Toronto, WTF?

[Azazal]

Two killed, 19 injured in shooting at Toronto party

- A shooting at a house party in Toronto killed two people and left 19 others wounded, many of the injuries a result of the ensuing commotion, authorities said Tuesday.
It's unclear what prompted the altercation that led to the shooting late Monday, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said.
The injured included an infant under age 3. The number of casualties is preliminary and may go up, according to authorities.

Blair described it as an unprecedented incident.
"The level of violence is something that we have never experienced and right now we're working very hard to ensure that we provide all the assistance that we can to the people who have been injured," he said. "We're working fully to identify the people responsible to get them off the street, to get their guns off the streets and bring them before the courts."

The incident comes six weeks after a mall shooting in the city killed one and injured seven others.
Of the eight casualties in the June shooting at Eaton Centre, seven suffered gunshot wounds. An additional woman was knocked down in the melee and suffered minor injuries.

I hadn't heard anything in the news about the Eaton Centre shooting until now. Did a quick Google search and found, 2nd victim dies days after Eaton Centre shooting

A man has succumbed to injuries he suffered during the deadly food court shooting that took place in Toronto's Eaton Centre on June 2.

Toronto police say 22-year-old Nixon Nirmalendran died Monday evening. Police previously said he had suffered "multiple gunshot wounds" in the food court attack.

The shooting, which occurred on a Saturday night when the mall and the north-end food court was packed with shoppers, also claimed the life of 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan.

Police have alleged that Hassan, the shooter and Nirmalendran, were members of the same gang. However, investigators do not believe the shooting at the Eaton Centre was gang-motivated.

Five other people survived gunshot injuries, including a 13-year-old boy who was wounded in the head. The teen was released from hospital on Sunday.

Police have charged Christopher Husbands, 23, of Toronto, with one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Husbands turned himself in to police in the early hours of June 4. Police announced the charges against him hours later.

4 dead and 24 injured in a few weeks? Toronto, what's going on? Please be a major aberration and not a hint of things to come.

[Koolaidkirby]

Maybe all those gun nuts from the US who said they were moving to Canada weren't bluffing after all?

[Sephirius]

Maybe all those gun nuts from the US who said they were moving to Canada weren't bluffing after all?

Hey, guess what? Fuck you.

Apparently, some idiot tweeted that there would be free Hennessey cognac at this thing- leading to people showing up from as far away as London Ont. Looks like it brought the bad element out as well.

[Saxtonite]

I know this is due to my location and context and all, but 4 dead is a small number for a city of that size especially over several weeks. Toronto has a similar size to Chicago and a similar climate, only larger suburbs, less blacks/hispanics & more chinese + other varying immigrants. Still it is interesting to see how both diverge in things like this despite similarities.

I'm reminded of times when 4 - 10 die in a single day or night (or weekend) during spring-summer-fall in Chicago.

[Broomstick]

Is Toronto also suffering under the current and recent heat waves? High heat generally increases levels of violence due to everyone being sweaty and cranky.

But yes, that was an unusual episode for somewhere in Canada.

[Aaron MkII]

Yes.

Now Dalton can go on about Summer Of the Gun II next election.

[aerius]

When you have around 200 people, apparently with quite a few gang members and questionable characters among them showing up at a block party, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, expect more shootings in about 2 weeks when Crime-abana rolls into town.

[Dalton]

Yes.

Now Dalton can go on about Summer Of the Gun II next election.

I hope you mean McGuinty.

[Saxtonite]

When you have around 200 people, apparently with quite a few gang members and questionable characters among them showing up at a block party, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, expect more shootings in about 2 weeks when Crime-abana rolls into town.

Someone I talked to from another forum who apparently has contacts/hangs with with a lot of East/South Asian gangbangers mentioned how he was surprised how there was such a low murder count in Toronto's Metro Area given all the sorts of weapons he apparently saw them hanging out with and some dangerous practices conducted (i.e. being drunk/high at parties with loaded weapons nearby).

[Aaron MkII]

Yes.

Now Dalton can go on about Summer Of the Gun II next election.

I hope you mean McGuinty.

Yes

[Phantasee]

When you have around 200 people, apparently with quite a few gang members and questionable characters among them showing up at a block party, yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, expect more shootings in about 2 weeks when Crime-abana rolls into town.

I thought Caribana got cancelled after this? Even if it goes on, there's going to be markedly reduced attendance due to the events of the last few weeks.

[Irbis]

I know this is due to my location and context and all, but 4 dead is a small number for a city of that size especially over several weeks. Toronto has a similar size to Chicago and a similar climate, only larger suburbs, less blacks/hispanics & more chinese + other varying immigrants. Still it is interesting to see how both diverge in things like this despite similarities.

I'm reminded of times when 4 - 10 die in a single day or night (or weekend) during spring-summer-fall in Chicago.

In my country, there are 4-5 cities the size of Toronto. We have heat waves too. Number of shooting related deaths this summer? Zero. No wounded/accidents either. But we are this barbarian country that doesn't let our citizens arm bears, or something. Result: our gangs might be slightly dangerous in bad parts of the city, but number of deaths caused by them is 1-3 per year. For whole country, not city. To the point each death is major national event, not Saturday footnote.

And that in something 166% the population of Texas. Plus, our country is much poorer so we should have much higher crime rates, too, not something like 1/3 of American ones, despite slight underfunded police that walks the streets in t-shirts, normal vans, with old pistols, not kevlar body armour, armoured cars and with personal arsenal of its US counterpart.

