PHOTOS: Into the evening Friday, the mood in the Bavarian city of Munich was surreal (Polizeipräsidium München image). Below: The scene of Friday’s shooting in Munich.

The person I know best in Munich described the mood in the Bavarian city Friday as “surreal,” so it seems fitting the Tweet from the Munich Police that night notifying the world the crisis sparked by a mass shooting at a fast-food restaurant was finally over had the surreal quality of found poetry:

We found a man,
who killed him himself.
We assume,
that he was the only shooter.

By yesterday, assumptions had started to give way to knowledge, offering us the opportunity to learn something useful from this tragedy.

ShootingSceneIt is important to do so while the knee-jerk responses by some of our fellow Canadians – who used it as an instant excuse to defame Muslims, portray refugees as dangerous and, bizarrely, demand less-effective gun control laws at a time virtually no solid facts were known – remain fresh in our minds.

The first lesson is the obvious: While Friday’s events were terrifying, they were not terrorism. That is, they were not connected with terrorism in the sense we normally define the word today, as organized attacks on civilians with a political or religious motivation that are not carried out by a nation state’s armed forces.

Munich police say the 18-year-old German-born, German citizen acted alone and that there is no evidence whatsoever he was connected with any terrorist group, at least of the sort associated with the Middle East.

Rather, it turns out, Ali David Sonboly, the troubled young man with the gun, was obsessed with U.S.-style school and restaurant shootings – which appears to be exactly what he set out to perpetrate. He is also reported to have been fascinated with neo-Nazi ideology, which may explain why he struck on the fifth anniversary of the mass murder in Norway by far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, why he was shouting “I am German,” or words to that effect, and why most of his victims seem to have been Muslims.

So one lesson this should reinforce is that first media reports from most violent situations are almost invariably wrong.

Multiple shooters? As usual, it turned out there was only one. However, it had been threatening to rain that morning, so no doubt some of the people scurrying away were carrying rolled up umbrellas, just the thing, irresponsibly reported, to raise the panic level.

People yelling “God is Great” in Arabic? Turns out the young man in question was shouting “I am 100 per cent German” in German. There was only him. It is telling and troubling that it wasn’t only fraudulent online anti-immigration sites that made this mistake, presumably intentionally, but also respectable news organizations like CNN.

Another lesson is that if you hold strong views, you’re certain to look smarter if you wait to start screeching about the bee in your bonnet until you know what the hell is going on.

If you ask me, my anti-immigration neighbours who apparently sincerely believe they are about to be subject to Sharia law right here in Edmonton, where we’ve gotten along fine with our Muslim neighbours at least since 1938 when they built their first mosque, should have waited until they knew who the shooter was before they started shooting off their mouths on Facebook.

But then, these folks are normally quite undeterred by facts. It will probably be enough for them that it appears the shooter’s parents came to Germany from Iran, and his first name suggests he is Muslim – never mind that a Shia from Iran is about as likely to be found in a terror group like ISIS or Al Qaeda as a Mormon from Cardston is to be welcomed into the Swiss Guards at the Vatican.

Another clear lesson from Friday is that tough gun control laws help. The BBC reports that it’s not yet known how the shooter acquired a handgun, ownership of which is tightly controlled in Germany.

This has gun nuts screaming that everyone should be armed, so they can shoot back, a recipe for chaos and more tragedy. But the reality is that if this had taken place in the United States – or now, sadly, Canada, as a result of the destructive work of the Harper Conservatives – the death toll would probably have been much higher because an easily accessible assault rifle would have been at hand.

Statistics show clearly that such events are far less common in Germany than they are in the United States. And, unlike what may happen now in Canada, they will stay that way thanks to Germany’s tough gun laws.

We cannot fault the Bavarian police, by the way, for their overwhelming immediate reaction to a situation that could have been anything. In light of recent events elsewhere in Europe, a strong response really was their only choice. Still, their after-action response was appropriate too – in effect, that this was a terrible tragedy, it’s under control, you may now go about your business. The citizens of Munich, to their credit, seem to have done just that.

It was refreshing to see a state authority not make an effort to terrify the population as a method of social control, as has happened in some neighbouring European countries and in the United States.

Finally, we can take two additional lessons, that terrorist groups will take credit for any violent tragedy, even when it is quickly apparent they could have had nothing to do with it.

And that we can become so terrified of terror we’re prepared to give up what makes our society worth fighting for: our freedom of movement, association, religion and expression.

Only fools, cowards and people who have another agenda would tell you a Wall will make us safe.

