It’s just my harmless Toronto-type blither. I had no idea I was risking being shot to death by an excitable visiting cop from Kalamazoo who thinks “Have you been to the Stampede yet?” is a coded invitation to join the choir invisible. I would have eaten extensive American lead.
Officer Walt Wawra — now the “laughingstock of Canada” as American website Gawker.com put it, and a joke festival on Twitter — was approached by two young men who suggested recreation options (apparently free Stampede passes).
Wawra interposed his body between them and his good lady wife, said “Gentle-men [sic], I have no need to talk with you, goodbye,” and walked on by, thanking “the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort.”
Talk about your clash of civilizations. A Canadian feels awkward meeting other people in a great big empty like Nose Hill. He isn’t thinking “gun,” he’s thinking “overstuffed cargo short pocket,” but his default will still always be to talk, however pointlessly.
An American feels awkward and his default is to shoot. If he doesn’t have a gun, he then writes to the local paper, the Calgary Herald, about his narrow brush with courtesy.
This is puzzling since one of the things I like most about Americans is their insane friendliness. Three years ago I was crossing the street in Toronto’s Chinatown and a man from San Diego asked me for restaurant advice. His mother-in-law, now a friend, is still sending me pictures of the baby. Little McKenzie’s growing up fast!
Wawra, father of three and husband of Debbie, clearly felt our Canadian refusal to allow tourists to pack heat placed him “in harm’s way,” as Americans put it. Yet Kalamazoo, pop. 74,000, had five murders in 2011. Calgary, with 1.1 million people, had only 11.
Here’s a series of walking tips issued (seriously) by the Kalamazoo Police Department on its website: “Stay alert and tuned in to your surroundings, wherever you are. Don’t be taken by surprise. Be aware and be prepared. Stand tall and walk confidently. Don’t show fear. Don’t look like a victim.”
Wawra, who has previously written to the Kalamazoo Gazette regarding President Obama and his “rapper” associates, was perpetually braced for gunplay, even in a big space on a bright Prairie day. He resented not having had the option of shooting.
Similarly, a common response to the recent slaughter in Colorado was that everyone in the movie theatre should have had the option of firing back.
The thing is, they did. In the U.S., there’s almost no personal restriction on guns and ammo, and no restriction on a citizen’s own government targeting him from the sky with a Predator Drone. Killing is the option of first resort. Talking is the last. As for diplomacy, the first response is to arm the local “friendlies” and bomb the “unfriendlies,” then switch, then bomb everyone. The last would be to ask the UN for a sit-down.
Think of what daily life must be like in the U.S.A. if you’re Wawra and always armed.
You’re at the self-serve checkout at IKEA on a Saturday afternoon and you’ve just realized that your Ektorp sofa is actually a Klippan.
Which is bad enough but now you have to return to the Dark Hall and face down the couple from whose arms you wrenched the Klippan in the first place. They have since settled for the Ektorp — for the sake of the marriage — but you’re in a towering rage. The wife says never mind, let’s just get a Lycksele Lövas, it’s half the price, but no, you’re headed for a showdown.
And you have a Glock.
Every day must be like this in Michigan. “What’s the frequency, Kenneth,” you think you hear someone say. Then imagine the paranoia, the expense of bullet removal and lung replacement, your videotaped interrogation, your incarceration with some guy named Black who never shuts up. And of course missing the Stampede, which was the reason you went to Calgary in the first place.
And now you’re famous. Infamous. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, Wally?
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Heather Mallick
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