An hour before the Dawson College Shootings, there was a conference arms proliferation and how arms sale from Western countries (including Canada) helps fuel ethnic strife and conflicts elsewhere, conference held right here in Montreal, a few meters away from the site of the shootings.

I still remember this heated debate in Montreal, in 1996-1997, when there was a kid that got knifed by another kid at a local small school in my neighborhood. The kid was stabbed over a couple of Pokemon cards, and then the parents started freaking out that we should ban Pokemon cards from school.

I remember asking the one fundamental question : What the hell was an 8-year old kid doing with a rambo knife in the school yard in the first place?

I still can't shake out of my head that Dawson was changed forever because some pseudo-goth loser kid from suburbia managed to get his hand on an assault rifle...