CANADA - shooter in RCMP vehicle & uniform, 22 killed (plus perp), Portapique, NS, 18 April 2020 #3

[Errrr]

If I was in a domestic abuse situation, the last thing I would do is buy bullets for his gun!!!Just saying...

I wonder if there’s a way to tamper with them to blow up inside the gun.?

Not sure where you’re going with this - are you wondering if the ammunition was purchased intending that he’d kill himself by a gun that’d been tampered with? Tampering with someone’s gun, vehicle, furnace or anything for the purpose of intentionally causing a person’s death is considered to be murder.

If that were a defence - admitting to one illegal act with the intention of committing a far more serious crime, that wouldn’t go very far IMO.

No. I was just wondering if someone dangerous made me buy them ammunition, if there was a way to make it fail so as not to kill anyone.

 

[MistyWaters]

I wonder if there’s a way to tamper with them to blow up inside the gun.?

No. I was just wondering if someone dangerous made me buy them ammunition, if there was a way to make it fail so as not to kill anyone.

I’ve never heard of a gun killing the shooter. Plus I can’t imagine a situation where someone dangerous could make anyone buy them ammunition, since buying ammunition makes them even more dangerous.

 

[Satchie]

I’ve never heard of a gun killing the shooter. Plus I can’t imagine a situation where someone dangerous could make anyone buy them ammunition, since buying ammunition makes them even more dangerous.

IMO, a woman can be in an abusive situation but not see it that way herself. The reason she stays may be love, but also the financial and social security of having a partner,
IMO, keeping him happy, giving into whatever he wants, is often the way a submissive partner keeps the peace with a domineering partner. If they were emotionally/
psychologically able to stand up to him and say no, they'd probably have left long ago.

So I don't see it as necessarily overt threats, but possibly her asking her brothers to do her a favour, and none of them being very principled, and possibly incapable of imagining what he really had in mind.

They may have been more aware of his criminal intentions, but if it's the scenario I've described, IMO the charges probably reflect that they concealed their actions and other information from the police.

I think the charges reflect that police are refusing to protect her any more as a victim. They are being blamed, when people close to him made no effort to inform police of what they knew, that could have prevented later deaths, including the death of their own officer.

 

[MistyWaters]

IMO, a woman can be in an abusive situation but not see it that way herself. The reason she stays may be love, but also the financial and social security of having a partner,
IMO, keeping him happy, giving into whatever he wants, is often the way a submissive partner keeps the peace with a domineering partner. If they were emotionally/
psychologically able to stand up to him and say no, they'd probably have left long ago.

So I don't see it as necessarily overt threats, but possibly her asking her brothers to do her a favour, and none of them being very principled, and possibly incapable of imagining what he really had in mind.

They may have been more aware of his criminal intentions, but if it's the scenario I've described, IMO the charges probably reflect that they concealed their actions and other information from the police.

I think the charges reflect that police are refusing to protect her any more as a victim. They are being blamed, when people close to him made no effort to inform police of what they knew, that could have prevented later deaths, including the death of their own officer.

Yes plus the unanswered question - where’d the shooter get the ammunition? - had still been out there up until now, given he couldn’t have legally purchased it.

So while the charges in themselves are not proof of guilt, the RCMP surely couldn’t have looked the other way even if they believed any of the three had a justifiable reason. Given the seriousness of what transpired as a result of the ammunition stash, the only option they have is to allow the Courts to decide.

 

[tayaway]

It's a shame the RCMP looked the other way and did not follow up on previous complaints about an unlicensed wealthy wife beater white guy owning a cache of weapons and ammo.

 

[MistyWaters]

It's a shame the RCMP looked the other way and did not follow up on previous complaints about an unlicensed wealthy wife beater white guy owning a cache of weapons and ammo.

Would’ve it prevented this from happening? I really do doubt it. In Canada he surely wouldn’t have spent much time in prison, if any since he had no prior criminal record. Definitely not 7+ years for possession only as he wasn’t selling them nor at the time shooting people with them. Convicted murderers are often out in less time than that. A short stint in jail rarely turns anybody into a poster boy.

