeup,their being. Smoky Smith was always quietly humble about "doing his duty".

I mentioned the difference in my letter,and ended with,"it's too bad there wasn't a Smoky Smith present on that terrible day".

I expected a flurry of letters refuting my point. There never was a reply. I think a lot of people came to the same realization at the same time,that cowardice had become the default position.

I do not blame the men although if when they walked out they were walking by the shooter and he was looking elsewhere.... that is an opportunity lost.

What I don't understand about these types of mass shootings is that the women (or people in general) just laid there on the floor (or stood in line) and politely waited their turn to be shot. How can people do that? In some cases, they waited as perpetrators reloaded!! You know that he is going to kill you all - why not at least take the opportunity to fight to live or at least save some of you? I'm afraid that I couldn't go like that. Fifth in a line-up of people waiting to get murdered. These are just thoughts because, as others have stated, you never know what you'll do in certain situations but I hope that if I was to be murdered, I would be murdered fighting tooth and nail for my life.

I also agree with some of the other comments here about society turning us into perpetual victims, unable and unwilling to defend ourselves. We are taught that the police will protect us but that is completely false. The police will never be in time to protect us. The police are there to find our killers after the fact. The whole justice system perpetrates this falsehood by charging people who attempt to protect themselves, their family, their fellow man, or their property from criminals. The criminals are the ones protected by our laws. Until this changes, we can look forward to more of these types of incidents. We need to empower people to defend themselves in my opinion.

Also, we must get rid of the "look the other way" syndrom otherwise known as "I didn't want to get involved." When someone needs your help, you need to stand with them. If everyone did this, the risk to everyone else would decrease exponentially. It used to be that you could count on the people around you to do the right thing but now, you can count on them likely running away. Thugs and criminal elements own us whether we realize it or not. Fear has paralized our population and we want others to take care of it because we don't want to do any heavy lifting or take any risks for the safety of our fellow man.

Larben, thank you for taking risk to yourself to stand up to those who deserve it. I hope that others can find the courage that you have to stand with you. My sister has taken the train at night and been accosted by men - someone stood up for her and was roughed up for his troubles but he wouldn't have been if everyone around would have stood together against these aweful men. Thank you again for helping others when it appears that no one else will bother. Shame on them.

Shaidle is the worst kind of coward. She hates Canada, she told everyone so. She hates Canada, but doesn't have the guts to leave. I used to date a woman that constantly spouted, much like Shaidle. It was nothing but hot air. She froze, like a sheep, at the first sign of trouble.

I've stepped into some situations that got me an ass kicking. I tried to stop a guy from running down skateboarders, with his truck(actually, I did stop him), and some bystanders grabbed me, and allowed the guy to kick me in the nuts. After 14 years, it still hurts, when I sit a certain way.

I broke up a knife fight, between two bikers, once. Talk about a surreal experience. I'd never do that again.

I stopped a guy from beating his wife, years back. I gave his wife and kids a ride home, and made sure he stayed away, til morning. That woman hated my guts after that. I never figured out why. Maybe she was embarassed, I'm not sure.

My older sister once stepped in front of me, when a pervert pointed a handgun at me. I was 4, she was 15. The idea that bravery is up to the male population is a total cop out.

Was it proven that those male students knew the women were about to be murdered? Separating them might have seemed like a way to advance his position in hostage negotiations. If professionals can misread hostage situations, it's quite possible that frightened hostages might do the same.

Okay, enough of this. Arguing about what should have been done is pointless. The result is, women have pushed gun control, to the point of no return. You can't disarm, and emasculate the male population, then expect us to ride in and save the day.

Hey, dmorris! :-)

Look, I'm not saying that I would be courageous and full of valour if I was in the situation those men were in, but one has to look at trends in order to make sense out of certain situations.

It is pretty amazing that a group of both men AND women didn't try to overpower this one madman. Twelve women dead as a result. It's hard to imagine that happening if the classroom had been inhabited by the generation of men who fought in WWII.

Those of us who are in the classroom every day see the dumbing down of both genders, the pansification of our males, and a total lack of accountability for one's actions, partly because it's not demanded.