We're not interesting country, not very cool, I know

[Questor]

Where is this Paradise?

Countries with around 1.66 times Texas's Population (Gun Homicides/100,000 (year)):

Myanmar (1.9x) (0.06 (2002))
South Korea (1.9x) (0.04 (1994))
Colombia (1.8x) (27.1 (2010))
Spain (1.8x) (0.18 (2008))
Ukraine (1.8x) (0.21 (2006))
Tanzania (1.7x) (0.56 (1996))
Kenya (1.7x) (Not Available for gun homicides)
Argentina (1.6x) (3.0 (2008))
Poland (1.5x) (0.04 (2009))
Algeria (1.5x) (0.1 (2008))
Canada (1.4x) (0.5 (2009))
Iraq (1.3x) (Data not available)
Uganda (1.3x) (1.42 (2004)

For reference:
United States (12.5x) (2.98 (2009))
United Kingdom (2.5x) (0.03 (2009))

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... population)
Rates (http://www.gunpolicy.org/)

So while it's OK to be smug - particularly about US gun crime rates, let's use actual facts instead of things you made up.

[His Divine Shadow]

How about actual homicide rates instead.

[Questor]

Those are the actual gun homicide rates, which are a subset of the homicide rates. Square/Rectangle relationship. What use is including knives and clubs in a discussion of gun crime?

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm not interested in just a subset of statistics, it does not really tell me which one is "better" or "worse" in a way that matters, dead is dead, I don't really care about the method.

[Questor]

They're on the site I linked, but as they're not relevant to the point I was making, or the post I was responding to, how about you fire up your web browser and look them up yourself if you're so interested?

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm not really, just saying that using gun crime only to see if a country is "barbaric" or "paradise" is a fucking useless metric.

[Questor]

My point isn't that. My point is that Irbis is being a sanctimonious prick and didn't do any fact checking. Not a single country on that list has only 4 gun homicides a year. For him to get sanctimonious to Canada about gun crime is non-sensical.

Paradise was used in the "place that does not exist that is perfect" sense, with an emphasis on "place that does not exist".

I'm also not seeing a whole huge number of countries that have populations of roughly 40 million that have 4-5 5-6 million person cities (I'm using the cities=metropolitan area definition now.)

[His Divine Shadow]

Well in that we're in agreement anyway.

edit: That too
vvvvvvvvvv

[Questor]

I'm not really, just saying that using gun crime only to see if a country is "barbaric" or "paradise" is a fucking useless metric.

Agreed 100%. I'd actually argue that homicide rates in general are bad measures. The odds are so low that it's essentially a discounted probability. Far better to use something like GINI or the World Happiness Index if you feel like trying to label countries as "barbaric" or "paradise" and even those metrics have significant issues.

I do reserve the right to describe weather with the word "paradise" though, even if the locale is a shithole otherwise. There's just something special about clear gemstone blue skies, 21 degree temperatures, and a nice soft breeze blowing in from the ocean that puts me in a good mood.

[Col. Crackpot]

Questor, the general homicide rate would be a better indicator as gun crime would be less in a country where guns are not available, simply because guns are not available and therefore the vast majority of murders would be committed by other means.

[Questor]

Questor, the general homicide rate would be a better indicator as gun crime would be less in a country where guns are not available, simply because guns are not available and therefore the vast majority of murders would be committed by other means.

What does that have to do with Irbis claiming that there were no shooting related deaths in the entire country, and the since I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed by "shooting" he meant homicide, I checked and found out the gun homicide numbers do not bear this out.

For further detail, and since I no longer feel like being charitable, I decided to pick on Poland (lowest numbers on the list) and I went and pulled the year in that data with all info for suicide, unintentional, and homicide gun deaths, I left out undetermined because of a paucity of recent data. Full data was available for 2009 in my source (BTW, Poland reports on this in a lot of detail for the different types of guns).

Unintentional Gun Deaths: 11
Gun Suicides: 55
Gun Homicides: 15

So, for even the lowest level of gun homicides on the list, there were an average of 1.25 gun homicide and 6.75 gun deaths a month. Therefore it is unlikely that there have been no shooting related deaths this summer at all.

I have no interest in the general crime issue, and would not have even entered the discussion if Irbis hadn't started pulling numbers out of thin air.

[D.Turtle]

He is from Poland. Looking up the European Detailed Mortality Database, they have the following gun-related deaths in 2009 (the newest year they have data from) for Poland (cause and number of deaths):

Handgun discharge 2
Rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge 3
Discharge from other and unspecified firearms 6
Intentional self-harm by handgun discharge 11
Intentional self-harm by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge 14
Intentional self-harm by other and unspecified firearm discharge 30
Assault by handgun discharge 1
Assault by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge 3
Assault by other and unspecified firearm discharge 11
Handgun discharge, undetermined intent 10
Rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge, undetermined intent 5
Other and unspecified firearm discharge, undetermined intent 20

Seems his overall assessment is realtively accurate and his claim of no shooting deaths this summer is certainly possible (depending on what one includes in the term "shooting".

[Darth Wong]

Well, good for Poland, I guess. It's actually surprising, given their poverty level and also their high level of socially accepted racism. You would think that would lead to a lot of racial violence (unless there simply aren't a lot of racial minorities there).