And aside from telling everyone I was safe the other day, this is the first time I've tweeted about the Toronto van attack. Really I just want to address a few things and refute some rumours.
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This does hit very close to home for me. I'm vaguely familiar with the intersection where it happened, and apparently he's a student of the same college where I went. So that's uncomfortable.
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He is NOT a Syrian refugee. Alek Minassian, mildly foreign-sounding name notwithstanding, has lived in Canada his whole life. I don't know what religion he is but he looks pretty darn white to me.
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I think Minassian is an Armenian name but I'm not sure. If so, he is literally Caucasian. But what race and religion he is shouldn't be important, right? This isn't about making this the fault of some other demographic. This is about denouncing violence in all forms.
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So here's a few words on that: people will say that this is proof guns shouldn't be restricted because if someone wants to kill you, they will, with a van or something. But vans have uses other than murdering people. Assault rifles don't.
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If he'd had an AR-15, I'm positive he would have hurt a lot more people. And the cop who arrested him, notably, refused to shoot despite repeated provocation. This won't mean much to everybody but I, at least, am glad he was brought in alive.
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He's going to trial. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. But also perhaps we'll get a better understanding of what drove him to this so we can prevent it in future.
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I don't mean to absolve him of personal responsibility, but this kind of thing keeps happening. There's clearly a larger system at work than a few isolated individuals doing terrible things.
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I've heard from a few sources that he expressed an admiration of that "incel" shooter in California a few years ago, Elliott Rodger (can't be bothered to confirm spelling). This is very possible and wouldn't surprise me. I don't know if this is confirmed yet though.
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I think it's important we not leap to conclusions, even if those conclusions seem very plausible to us. Maybe Minassian is a bitter twisted MRA, or maybe he did it for some other monstrous ideology. He was brought in alive, so we've got plenty of time to figure it out.
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DAYS LATER UPDATE: Yes, it looks like he was indeed some type of incel misogynist Fuck their ideology and its self-centred entitlement.
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