I demand it in my classrooms and get little or no support from the milquetoast administrators who view parents as clients. It's troubling to see a critical mass of always shrugging, I-don't-know/it's-not-my-fault/amoral young people with the zombie look in their eyes. I'd hate to be in a room with them if I was threatened by a gun-toting madman, because I can't see them lifting a finger to help me or anyone else.

Confidence gives people courage, as stated by Bruce. People who are coddled and protected from all evil are as helpless as baby lambs when confronted with real danger. One big loud beller (from a man or woman) would have thrown the little coward with the gun off his guard "What the Hell is going on here?" would have stirred up some terror is his wee mind. The confidence behind that beller would be the statement: 'we can do something here' - to the fear paralyzed crowd; 'you are going to be hurt' - to the wee coward with the gun'.

It happened in the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish people fought back, with confidence, because their fear of dying was conquered with the realization that cowering and hoping it would all just go away, would end in certain death; fighting back would likely result in death but it would be an honorable death because the dead person TRIED to help himself - he/she decieded HOW he would LIVE and thus his fate was NOT determined by the enemy. That decision is the VICTORY that all free people embrace. We are all going to die - it is how we live that counts!

BRAVA, batb!

I fully concur with your thesis that the shunning of the Judeo-Christian foundation of this country—actually, of Western civilization—has EVERYTHING to do with the self-centredness and cowardice (which breeds low self-esteem and bullying on a grand scale) that we see everywhere these days.

CRU-Tape wouldn’t have happened 50 years ago: with the ANTI-Christian “anything goes, forget accountability and responsibility” ethos, which is now the default position of our crumbling, ANTI-Christian civilization, we’re going to see the self-referential, evil promotion of lies to gain power multiplied exponentially. (Think Obama and his Chicago thugs: ANTI-Christian societies are turning out Obama clones at an alarming rate.)

I notice that most of our sda fellow travellers ignore my and batb’s appeal to the Judeo-Christian dispensation. Interesting . . . (Islam is also ANTI-Christian. Look what its followers do and notice how our ANTI-Christian civilization seems to be moving to a lesser place as well. Interesting . . .)

Not once has the media ever said who Marc Lepine really was. What a stigma on the lepine name. Marc was born of a muslim father who abused his family. Why is this never mentioned in the media?

What a stigma on the lepine name. Marc was born of a muslim father who abused his family. Why is this never mentioned in the media?

Why does it need to be ? Marc himself was NOT a muslim.....so what difference does it make.

It would be highly unusual for them to mention those who committed crimes who were Christian. You have to have it both ways, or no way.

Oh please...It's shameful to make this about something it's not. Actually, it's appalling.

Marc Lepine was NOT muslim. He was baptized Roman Catholic, but lived his life as a confirmed atheist.

"Oh please" is correct. Now that I know that religion played no part in the actions of this "nutcase", I'll have to look elsewhere for the 'source of sanctimony' being displayed in most comments.

"Osumashi Kinyobe": another succinct comment (Dec 6th 9:22am), as we've come to expect from you. Good to hear from you again.

"Infinity squared": correct with your Dec 7th 11:26am comment.

Annie: "It would be highly unusual for them to mention those who committed crimes who were Christian."

'Not highly unusual at all. The media had a hay day pointing out that Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma Bomber) was a Christian and that Vince Li (who beheaded Tim McLean on a bus and cannibalized him), went to an evangelical Christian Church. In Li's case, he was a recent convert to Christianity -- where it looks as though the church personnel were trying to help this, obviously, troubled recent immigrant from China, but the MSM made a big deal of this connection.

I'm not sure what media you're tuned into, but you've obviously missed their bias. I agree with you that there shouldn't be an emphasis on someone's religion/culture in only some cases but not in others. Somehow, however, that "courtesy" is not extended to deranged individuals who have any connection with a Christian denomination.

Annie, Gamil Garbi, which is Marc Lepine's real name, and his family were brutalized and then abandoned by a Muslim father. What don't you get about this having something to do with Islam and its appalling record re the dignity of women?

