TOO SMALL A WORLD FOR SMUGNESS

It’s tempting for Canadians to view what happens in the United States with a degree of smugness. We have a front-row seat to perhaps the world’s most entertaining political theatre. With a former reality show star playing the president, there is no shortage of idiosyncratic policies and personalities to amuse or astonish Canadians, whether it’s a dubious plan to build a wall on the Mexican border or the country’s peculiarly permissive gun laws.

We are, after all, citizens of a sovereign country watching from afar at the ramifications of American politics or social problems.

If only that were so. Sunday’s massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas grimly reminds us that it’s much too small a world for smugness.

The tentacles of U.S. gun violence are so farreaching that people in Edmonton and smalltown Alberta are grieving the loss of friends and family. Three women from the province are among the 59 concertgoers who died at the country music festival when a gunman positioned high in a nearby hotel sprayed bullets into the crowd.

The small town of Valleyview planned to hold a candlelight vigil Tuesday night for Jessica Klymchuk, a mother of four who was with her fiance when she was struck down.

Calla Medig, who grew up in Jasper and worked at the West Edmonton Mall Moxie’s, was also killed in the attack. Tara Smith Roe of Okotoks was confirmed dead by family after being separated from her husband in the rampage. Jordan McIldoon of Maple Ridge, B.C., was the fourth Canadian to die in the shooting.

It was a horrific weekend for Albertans at home and abroad. In Edmonton on Saturday, an attacker drove a car into a police officer and mowed down pedestrians on Jasper Avenue with a moving van. The massacre in Las Vegas bookended a bloody weekend.

Having the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history occur in Las Vegas meant that Canadians were almost certain to count among the casualties. Canada is the No. 1 source of international visitors to the city and a favoured getaway for Albertans — a convenient connection that will only grow with the launch of the Vegas Golden Knights National Hockey League franchise.

So when President Donald Trump signs a bill revoking Obama-era checks on people with mental illness purchasing guns or when U.S. lawmakers propose a bill easing rules on gun silencers, those decisions can also put Canadians in the crosshairs.