Long after 2013 we know had a gun supplier from Maine, people willing to supply him with ammunition so whether or not he was able to obtain a firearms licence didn’t matter. He had others assisting him in creating a fake police car. It appears these actions mostly or all occurred within the past year.

Indeed after the fact we know he was a dangerous paranoid nutcase. But I don’t think there was anything that would’ve stopped his killing spree other than people he was associated with noticing danger signals within the preceding weeks. But as it appears he was devious and sly, that’s easy for me to say, far more difficult to recognize. Everyone probably just accepted him as being a bit odd and quirky, totally harmless as the vast majority of odd and quirky people are.

 

[tayaway]

Would’ve it prevented this from happening? I really do doubt it. In Canada he surely wouldn’t have spent much time in prison, if any since he had no prior criminal record. Definitely not 7+ years for possession only as he wasn’t selling them nor at the time shooting people with them. Convicted murderers are often out in less time than that. A short stint in jail rarely turns anybody into a poster boy.

Long after 2013 we know had a gun supplier from Maine, people willing to supply him with ammunition so whether or not he was able to obtain a firearms licence didn’t matter. He had others assisting him in creating a fake police car. It appears these actions mostly or all occurred within the past year.

Indeed after the fact we know he was a dangerous paranoid nutcase. But I don’t think there was anything that would’ve stopped his killing spree other than people he was associated with noticing danger signals within the preceding weeks. But as it appears he was devious and sly, that’s easy for me to say, far more difficult to recognize. Everyone probably just accepted him as being a bit odd and quirky, totally harmless as the vast majority of odd and quirky people are.

We certainly don't know what his friends/fam/neighbors thought, but IMO, some of them were afraid of him. He showed psycho behavior when he beat his father while on vacation, he beat his common law wife multiple times in front of fam/friends, and he was obsessed with the police. Those are not new or recent behaviors and they are enough to make any rational, reasonable person wary of him. Those signs, I agree with you, don't translate into the precursor to being a mass shooter. There are plenty of wife beating gun nuts out there that don't.

We know what-ifs are pointless and you and I have respectfully tussled over this element of this case from the start. For me, it's not about the idea of previous intervention leading to preventing a mass shooting. The fact is that the LE here and in America, in general, as proven over and over again, with case after case, use their power to hold up a two tiered system, where rich white guys get away with so much more. They plan to go out with a bang and they destroy whole communities.

The RCMP knowingly let this unlicensed entitled white guy keep his cache of illegal weapons and ammo. Give an inch and he takes a mile. It's not blaming LE for this massacre, it's an indicator that we need to change the system.

 

[Satchie]

We certainly don't know what his friends/fam/neighbors thought, but IMO, some of them were afraid of him. He showed psycho behavior when he beat his father while on vacation, he beat his common law wife multiple times in front of fam/friends, and he was obsessed with the police. Those are not new or recent behaviors and they are enough to make any rational, reasonable person wary of him. Those signs, I agree with you, don't translate into the precursor to being a mass shooter. There are plenty of wife beating gun nuts out there that don't.

We know what-ifs are pointless and you and I have respectfully tussled over this element of this case from the start. For me, it's not about the idea of previous intervention leading to preventing a mass shooting. The fact is that the LE here and in America, in general, as proven over and over again, with case after case, use their power to hold up a two tiered system, where rich white guys get away with so much more. They plan to go out with a bang and they destroy whole communities.

The RCMP knowingly let this unlicensed entitled white guy keep his cache of illegal weapons and ammo. Give an inch and he takes a mile. It's not blaming LE for this massacre, it's an indicator that we need to change the system.

"Between 1982 and February 2020, 64 out of the 116 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters...Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the US population as a whole."

Mass shootings are indeed, almost without exception, carried out by men.

Mass shootings by shooter’s race in the U.S. 2020 | Statista

As to socio-economic factors, one study reports "Counties with growing levels of income inequality are more likely to experience mass shootings. We assert that one possibility for this finding is that income inequality fosters an environment of anger and resentment that ultimately leads to violence." Income inequality and mass shootings in the United States | BMC Public Health | Full Text

While it may be true in general, IMO income inequality doesn't apply in this case.