NOTE: This is probably a good moment to mention to readers that in a couple of weeks, things will be much quieter for a spell on this blog. I will be off, you see, to … Munich. This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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10 Comments

  1. No amount of gun control can make us 100% safe; just look at incidents of mass stabbings, etc. But … the risk of being the victim of some sort of mass murder is much, much greater in societies with ready access to guns than in those with stricter gun control. And, the risk of dying by firearm in the United States is 2½ times higher than in Canada (based on per capita statistics from StatsCan and an analysis published on Nate Silver’s 538.com blog: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/), including deaths from all causes including suicides and “accidents”. That doesn’t mean there are no gun deaths in Canada, or in other stricter gun control countries, but there are undeniably fewer gun deaths, per capita, than in the US.

    Life is not 100% safe, but there are varying levels of risk of dying prematurely, and the risk in the US is higher than in Canada, and guns are one major reason for that difference.

  2. I think it’s always a good time to review some facts.
    Let’s start with CNN being classified with the rest of the “respectable news organizations”. It isn’t, any more than Fox is. And hasn’t been for some time. Probably lost its respectability and newsiness about the same time it started catering to the ideological whims and wishes of it’s owners. Like Fox.
    Another fact of life in the 21rst Century that we have known about for a long, long time is that it’s hotter, hotter than hell in some places. It was 54C in Kuwait yesterday. Too hot for life, human life or any kind of life that supports human life.
    Like the Slave Lake fire where we knew 3 days before the fact, that the winds were going to blow it into town; like the Calgary floods where we knew 2 days before the fact, that the rains were going to roar out of the mountains; we have known about the unlivable conditions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for quite some time.
    Also like our 2 local disasters, the hordes of climate refugees pouring out of MENA and into Europe is a disaster, an on-going disaster. Precious little forethought or planning has gone into preparing a response to the millions of desperate, poor, often illiterate, often uneducated people, more often than not unable to speak the language, people who just show up. We don’t know much about them, their values or their way of life and they know even less about us.
    And they just keep coming. Well over a million so far this year alone. There is no plausible reason to think this migration will abate, or even not increase, any time in the near future.
    And still no ‘plan’ except the very basic human response to open our arms and our doors to help another suffering human being out of a desperate situation.
    It’s not enough. It is counter-productive.
    On this hot, crowded planet we are bombarded daily with images of cops killing people, people killing cops, ideologues blowing themselves and others up, ideologues yelling and shouting slurs and epithets at any who proclaim disbelief and all the while the great American, and global, media machine is spewing the message of individualism; pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps; big gov’t, or any gov’t, is bad gov’t; collective, community or social action is radical, even criminal, activity and that seeking a profit is an end unto itself that forgives any and all sins. This is normal in the 21rst Century. Anyone paying even the slightest attention is normalized to this environment.
    Small wonder then, that confused and hopped-up on hormones adolescents (doesn’t that describe all adolescents?) find their solution of a sort in violence, either suicide or a blazing shoot-out with the bad guys. This too, is another fact of life in the 21rst Century.
    So yes, there are many lesson here, for all of us.
    One lesson that gets little exposure is this; There is precious little point to all, even many, of us learning our lessons well if in the larger, institutional society decisions are made that ignore those lessons. If we want our way of life, our culture, our society to persevere then we need our institutions to demonstrate these lessons learned in every action and decision. We need our political and social leadership to be out front and vocal on these lessons.
    Unlike what happened in Whitehorse last week.
    Otherwise, we are just blowing more hot air into an already incendiary and arid environment.

  3. Enjoy your holiday, David. While you are in Bavaria, may I suggest you spend some time looking for a crappy beer? Your search will probably be unsuccessful, but the hunt can be so rewarding.

    1. Exactly what I intended to do, Bob. I expect similar success to that I recorded back in 1977, when I went on an extended search for a bad meal in France. DJC

  4. On Sharia law, you must admit reasonable accommodation is a slippery slope as the British have found out with their attempts to include Sharia law. See:
    https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/jun/27/mps-launch-inquiry-sharia-law-courts-uk

    The point is that all citizens are deserving of equal protection under the law and allowing Sharia courts, as the British have done, has created two or perhaps three levels of citizenship based on ethnicity, gender and creed.

    The women, not all of whom participate in these things voluntarily, have been removed from the protection of the rule of law which all citizens deserve.

  5. I look forward to reading your reports from Munich. How is that world domination thing working out?

    1. This is the Internet age. My plans for world domination will be managed from World Headquarters right here in St. Albert. I censored your movie. You know why. Pinky says hi.

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