Dorval teen killed in shooting
Montreal police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old male in Dorval late Monday, and they took a 12-year-old who was reported to be the victim’s sibling to their operational centre for questioning.
Unconfirmed reports that it was two brothers in what may have been an accidental shooting might renew the gravity of the gun-control debate in Quebec.
The tragedy began about 5:30 p.m. when police were called to Hamilton St. near Thorncrest Ave.
They found a 16-year-old boy who had been wounded, apparently by a firearm. He was transported to hospital and was pronounced dead there.
Although the case has not yet been deemed a homicide, it has been transferred to the Montreal police major crimes division because it involved a death.
With the issue of gun control very much in the news these days, Quebec has had a lot of very unfortunate firsthand experience with the matter.
There was the 1989 massacre at the Université de Montréal’s École Polytechnique engineering school, when a gunman killed 14 women; the 1993 shooting at Concordia University when a disgruntled teacher shot and killed four professors; and the 2006 shooting at Dawson College when a gunman injured 19 students, killing one young woman.
As U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing for a new gun-control initiative in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the Quebec government has said it has no intention of backing down from its fight with the federal government to create a provincial gun registry.
Even though Ottawa has abolished its gun registry and destroyed the data for the rest of Canada, the registry lives on in Quebec, thanks to a court decision last September granting a reprieve for the Quebec portion of the registry.
Quebec’s public security minister, Stéphane Bergeron, announced his intention to introduce a bill to create a Quebec gun registry on Dec. 6, the anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre.
Quebec took the federal government to court after the Conservatives ignored eight unanimous resolutions of the Quebec National Assembly calling for maintaining the registry.
At the time of the Newtown shooting, Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted Canada has a stricter gun-control system than exists in the U.S., even without the long-gun registry.
The Conservatives abandoned the registry last year on the grounds it was costly and ineffective.
Harper said Canada continues to require gun licences and that handguns and restricted weapons be registered.
Quebec will face off with Ottawa in court in March, with Bergeron saying his government is confident of winning.
He said police in the province still consult the registry an average of 664 times a day, using it to determine whether a weapon is registered at the address where they have been called.
As details emerge about what happened on Hamilton St. on Monday afternoon, there is no question the issue of guns will continue to resonate in a province that has had more than its share of tragedies involving weapons.