There are far fewer mass shootings in Canada, the list is very short:
Category:Mass shootings in Canada - Wikipedia

I'm not willing to compile statistics, but IMO, almost none of the other shooters fit the profile of a PWG: It includes people from immigrant backgrounds many young men under age 20, several who complained they'd been bullied, etc

I think possibly there is a tendency to read about and remember the few mass shootings by PWGs, because there's more media coverage, and possibly because their actions have more impact on other PWGs and PWW. IMO, that's not a problem with the legal or other system, IMO that's a problem of believing that crime is something that never should never occur in privileged white society.

Note: The crime of family annihilator is a separate category, and doesn't fint in this case.

 

[tayaway]

"Between 1982 and February 2020, 64 out of the 116 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters...Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the US population as a whole."

Mass shootings are indeed, almost without exception, carried out by men.

Mass shootings by shooter’s race in the U.S. 2020 | Statista

As to socio-economic factors, one study reports "Counties with growing levels of income inequality are more likely to experience mass shootings. We assert that one possibility for this finding is that income inequality fosters an environment of anger and resentment that ultimately leads to violence." Income inequality and mass shootings in the United States | BMC Public Health | Full Text

While it may be true in general, IMO income inequality doesn't apply in this case.

There are far fewer mass shootings in Canada, the list is very short:
Category:Mass shootings in Canada - Wikipedia

I'm not willing to compile statistics, but IMO, almost none of the other shooters fit the profile of a PWG: It includes people from immigrant backgrounds many young men under age 20, several who complained they'd been bullied, etc

I think possibly there is a tendency to read about and remember the few mass shootings by PWGs, because there's more media coverage, and possibly because their actions have more impact on other PWGs and PWW. IMO, that's not a problem with the legal or other system, IMO that's a problem of believing that crime is something that never should never occur in privileged white society.

Note: The crime of family annihilator is a separate category, and doesn't fint in this case.

The page you linked, for mass shootings in Canada, shows that the racial breakdown is similar to the population census. Unlike the US, though, there are no female shooters listed. 60% of the Can shooters are white male, but as you point out, almost none are PWG. Vietnamese immigrant, Phu Lam, who shot mainly members of his family, and ?Dene? Randan Fontaine, who shot his cousins and people at school, don't fit either, given the family connections.

My point was, however, about the treatment of the PWG by LE. Nowhere did I assert that most of the shooters are PWG. I focused specifically on PWGs - which, as you've shown, needed to be expanded, since they're in the minority statistically. If you want to include white males of lower statuses, such as the poor, working, and professional classes, yes, they too are given privilege when compared to BIPOC (Black Indigenous, People of Color). You can compare how LE dealt with white mass shooter academic James Holmes, who actually killed other people, to black George Floyd, who alleged attempted to pass off a counterfeit $20 at a corner store.

Let's look inside Canada, where two Metis-Cree, Jake Sansom and Maurice Cardinal, were allegedly ambushed and shot by two white working/skilled trades class men. In this region, like most across Canada, where Metis/First Nations interact with white settlers, POC experience frequent racist harassment, and, in the case of Thunder Bay, murder, especially if you're a FN student from the north. Reports of death threats and racial harassment from random working/skilled trades white men against BIPOC were made to the RCMP in the Glendon region, where Sansom and Cardinal resided. The RCMP ignored the systemic racist intimidation and only acted when they were faced with 2 deaths determined by the coroner as homicide. Couldn't write it off as another drunken native teen, all alone, drowning in TBay's McIntyre River.

The white male privilege goes far beyond PWG and mass shootings. It's systemic in both Canada and the US. Maybe because of the one percenters' status and the not-so-wealthy but still rich, like GW, people like me tend to single them out.

 

[MistyWaters]

We certainly don't know what his friends/fam/neighbors thought, but IMO, some of them were afraid of him. He showed psycho behavior when he beat his father while on vacation, he beat his common law wife multiple times in front of fam/friends, and he was obsessed with the police. Those are not new or recent behaviors and they are enough to make any rational, reasonable person wary of him. Those signs, I agree with you, don't translate into the precursor to being a mass shooter. There are plenty of wife beating gun nuts out there that don't.

