When tragedy touches home.

@Roundandroundwego Things are getting worse so maybe we need to spend a bit of time reverse engineering things to figure out what is bringing us these tragedies. Guns are only part of the problem.

@hippyjoe1955 but they always have guns at shootings, and I will accept that's not yet the issue for everyone but myself. It's about other things! Only. For Canada, the USA and all people but me. Alone.

@Roundandroundwego This is Canada. We have extremely restrictive gun laws. The shooter was known to have mental issues. The guns were removed from the home and then returned. The shooter was under psychiatric care. His mother refused to let his father be involved in the shooter's life even as she encouraged him to try to become a female. To blame guns is akin to putting a bandage on a cancer.

@hippyjoe1955 I still blame guns, and thet shouldn't be in anyone's home. I have huge excuses to be crazy and I know a lot of us do. We have no excuses for the guns.

@Roundandroundwego You have no idea what you are even talking about. Tumbler Ridge is a very remote community. Bears, cougars, and all kinds of other dangerous wildlife is all around and in the town. The area around it teams with wildlife that people like to hunt to and eat. Deer, moose, elk etc. However you seem to have missed the point I made earlier. The guns were confiscated at one time. They were then returned. The owner was cautioned to keep his guns in a gun safe as per Canadian law. He didn't do that either. Sadly he paid for that with his life. The police were aware of the shooter and alerted the school. The school went into lockdown but the gunman got in anyways. Strangely like so many other mass shooters this one was trans. Hie mother was trying to help him become a woman. Sadly she paid for that with her life as well.

@hippyjoe1955 I know remote rural shooting people, like my family. No reason to excuse anyone. I know far too much about guns, reloading, shells... No, it's wrong anyway.

@Roundandroundwego So my friend who is a religious pacifist got a job doing some survey work in the high arctic. The company who hired him took him to a rifle range and taught him how to shoot. As they explained to him. Where you are to be working has lots of polar bears and if there is one thing you don't want to meet if you are unarmed is a polar bear. The 30-06 they gave him never left his side the entire time he was on the tundra.

@hippyjoe1955 you need another plan if you're loaded for bear. I feed animals that might be willing to eat me, some are really cute, but if you weren't bigger than them, they'd be nasty devils, once you get to know them. I plan on not having to hurt a single one, I use my staff only as a way to let eagles know I'm too big to eat.
To me that's what God intended people to do - feed animals and lead them around and be there to keep the peace.

@Roundandroundwego Good luck with that approach to a polar bear. They are simply killing machines. There is a good reason they give out rifles to anyone in polar bear country. Another friend of mine was working not too far north of Yellow Knife. Polar bears live in that area and the camp he was staying in has a very high and very strong fence to keep the bears out. My friend wanted to go for a short walk outside the fence. He was given a rifle before he left the camp. In Churchill Manitoba it is illegal to lock your car. That way if someone is walking down the street and encounters a polar bear they can seek shelter in the car.

@hippyjoe1955 that's another thing you keep skipping - there's no good way to approach a polar bear and you have no business doing it. So you don't prepare for it.

@Roundandroundwego Unless you happen to live in the area. We went to visit my wife's cousin in Calgary one day. I found the cousin's husband in the basement which he had made into his man cave. The walls were lined with mounted fish and on one wall a gigantic polar bear pelt. I was impressed and assumed that he had shot the bear and kept the pelt. 30 years later he died and at his funeral I talked to his son about the polar bear pelt. The son laughed and explained the pelt. Hid dad was a dental surgeon.and he specialised in the tough case. A young man from the high arctic became one of his patients. The problem was the young man had no money. The surgeon told him it was OK he would do the surgery and when the young man got home he could come up with something to pay for the operation. About a year later a large crate arrived at the surgeon's door. It was a polar bear pelt sent by the young Innuit man. He didn't have any money but he could hunt a bear if needed. His family ate the bear meat and then sent the pelt south.