MONTREAL MASSACRE – WE SHOULD REMEMBER

24 years ago today, December 6, 1989, 14 women were murdered simply because they were women.

Marc Lépine went into École Polytechnique in Montreal and targeted the female engineering students because he said they were feminists and he hated feminists.

We should remember not only the people that were murdered that day in the Montreal Massacre, but those wounded and targeted, as well as their families and friends.

I’m not really going to get into the gun aspect of this; anyone in their right mind knows that guns do kill people. As do grenades, knives, machetes, vehicles, etc. if they’re used for violence.

We spend a lot of time after tragedies mourning, assigning blame, asking what could have been done to prevent them, creating new laws (In Canada, there were many gun control measures discussed, brought forward and implemented. The long gun registry was established, which pleased law enforcement, the families of the victims, and many citizens. It has since been abolished by the current government to accommodate a special interest group), and hoping next time someone will see the signs.

Yet before and after, there have been hundreds of massacres all around the world.

We like to believe these are attacks by maniacs. We like to believe they’re random and isolated. It makes us feel better, safer. This mass shooting was against women, others against children, leaders, family, friends, co-worker, bosses, gangs, etc. Some have political, racial, or religious motivations. They are rarely random; the targets are intentional. They’re not as isolated as we would like to think. And sadly, not all by maniacs. We need to find the root cause of violence and try to reverse the rising tide.

Today we remember the victims of this and all other violence – women, children, men.

Each day we should remember that violence never solved anything. It just steals precious lives.