We know what-ifs are pointless and you and I have respectfully tussled over this element of this case from the start. For me, it's not about the idea of previous intervention leading to preventing a mass shooting. The fact is that the LE here and in America, in general, as proven over and over again, with case after case, use their power to hold up a two tiered system, where rich white guys get away with so much more. They plan to go out with a bang and they destroy whole communities.

The RCMP knowingly let this unlicensed entitled white guy keep his cache of illegal weapons and ammo. Give an inch and he takes a mile. It's not blaming LE for this massacre, it's an indicator that we need to change the system.

If I were to point my finger at a cause for this disaster - it’s the growing proliferation of Conspiracy Theories that dominate people’s minds who also have underlying and untreated mental illness. According to reports this is the reason the shooter believed he needed to be armed, to protect himself. Not long before this, the Moncton shooting of 2 police officers and 2 innocent people occurred, a similar scenario involving anti-government and anti-authority views derived from conspiracy theories.

As the shooter is dead we’ll never know for sure what his motivation was but it’s possible he was on a mission to fight his perceived enemy, just as other killers have claimed.

How the system can overcome this, I have no idea. Right now, today anti-government conspiracy theories are spreading almost as quickly as COVID-19 numbers are growing. How many of those obsessively dedicated believers are also close to tipping over the edge?

JMO

 

[tayaway]

If I were to point my finger at a cause for this disaster - it’s the growing proliferation of Conspiracy Theories that dominate people’s minds who also have underlying and untreated mental illness. According to reports this is the reason the shooter believed he needed to be armed, to protect himself. Not long before this, the Moncton shooting of 2 police officers and 2 innocent people occurred, a similar scenario involving anti-government and anti-authority views derived from conspiracy theories.

As the shooter is dead we’ll never know for sure what his motivation was but it’s possible he was on a mission to fight his perceived enemy, just as other killers have claimed.

How the system can overcome this, I have no idea. Right now, today anti-government conspiracy theories are spreading almost as quickly as COVID-19 numbers are growing. How many of those obsessively dedicated believers are also close to tipping over the edge?

JMO

You're probably right. It's like a cult and a lot of people need something to believe in, especially during a pandemic.

 

[newguy123]

If he believed he needed to be armed to protect himself, and keep large sums of cash on hand, I can see why he might hunker down in his own home, waiting for events. I can even see he hated authority and would challenge it if possible. But what happened seems geared to hurting people who were not authority figures. That is what puzzles me.
I read about people rebelling against things such as mandatory mask wearing, or restrictions on our daily lives due to covid, but his actions were not (that I can see) geared to challenging "authority" as such. Was posing as a police officer a way of hitting back at authority? Or was it a clever disguise?
For my own understanding, I seek logical connections between thoughts and deeds, and perhaps that will never happen here.

 

[MistyWaters]

If he believed he needed to be armed to protect himself, and keep large sums of cash on hand, I can see why he might hunker down in his own home, waiting for events. I can even see he hated authority and would challenge it if possible. But what happened seems geared to hurting people who were not authority figures. That is what puzzles me.
I read about people rebelling against things such as mandatory mask wearing, or restrictions on our daily lives due to covid, but his actions were not (that I can see) geared to challenging "authority" as such. Was posing as a police officer a way of hitting back at authority? Or was it a clever disguise?
For my own understanding, I seek logical connections between thoughts and deeds, and perhaps that will never happen here.

It’d be impossible to imagine the shooter was thinking rationally if indeed Conspiracy Theories fuelled his diabolical actions. The two just don’t go together.

Exactly how he chose his victims, random or targeted, nobody will ever know for sure.

But we do know his dental business had to be totally closed due to the COVID lockdown. The final results of the investigation also haven’t been released but iirc the RCMP have eluded to a possible connection with that and the timing.

So I wonder - were most of his victims still employed in the type of businesses or jobs that weren’t impacted by the lockdown? I don’t know so purely my speculation, but if he was deep into a anti-govt conspiracy whereby the virus was created in a lab, savings to be confiscated, a govt takeover of freedoms, etc....perhaps the government and authority co-conspirators (all of whom would be his perceived enemy) were those who’s daily lives weren’t directly impacted by the lockdown?