P.S. Whether Garbi was Muslim or not is entirely beside the point.

That's true batb...not unheard of for religion to be mentioned. But I think there is a different spin when the religions in play are Christianity or Islam. When a psycho who commits a heinous crime is Christian...the tone reads....'I don't understand...how could he have done this'. Whereas when a psycho who commits a crime is Islam...the tone is....'well there you go...there's your answer'.

Sometimes crazy is just crazy...and it comes in all colours and creeds.

And of course Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian, but rather came out of a Christian background. Like Hitler. Or Stalin.

Of course, if you regard those two as Christians, then just ignore me. I'm not talking to you anyway.

"What kind of society have we created where men (or any other person) will leave a room knowing that those remaining will be killed?"

Maureen

There is a clear difference between bravery and stupidity. Would you have stayed in the room?

Ditto what lookout said.

Annie: "When a psycho who commits a heinous crime is Christian...the tone reads....'I don't understand...how could he have done this'."

Again, I ask you, what media are you talking about? The tone is far from what you've said. The tone is, Hmmm, those crazy Christians; 'see what Christians do? They're jerks -- and worse, idiot psychopaths.

I suspect you're much younger than I am, and I also suspect that you're not a practising Christian, which is fine with me, except that if you're not a practising Christian, you wouldn't have much of an idea of how anti-Christian the MSM has become in the past 40 years, beginning in the late '60s, early '70s.

I'm old enough to remember a media that had respect for the Christian religion, even if individual journalists weren't believers or church goers. There was a recognition that Christians contributed to the good of society; now, the media usually shows contempt and scorn for Christianity, especially the Catholic variety.

batb...I wasn't specifically referring to the media.

I too am old enough to remember when there was integrity in the media...and all that was told was the facts. No editorializing, no showmanship, no 'desk chatter', no what ifs. Just the news. And if there ever was a time that the media showed a respect for the Christian religion, then that too carries its own bias.

Anyways....I get tired of hearing people sum up a situation by what their religious beliefs are. Indeed there are situations where it is pertinent...this wasn't one of them IMHO.

(I am not a Christian...raised Catholic...moved far away from that the minute I had the choice. I've practiced no faith for the last 45 years) ;)

Annie wrote, "But I think there is a different spin when the religions in play are Christianity or Islam. When a psycho who commits a heinous crime is Christian...the tone reads....'I don't understand...how could he have done this'. Whereas when a psycho who commits a crime is Islam...the tone is....'well there you go...there's your answer'."

When one considers that "Not all Muslims are terrorists but most terrorists are Muslim", why would you be surprised at the reaction you cite when we find that one more Muslim—not necessarily a psycho, but a man religiously trained to hate and eradicate the infidel (non Muslims)—has wreaked havoc on his (it's usually a male) fellow human beings?

With due respect, your naïveté strikes me as being rather Pollyanna-ish.

Showing respect, Annie, carries its own bias?

I sure as heck hope not.

Well if it's Pollyanna-ish to formulate my opinions based on what IS, rather than what it may seem...then I am happy to be Pollyanna-ish.

....and if it's naive to choose to not stereotype using a mere snippet of this NON-MUSLIM man's past to draw a conclusion on his psychosis...than naive is how I would prefer to remain.

Annie, there are dots to be connected. You choose not to do so.

Naive? I don't think so.

For Annie’s information:

In this morning's National Post, in an article by George Jonas, "What Jihadists Oppose Most":

“In an interview . . . Dr. Hamid Tawfik, a Cairo born physician who describes himself as a former jihadist, is asked why he came close to becoming a terrorist. . . ‘It was not poverty . . . it wasn’t lack of education. . . It was basically a religious form of teaching that instructs us to use violence with non-Muslims . . .’

“. . . in answer to the question of who is the ‘enemy’. . . Dr. Tawfik is unequivocal:

“’The West, but in particular, women’s rights. Women’s rights was the first enemy for us.’”

Annie, what do you not understand about this? The dots are all lined up: connect them.