7:00AM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2016
"This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries." - President Barack Obama
In late January, a 17 year-old used a shotgun to shoot at least nine people in the remote northern Saskatchewan community of La Loche. Four are dead, including the attacker's two brothers, who he killed at home before going to the high school.
The description of the attack at the school was sadly familar:
As gun blasts thundered through the halls of the La Loche Community School last Friday, students and staff dove for cover — in classrooms, washrooms, offices and closets.
Others just froze.
“I didn’t know where to go, I felt so lost,” student Cayleen Jayden Park later recalled.
Staring down the barrel of a shotgun in the commons area, a school employee waited for the gunman to fire, thinking she could “outrace” the bullet.
She was wrong.
Shotgun pellets reportedly pierced her arm and stomach.
Amid screams of fleeing students, the suspect, described by his peers as “quiet and kind,” allegedly dared some people to tease him, while bypassing those who had been nice to him.
“No man, not you, bro,” the lanky teen is reported to have said.
One thing that was different about this attack was the response from the media and President Barack Obama. In the immediate aftermath of similar attacks in the U.S. in 2015, the president practically ran to the microphone to claim that mass shootings never happen in other civilized countries, and he pointed to steps those countries have taken (i.e. gun control laws) that he believes will work here.
President Obama often points to countries like Canada as examples of the "steps we could take" to prevent these types of attacks. So let's take a look at the steps Canada has taken.
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