I keep in touch with a few Americans through the magic of Facebook. One is a former United States Marine who has served multiple tours in the Middle East.
After the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, he posted, “Is it possible that the root of all these school shootings is bullying? Not guns, mental illness, not fat lazy cops?”
In response, I wrote, “Bullying is part of the human condition. Every society on the planet establishes its own pecking order (and every species, for that matter). You must have seen it the first time your son went to day care. It goes all the way from there to Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It’s why you served multiple tours in the Marines, so that other nations won’t bully your people. It has always existed, and it will always exist, and no number of pink tee shirt days will solve it or stop it.
“Now, that being said, you, as Americans, have to ask yourselves what makes you so unique? Canadian and American culture is almost indistinguishable in 99.99 per cent of its ways, from the TV we watch, to the video games we play, to the language we speak and the thought patterns we’ve shared. We’ve fought side by side in major conflicts ever since 1917. I live 10 miles from the U.S. border, and the people in Noonan, North Dakota, are no different than those in Estevan, Saskatchewan.
“So why is it Canada has had something like a half dozen school shootings since 1989, and the US will have had more than that since the New Year? Those are the questions you should be asking. You have guns, we have guns. But our gun laws are a lot more restrictive, especially for what we categorize as restricted or prohibited weapons; pistols and assault/submachinegun types.
“No one has concealed carry here except for the police, essentially. No one has open carry here, either, except for usage at the range or hunting. You will never find a Canadian citizen (who’s not some gang banger or some other crook) carrying a pistol on the street, open or concealed. Our entire nation has fewer murders in one year than Chicago. Just Chicago.
“I read an account this week from a trauma surgeon in Florida who routinely treats gunshot wounds. He characterized the difference between a typical pistol wound and those he saw from the Parkland shooting generated by an AR-15. You will have to look long and extremely hard to find ANYONE in Canada with similar experience to this one surgeon.
“The reality is the gun culture of the U.S., inspired by the Second Amendment, is becoming your nation’s downfall. The rest of the world sees this, and knows this. But America has gone soooo far down this path, any attempt to rectify it will result in even more deaths as gun nuts barricade themselves and shoot it out to the death.
“No one will dare try, because they know what will happen. This mass psychosis is literally America going mad, and the bodies in the streets are your own children.”
As you can imagine, my response was from a different perspective than many of the others. But he and his friends were appreciative of my perspective. Through several civil exchanges, I realized something, something that explained all the above. It’s the fear indoctrinated into American culture.
One person wrote, “If you have guns protecting our banks, our congressmen and women, our president, hell, even our border, why can we not use them to protect our children? Why have these gun free zones that only serve the purpose of gathering unarmed individuals? That’s where all of our mass shootings and terrorist actions are taking place. Schools and planes and churches. Innocent defenseless victims.”
I responded, “In Canada, the average Canadian does not expect some crazed bastard to show up out of nowhere and start shooting up the place. It generally doesn’t happen, anywhere, ever, except in EXTREMELY rare circumstances. And those tend to make national news, whereas in certain places in the U.S., it would hardly make the 5 o’clock news.
“The American psyche has evolved to the point that there is an expectation that the bad guys are coming to get you, wherever you are, whoever you are, so you damned well better be ready, and preferably, armed. Canadians, on the whole, simply do not think like that. Your ‘gun free zones’ generally is all of Canada. And yet, we are not a disarmed society, like the U.K., either. We still have guns. I have guns.
“Maybe that’s the difference. People here don’t have the fear that you do, in most cases,” I concluded.
That’s it. Fear is the difference.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
