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Simplistic to blame guns, goths, games: Handy solutions won't stop tragedies like Montreal campus shootings

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I used to think the 10 most dangerous words in the English language were, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Now I think the most dangerous may be, "Something must be done." Calls for something to be done are usually issued in panic and typically lead to hasty solutions.

James Madison, one of the principal authors of the American constitution once cautioned that the greatest threat to freedom was the tendency of the people to clamour for a new law after each new calamity.

Haste makes waste, as the old saying goes. It also makes for bad laws.

It is only natural after watching a violent tragedy such as the shootings at Montreal's Dawson College on Wednesday to want to prevent such a deadly catastrophe from happening again.

So we are eager that those in power do something -- anything -- to ensure no repeat. Perhaps we are even desperate for them to take action out of fear the same might happen to us or the ones we love.

But it is at moments of grief, fear and confusion that we are probably least capable of judging what should be done.

That is certainly true in the aftermath of the Dawson shootings.

So far, the three most common suggestions for preventing a recurrence are all off the mark: a clampdown on goth culture, censorship of violent video games and a tightening of the federal gun registry.

The alleged attacker, Kimveer Gill of the north Montreal suburb of Laval, was proudly goth, a subculture frequently marked by an obsession with death, dark-dyed hair, pasty makeup; black lipstick, eye shadow and nail polish; multiple piercings and tattoos, a taste for heavy metal music, and black clothing and boots.

He was clearly fascinated by death.

His favourite website is said to have been VampireFreaks.com. In messages posted there, he signed off as Fatality666 and at least once referred to himself as the "Angel of Death."

He boasted, too, that he intended to kill others and urged other web surfers to "give them what they deserve before you go," which some experts have interpreted as a call to kill others before dying oneself, perhaps violently or by one's own hand.

Gill professed in messages left on a the VampireFreaks website to want to die "in a hail of bullets." And he posted pictures there of himself all in black brandishing what appears to be an automatic rifle.

Gill also claimed his favourite video game was Super Columbine Massacre. Gamers "play as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on that fateful day in the Denver suburb of Littleton," in 1999 when the pair, dressed as Gill was Wednesday in long black overcoats and brandishing automatic rifles, killed 12 and wounded 24 others before killing themselves.

"How many people they kill is ultimately up to you," the game programmers boast. At least 226 people can be found and killed in the game that has been downloaded by at least 40,000 players.

And Gill, of course, had guns; at least three of them according to Montreal

police.

So there have been renewed calls to keep Canada's universal gun registry.

Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, has already promised that his party will use the Dawson shootings to stop the Conservatives from passing a bill this fall that would begin the dismantling of the expensive, error-riddled rifle and shotgun registry.

The Toronto Star proclaimed that "gun control (is) back on target." Meanwhile CanWest News Service reported that the "shooting stirs up gun the registry debate," which most Canadians and parliamentarians had thought was dead.

There will likely also be calls to investigate goth culture. On a Montreal call-in show on which I was a guest for nearly an hour the evening of the shooting, listener after listener laid blame on the nihilistic attitude of goths, who are

mostly teens and young adults, while others demanded a ban on violent video games.

All three suggestions -- goth crackdown, game bans and gun controls -- though are prime examples of hasty reactions that are unlikely to do any good.

Admittedly, goths unsettle middle-class and suburban culture. But that is what they are trying to do with their death-mask makeup, studded wristbands and eyebrows, and their sullen, menacing looks.

Most goths are no more dangerous than anyone else.

Kimveer Gill is no more representative of the majority of goths than James Roszko, the Mayerthorpe Mountie killer, is typical of rural Albertans.

And millions of young people play violent video games with no effect. If Super Columbine Massacre was the trigger that turned Gill into a killer, in its absence something else would have set him off. Someone capable of such carnage will be driven to it regardless of the games he plays on his television or computer.

And if reports are correct, all three of Gill's guns were registered. Gun controls did not stop him and more controls will not stop the next Gill.

We can grasp at handy, quick solutions to ease our disquiet. But that won't change the fact that bad things will happen regardless of our most sincere efforts to prevent them.