Paying respect to those who protect.

by Ziying Feng on June 12, 2014 - 1:45pm


Summary of the Moncton Shootings

More than a week ago on June 4 2014 in the City of Monction in New Brunswick a tragedy happened. 24 year old Justin Bourque ambushed a group of RCMP officers with heavy weaponary, killing three of them and injuring the two others. He then feld the scenes. Afterwards, the police began a manhut and Justin was finally captured on June 6. 


Summary of the Article

On June 9, the city of Moncton held a funeral for the 3 RCMP officers killed by Justin Bourque. Hundreds of people when to pay their respects, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the opposition leader Tom Mulcair, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau and Governor General David Johnson. The service was also televised so that those who couldn't attend could at least pay their respect in spirit.

The three officers who died, Gevaudan, Larche and Ross were all men who loved their community, did what they could to help protect it, and wanted to help make the world a better place. They will be remembered with honor.



Seeing all this, I started wondering if all this could have potential be avoided. Afterall, there had to be reason that explains why this man decided to arm himself so heavily and then deliberately lured a group of cops out to kill them. Presumably, by which I mean judging by his arsenal he was planning on killing more officers, but he was cornered and stoped before he could. So I did some research that may allow me to potentially figure out why this happened.

From what I understood, Justin was a man who had a lot of issues with authority, maybe even fear ''The Man'' as it were and was really fascinated with consipiracy theories. So for now the most likely explaination that I can think is that he had a bad day or a series of really bad days. Maybe he got screwed over by the government, mayne not, but he likley blamed the government. So he saw the police as the representation of governmental authority and he decided that since he really didn't like the government, he could strike back at them over som perceived wrong by killing officers who work for the government. Seems fairly simple to me.

That said, I do believe that this could have been avoided. He friends and family have known that he has an obession with guns, anti-authority issues and possible paranoia for a long time now. And while I am not blaming anyone for not seeing this happening, I think that they should have tried to pay more attention at him when he started changing a lot of things in his life. Maybe they could have found or seen something that would have led them to get him professional help, or something. This didn't have to happen. Which honestly could be applied to many others events like this.


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