You’re (the general public including soldiers in uniform and politicians) about 1,000,000 times more likely (extremely increased probability) to be killed (cease to exist, shuffle off your mortal coil) in a car crash (an impact in an automobile that results in excessive lethal g force). You’re overreacting (taking things to the extreme without contemplation or consideration).
ETA: than being shot by a rogue, radicalized, insane gunman.
And yet it happened. Imagine.
All I’m saying is that the threat was real and foreseeable and we could have taken relatively simple steps to reduce the risk considerably. But we didn’t. So he’s dead. And my suggestion that we should have done something brands me a curious, over reactor. Got it.
It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, isn’t it?
Anyway. I don’t want to argue any more about this. The authorities will decide what’s best. I just hope it doesn’t erode our freedoms by much.
Well, in this case, very easy.
Then can you share your emails to your MP requesting security changes before this event? Of course not, because you didn’t predict it. No one did.
How about you tell us right now where the next attack will be, Kreskin?
Why would you don’t need a police state? Arm the soldiers.
CBC has posted video footage hereof the shooter driving and then running to the parliament with RCMP coming up behind him. As we know, he ran inside, shot and wounded a guard and then was shot and killed.
It is impossible to prevent armed crazies from killing someone in a public place. But authorities need to be able to respond rapidly to stop further bloodshed. And that is what happened. It seems to me that the system worked the way it was supposed to.
It doesn’t work that way.
Americans, “most free country in the world” have to take our damn shoes off when we get on an airplane. Bush II had “free speech zones” a particular distance away from him where people could, well, speak freely while soldiers with M-16s “protected them”.
People (even Canadians) will find someway to further their own interests or make money out of the public fear of terrorism, and make out like bandits.
And that’s the problem. There’s something wrong if the authorities failed to connect the dots on this one. It looks like they did. If we are witnessing the upper bound on what the intelligence/military/police community can accomplish then I find that frightening.
[quote=“carnivorousplant, post:228, topic:702149”]
It doesn’t work that way.
It does work that way. In the US we have the ability to carry concealed weapons. So if you want the kind of protection that stopped the assault of Parliament it’s available if people wanted it. It makes perfect sense for soldiers in Canada to carry weapons.
If Canadian’s don’t want guns in the average person’s hands that’s fine but soldiers have the training and the equipment already available to them.
And we all know how well that’s worked out.
What does that have to do with taking our shoes off to get on an airplane and Halliburton making money from terrorism fears? 
I know it might seem silly but there is this little taboo in civilian led democratic societies about having armed military on guard duty on city streets. Generally that’s done only in emergencies. No matter how justified it might turn out later, we don’t want to put our military men in the position of having to fire on fellow Citizens. That is simply NOT their role.
Okay, so what?
This year a thousand people will die in car accidents in Canada caused by driving while using a cell phone. About the same number will die by drunk driving accidents. Almost a thousand will die in accidental falls. Nobody is screaming that we do more.
The fact is, which you inexplicably refuse to acknowledge, that we actually do a LOT to prevent this sort of thing, which is why it doesn’t happen much. There is a substantial security and police presence around Parliament, key members of government at under protection, and on a broader scale we have a system of laws and controls in place to make it hard for violent criminals to remain at large. It is self evidently true that these systems work; Canadians do not murder each other very often.
The world is full of risk, but there’s a degree of cost benefit analysis that has to go into dealing with risk. You could eliminate scores of children dying in drowning accidents by making swimming pools illegal. Nobody ever suggests that, though. Why is that? Why do we not post armed guards throughout our rail transport system to prevent the inevitable bunch of deaths that happen every year from people walking on tracks being hit by trains? Why not force all cars to carry cellphone blocking technology to eliminate that hazard? Because the costs are too high. Life DOES have a price, and you know it. Or you’d be calling for peanut butter to be banned.
I’m sorry but tragic thought the young soldier’s death is, it’s one murder in a country that has hundreds of them every year. It is no more frightening or indicting of our security apparatus that the murder-suicide of three people in Brampton last month, which people hardly noticed because the victims were Indian so most people apparently don’t give a shit.
Where are you getting that I refuse to acknowledge how wonderful, peaceful, and orderly Canada is due to the hard and thankless efforts of it’s citizens?
I live in a highly developed country, largely due to the selfless efforts of others, I know it, and I’m thankful. There. Happy?
Please show me where I’ve refused to acknowledge that society must address the tradeoffs you’ve described.
In terms of indicting our national security apparatus, they are nowhere near the same. One is a tragic incident that does little to inform the effectiveness of our national security. The other will precipitate reflection, analysis and, ultimately, change to our national security procedures. I’ll leave the “which is which” as an exercise.
Look at the prospect of an armed gunman in the House of Commons chamber as we look at the prospect of using crystal meth: “Not Even Once”.
Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
It wasn’t his job to do so. And like many Canadians, he may have never been to parliament before.
It is great that the Sgt At Arms says things like he never wants to see parliament made into a fort, but it isn’t just his life, is it? And it is lucky that it was only one nut, because a group of people better armed would have killed a number of your representatives. Add a few grenades to the mix and it could have been a lot of people. None of the equipment necessary to accomplish this are difficult to obtain and we’ve seen enough nuts around the world willing to pull off stuff like this.
I haven’t seen what door he went through, but most secondary doors can be controlled easily enough to prevent all but the most determined effort. Main doors can have extra security personnel with the ability to lock them down securely if something happens. Something a bit more effective than stacking chairs against a door.
They can be unobtrusive as well for those that think security is ‘teh scary’. Nor does it have to be extremely expensive.
I’m an American but live close enough to the border that I’ve always had CBC TV available to me. I made a point to watch The National the last two evenings and completely avoid US news coverage of the tragedy.
I find it fascinating to see how a different culture reacts to some of the same issues the USA has had. Americans are so fearful of everything and want to assign blame whenever anything goes wrong (or at least there are those who think they can make a buck by whipping up those sentiments). Canada appears shaken but uninterested in panic and is taking a measured approach towards any idea of trading freedom for security. It’s as if the US stands on guard while Canada is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Well said, Sir. Well said indeed. Would that my fellow Americans could be bothered to see this…
Well, this guy was Canadian, right - so it’s a civil war, then?
Could Canadians have any other kind? 
It’s the ideology he subscribed to that we are at war with. But to be fair to your point, I do believe that after Mr. Vickers shot the guy, he said, “Sorry.”