Editorial: Questions, but no answers
Date: Oct 4, 2006 9:35 AM
PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2006.10.04
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PNAME: Editorial
PAGE: A12
SOURCE: Ottawa Citizen
WORD COUNT: 540

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Questions, but no answers

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Kimveer Gill, Duane Morrison and Charles Carl Roberts appear to have had
only one thing in common: Within a three-week period, each walked into a
school and started shooting at strangers.

A 25-year-old in Montreal; a 53-year-old in small-town Colorado; a
32-year-old in rural Pennsylvania. These are men who wouldn’t have been
likely to meet if they had lived out their lives. Even the superficial
similarities are few: They were all North American men who had access to
guns, but that’s not enough to cause someone to start killing children.

It’s only natural, though, to look for connections, for answers, for
meaning. In Kimveer Gill’s case, his online persona was a warning that
went ignored, and might have helped him cultivate the bravado he needed
to act on his plan. The Internet is a neutral tool that brings people
together. When it brings troubled or rebellious people together, it can
legitimize dark ideas and destructive behaviour.

But that doesn’t make the Internet a cause of violence. It does not seem
to have been a factor in other recent school shootings, and violence in
schools pre-dates the Internet. The same is true of video games: Young
men who bring guns to school might also play first-person-shooter games,
but so do a lot of other people.

After Mr. Gill shot 20 people at Dawson College, media attention turned
to goth culture. This was an echo of the attention paid to trenchcoats
after the Columbine shooting in Colorado. Both shootings were the work
of disaffected young men wearing slightly odd clothing. There are other
ways to spin the “outsider” theory: Jan Wong of the Globe and Mail has
been accused of suggesting that shooters Marc Lepine, Valery Fabrikant
and Kimveer Gill had something in common: outsider status in the eyes of
Quebecers.

The outsider theory doesn’t explain the country milk-truck driver who
seemed to blend right in with his community. Mr. Roberts might have
considered himself to be an outsider, but he didn’t look like one.

So are these school shootings just random occurrences, beyond all
understanding or influence? That’s possible, but there’s no reason to
give up yet. There may be a pattern in the psychology of these men.

In some cases, suicidal killers leave clues no one recognizes until it’s
too late. With Mr. Gill, it was his Internet persona. Mr. Roberts’
co-workers noticed that he seemed to be in a dark mood the days before
he took the Amish schoolgirls hostage. If there are warning signs, there
might be triggers, and if there are triggers, these crimes might be
preventable.

Why did these grown men choose to make their last stands in schools? It
could have been that the schools were simply vulnerable, convenient
targets; it could be that they took inspiration from previous school
shootings. It’s possible that there is something about schools that
makes them targets for disturbed men. There are hints of revenge in some
of these killings, but revenge for what and against whom? Mr. Gill

didn’t go to Dawson College; Mr. Roberts was home-schooled.

There is so much we don’t know about why people kill and the nature of
evil. One thing is becoming clear: It’s more complicated than video
games or hair styles.