When will it be enough?
Ten dead in Buffalo, and three more wounded.
Will that be enough?
Where is our breaking point, or at this point is it naïve to continue to believe we even have one?
What line has to be crossed before we — Canada, the U.S., anyone with the authority to make a difference — say enough is enough, we can’t take any more deaths, something has to change?
When the news of the mass shooting at a neighbourhood grocery store in Buffalo broke late Saturday afternoon we were horrified, especially when the enormity of the loss became clear.
We hoped no one from any of our local communities in Niagara was a victim; later we gratefully learned that none were. We felt terrible for our Buffalo neighbours who lost family members or friends in the attack, and for the survivors for what they witnessed.
We mourn, but we can no longer console ourselves with the thought that “at least that kind of thing never happens here.” It’s a quaint notion, but no longer true because that sort of thing certainly does happen here.
Not even a year ago, in London, Ont., in June 2021, four Muslim family members were run down and killed on a city street while out for an early evening walk. Police said the suspect targeted them in his truck because of their faith.
In April 2018, a young man — apparently angered over some perceived rejection by women, which he believed made him a victim — intentionally ran down 27 people on Yonge Street in north Toronto, killing 11 of them.
Sadly we’ve been here before, many times. Do you think after this, that things will be different?
Hate is hate, whether it’s directed at people because of their colour, their faith or because they were walking on the sidewalk you were driving on while you were hunting for victims.
Whether it’s what feels like near-weekly mass shootings in the United States or incidents in Canada that appal us with their brutality — less frequent than in the U.S., but remember we are one-tenth their size — the common denominator is hate.
Here at home, Niagara Regional Police conducted 21 hate-crime investigations last year, the same number as they did in all of 2019 and 2020 combined.
Blame it on a social media monster that spawns and spreads wild conspiracy theories such as “white replacement theory,” which appears to have at least partially motivated the accused18-year-old shooter in Buffalo; blame it on some parts of the media for doing the same thing. But it all comes down to hate, hatred of people different from us.
It doesn’t only show up in mass shootings and attacks. Hatred itself is a weapon. It’s in the way many of our elected representatives get mistreated and, incredibly, sometimes even our healthcare workers.
Too many of us have also lost our ability to recognize outright nonsense when we see it or hear it, to pause for a second and say that can’t be real. We fall for those who generate heat, not light. And that goes for people on the left and the right; nobody gives the other person the benefit of the doubt anymore. Everyone wants someone to blame.
Polarization leads to hatred, but to end polarization someone needs to stand down. A good start would be for some of the politicians who willingly inflame voters with their rhetoric to stop doing that; the same goes for some in the media.
Too much anger, too much hate, too many weapons. This is all leading us in a very bad direction.
Can we finally say now, enough is enough?