Reflecting for a moment on the latest mass shooting in America. 

Our condolences to the family’s and friends of Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh.

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Official Transcript:

I’m having trouble this week grappling with the news of the latest high-profile mass shooting in Colorado.

If you somehow haven’t heard, late Saturday night a 22-year old opened fired inside Club Q in Colorado Springs, injuring 17 and killing 5.

The club was known as a staple to the local LGBTQ community and so it almost goes without saying that this was a targeted hate crime.

The good news is that the shooter didn’t get away; taken down and disarmed by an army combat veteran who happened to be at the club with his wife, daughter and his daughter’s boyfriend.

The boyfriend, by the way, Raymond Green Vance, also 22, was among those killed in the attack.

The bad news is that once again myself and the rest of the world seem to be looking at America with the most confused of lenses.

How, in 2022, are we still watching mass shootings unfold all over your country, innocent lives being lost, almost every single time at the hands of sole-gunman.

It almost doesn’t even matter that it happened at an LGBTQ establishment because this story is in no way unique to this community. And I don’t say that to downplay what was almost definitely highly motivated by the shooters own disturbing biases and hatred – because after all, he could have chosen a children’s public school, but, the reality is that this could have been any old bar in any city, any state … in America.

Yea, sure, there are the occasional mass shootings in other parts of the world, but this problem is largely an American one and that’s really what gives me the greatest frustration and leaves me, as a Canadian a stone’s throw away from the action, utterly bewildered that this still happens.

It becomes increasingly clear that American’s would rather have the option to kill their neighbour than simply enact legislation removing the ability to purchase firearms in order to protect their children and communities.

There is literally no other way to frame this anymore.

America has a lot of problems.

It has a race problem. It has a homophobic problem. It has a transphobic problem. It has a gun problem. It has wealth inequality problems.

But more than anything, you have a power problem, and it’s going to be your own hands on the trigger that destroys any sense of promise left for your country.

No public space is safe. Not clubs, not parks, not schools, not malls.

No person regardless of religious orientation, sexual orientation, colour, or gender are safe in a community where you allow a 22-year old to purchase a weapon capable of inflicting this type of damage.

And the longer you sit around debating whether or not it was hate-motivated or not, which by the way, how can murder be described as anything but? You are allowing time for the next deranged person with a gun license to plan out his attack.

And yes, I used his for good reason. The act of mass-shootings is largely carried out by young men. White men.

The sooner we all agree on the facts, the easier it will be to solve the problem.

Visit EveryTown.Org to find out how you can help promote gun laws that will save your life.

Barring everything else, consider moving to Canada.

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