The largest mass killing in Canadian history started off as an act of domestic violence: it was well planned; it involved numerous illegal automatic guns; it resulted in numerous deaths. CTV News reported:

After what RCMP call “a significant assault” on his girlfriend, a Nova Scotia man went on a killing rampage, taking the lives of 22 people on April 18 and 19. Nine of his victims were male; the other 13 were female.

RCMP say the terrifying events of that weekend began when the shooter assaulted his girlfriend in Portapique, N.S. It was she who escaped and hid in the woods for hours, emerging the next morning with key information – that the killer was in a mock police car, wearing an RCMP uniform.

But to be fair, as Chris Shelly reported, “even if you just focused on spousal homicide… guns simply aren’t very commonly used in those crimes. Between 1995 and 2009, according to Statistics Canada… 28 per cent of spousal homicides with female victims were committed using firearms. The majority of those were with long guns, but we have no idea how many of those were “military style”… Meanwhile, eight per cent of those homicides were committed with handguns.”

Nevertheless Canada Takes Action

Following Australia’s actions after the Port Arthur Massacre of 1996, and New Zealand’s actions after the Christchurch mosque murders of 2019, the Nova Scotia killings prompted the Canadian government to introduce timely though clumsy legislation to restrict some 1500 “assault style” fire arms.

Though there may be problems with the legislation, generally Canadian public opinion is shaded by the fear of approaching anything that looks like the American free-for-all – the nation with the highest per capita gun deaths in the world – the nation that is the primary supplier of illegal weapons in Canada – and the nation that is still puzzled by how deaths by guns can be reduced (see “The only way to stop a bad man with gun…“).

Nevertheless, as usual, whenever government (especially this one) offers legislation as public relations, it invariable misses the point. The restriction on “assault style” fire arms has emboldened Canada’s own “pro-gun” group(s) to push back on what they see is an “attack” on hunters, farmers, and legal gun owners (though I have yet to see hunters and farmers use assault rifles to hunt or deal with predators), while doing nothing substantially to prevent gun crime. The Nova Scotia mass murder would not have been prevented by the legislation had it been in place and everyone knows this.

Of greater concern is preventing domestic violence in general, and domestic murders by fire arms in particular. For more read BBC reporter Robin Levinson-King’s article: Could Canada’s worst mass shooting have been avoided?

Today is the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.” The United Nations reports:

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.

In general terms, it manifests itself in physical, sexual and psychological forms, encompassing:

• • • intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide);
    • sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment);
    • human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation);
    • female genital mutilation; and
    • child marriage.

To further clarify, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defines violence against women as:

any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.