The mass shooting in Buffalo horrified people in this area in a way that similar murders have not. Buffalo is a place we might visit without much thought – do a bit of shopping, have lunch with friends.
To hear that a teenager had gone on a murderous rampage that was clearly motivated by racism is shocking.
The details are heartbreaking – 10 people murdered in a supermarket, all but one of them over age 50. Most of the people shot were Black, including a retired police officer working as a security guard – a hero whose actions prevented a much higher death toll. And the others – an elderly matriarch, a church deacon, an advocate for the Black community, a grandfather buying a cake for his grandson – all people we would enjoy having as neighbours.
The accused shooter is so very young, a boy, really. He is described as a very bright loner, although he had friends and family. He also had an apparent gift for keeping secrets. Prior to his murderous actions, he kept to himself his extremist views, and the fact he was researching communities with a large non-white population, purchasing firearms including a semiautomatic rifle and planning murder-suicide.
He planned his attack for months, and made more than one visit to the supermarket where he shot 13 people, killing 10.
The natural reaction of people, including in this country, is to try to identify red flags that were ignored or misread – natural, because that would mean such a terrible crime might be prevented in the future.
Perhaps if school officials had made more of the accused killer’s “joke” about murder-suicide, if family or friends had heard him voice racist opinions, or if someone had drawn attention to his school absences, visits to a certain neighbourhood in Buffalo, his growing collection of firearms, his frequenting certain extremist websites… 10 good people would still be alive.
Then again, what is the appropriate action to take when a 17-year-old says or does something that seems a bit “off?”
In this country, and in the United States, the person might end up in a local hospital emergency room, at least briefly, or in a psychiatrist’s office. This appears to be pretty much what happened in the case of the accused killer prior to his terrorist attack. Neither country has laws that would allow for the incarceration of a kid from a well-off family, who has kept his more extreme ideas to himself, and has no record of violence or trouble with the law.
There are people in this and every other community whose behaviour is far more alarming on an ongoing basis than this boy’s was. The vast majority are not in jail or other facilities. Police know them well; so do the folks who work in hospital ERs and social services.
Instead of trying to combat terrorism by figuring out how to differentiate between weird and dangerously weird, we need to approach the situation from a different angle, starting with acceptability.
As long as people are free to post hate-filled, toxic material on social media that would result in a lawsuit or criminal charges if published, announced or posted by mainstream media, racists, misogynists, bigots and extremists will have a circle in which they feel not only accepted but respected. This is heady stuff for someone who has been a lifelong loner, misunderstood even by their parents.
Allowing such material to be openly tweeted, shared or posted is much the same as laughing at a racist “joke” – it makes it acceptable.
We need to make it clear that racist jokes are no laughing matter, and toxic messages of hate have no place on any website, any more than they would have a place on a page in this newspaper.
Going to a grocery store and using a semiautomatic rifle to mow down innocent people, most of them elderly, is not the act of a hero in some video game race war. It is nothing more, or less, than a despicable, cowardly crime.
