There was another firearm mass murder at a school this week. All too familiar. But this one was different on a number of counts. The elementary school was located in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a remote rural town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northeast of the Province. Mass shootings are much rarer north of the boarder due to tougher Canadian gun laws, mental health care available by the socialized health care system, less virulent political and social polarization, and a more peaceful culture. Yet nine people including the suspect were killed, and dozens more injured in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s history. A teacher, 39, and five students were found dead in the school—three girls, all of them 12, and two boys, ages 12 and 13.
Before the shooting at the school, a 39-year-old woman and an 11-year-old-child believed to be the mother and step-brother of the suspect, were killed at a home linked to the suspect.
That suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, identified as a woman, attended the school a decade ago, and had a history of mental crises and encounters with law enforcement. In any country, women are far less likely to become mass killers than men.
But wait, there’s more! Police reported “Jesse was born as a biological male who...approximately six years ago began to transition to female and identified as female both socially and publicly.” Transgender women are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators. In the U.S. will use the tragedy to “prove” that gender non-conforming folks are an inherit danger.
The shooter was armed with two firearms, a long gun and a modified handgun. Neither were registered to her or her family members. How she obtained them remains a mystery.
Canadians are shocked. Americans are nearly numb.
This entry appeared in this blog on February 14, 2018.
My Facebook news feed predictably erupted on Tuesday [2018] with the news of yet another grizzly mass school shooting. This one was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, home state of lax gun laws and Republican politicos on the NRA payroll.
Post gun massacre flow chart.
We have been through this kind of thing so often the responses were almost entirely predictable—horror and anguish followed by sputtering outrage and the lingering sense of hopelessness that when the last funerals and memorials are over the moment will pass, nothing will change, and we will slide back into numbness.
By this time all, most of my gun worshiping friends and kin have long ago picked up their marbles and stormed off my wall, banning me in return. So, I get mostly the echo chamber of the liberals, leftists, and folks who have a prejudice against having their children slaughtered. All the Usual Suspects. But I still have friends of friends and one or two stubborn holdouts, so I get a taste of the equally predictable other side many of whom seem to believe that they are the real victims in all of this. And there we are—America polarized again, glaring over self-constructed parapets at our enemies.
One post caught my eye—a meme created by Robby Ravenswood, a California ukulele player, piano pounder, singer, busker, and comic. It said plaintively, “So now America has two Valentine’s Day Massacres—AWFUL.” That struck a cord because it was also the 10th anniversary of a tragedy close to home—a shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb that left six dead including the shooter. That’s where my youngest daughter Maureen went to school a few years earlier and where many kids I know from McHenry County go. But the number of the dead was insufficient to make the shooting memorable outside our area. And that says legions about the pervasiveness of gun violence in America.
A target company made this perfect modern American Valentine's Day gift.
Anyway, I was moved to write.
Three Holes in the Valentine Heart
Chicago 1929
Toddlin’ Town rat-a-tat-tat,
just Jazz Age juice and justice,
Tommy guns talkin’
fedoras flying,
mugs massacred,
wanna-be eye doc,
grease monkey
garage gore gone.
“Only Capone kills like that.”
Cool beans!
Gangsters!
Northern Illinois University 2008
Gunman on campus!
Good-guy grad student
gone goofy
lecture hall lesson
in shot gun blasts
and Glock gotchas.
Campus cops closing in,
one last round
under the chin,
oblivion.
Twenty-three down,
sixteen shot,
five dead and,
oh yeah, the perp.
Is that all?
Piker! Ain’t no Virginia Tech!
hardly worth the weeping and wailing
all those vigils and candlelight!
And the NRA says all those pussy students
who didn’t pack their own heat
should have OK Corralled it.
Nothing to see here,
move along.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 2018
Crazy Cruz kid had issues,
gas mask, smoke grenades,
and a handy AK-47
extra magazines just in case.
Shoot, pull fire alarm.
spray death, kick in doors,
spray death, repeat.
Efficient.
Thoughts and prayers
out the wazoo today.
Blame tomorrow.
Not me, not us.
Unpreventable.
Look….a squirrel
or Stormy Danniel’s cleavage,
any damn thing…
—Patrick Murfin
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