JMO

ETA - IMO this is why Conspiracy Theorists who are fighting some kind of imaginary battle in their own mind are so dangerous. The innocent victims have absolutely no inkling they represent “the perceived enemy”.

Another example -
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/matthew-degrood-brentwood-stabbing-murder-trial-1.3580058

 

[LadyL]

there are parts of this that really piss me off - more people knew he was a loose cannon and yet ...

Chilling details of a Nova Scotia couple's close encounter with a mass murderer have emerged from RCMP documents released this week, including a bizarre account of how the killer tried to conceal his identity.

As well, the couple knew Wortman had a decommissioned police car that he had planned to "decal up."

At one point before the killer arrived, one of the witnesses said: "Jeez, hope it wasn't Gabriel that lost it," according to a police account.

"Both ... commented that it would be a disaster if he was in a police car," says the statement, which is part of an RCMP application for a search warrant.

The redacted documents released this week also quote witnesses saying the gunman had smuggled guns and drugs from Maine for years and was severely abused as a boy.

‘Come out with your hands up.’ Witness describes Nova Scotia killer’s disturbing ruse

 

[newguy123]

It was reported that he spent several hours at the McLeod/Jenkins home. I have wondered if he was checking the news to see what had been reported up till that time. When he went to the house where they refused to answer, he must have known they probably knew of the search for him, so he pretended he was looking for the gunman by pretending to be a real officer. It didn't work, but that was probably his thinking.
Since this couple knew of his mock cruiser, I wondered at first if he thought to eliminate people with knowledge of it. But then, if so, why didn't he shoot Peter Griffin in Portapique? More unknowns to add to the list..........

 

[NBKevadian]

Podcast series....

‎13 Hours Inside the Nova Scotia Massacre on Apple Podcasts

 

[Satchie]

If he believed he needed to be armed to protect himself, and keep large sums of cash on hand, I can see why he might hunker down in his own home, waiting for events. I can even see he hated authority and would challenge it if possible. But what happened seems geared to hurting people who were not authority figures. That is what puzzles me.
I read about people rebelling against things such as mandatory mask wearing, or restrictions on our daily lives due to covid, but his actions were not (that I can see) geared to challenging "authority" as such. Was posing as a police officer a way of hitting back at authority? Or was it a clever disguise?
For my own understanding, I seek logical connections between thoughts and deeds, and perhaps that will never happen here.

IMO, the trigger in these kind of cases is often that the person wants to commit suicide.
How suicide prevention may help stop mass killers before they start shooting

In my mind, I can imagine that once they make up their minds to end it, the survival instinct to stay out of trouble is gone, and they see it as an opportunity to take revenge on the world, and go out in a blaze of perverted fame.

Also, they may be unable to physically go through with it, and they decide to 'suicide by cop', or to create a situation where they will have to kill themselves rather than face the consequences.

The Toronto van killer case is just wrapping up, IMO that's exactly what was going on with him. We all saw the scene where he tried to trick the cop into shooting him by pretending he had a weapon.

 

[newguy123]

He may have wanted "suicide by cop" but I do think he hadn't quite finished what he set out to do. He was heading to Halifax and I think he had more scores to settle.

 

[MistyWaters]

He may have wanted "suicide by cop" but I do think he hadn't quite finished what he set out to do. He was heading to Halifax and I think he had more scores to settle.

I agree. Of what we know, this case wasn’t a “suicide by cop” example whereby the criminal intentionally sets himself up in a threatening manner knowing he’d be killed by police. Just the opposite, he was fleeing police and we don’t know what his next intentions were. By the 2nd day of killings he probably thought he was invincible.

What brought him down was his inability to control the volume of gas in the vehicle he stole and an alert tactical squad. Just the act of gassing up indicates he wasn’t finished what he set out to do. As he allegedly hated cops, if cornered I think a person like him would be more likely to take his own life rather than allow a “suicide by cop”.

JMO

 

[NBKevadian]

Detailed portrait emerges of gun acquisitions, cash stockpiles of N.S. mass killer




Global News podcast digs into the 13 Hours of the Nova Scotia massacre | Watch News Videos Online