Two dead and a dozen wounded in a mass shooting in Toronto Canada.

Police near the sign of the shooting. ABC News. 

Two people are dead and a dozen have been wounded in a mass shooting in Canada. ABC News. The attack occurred in Toronto's Greektown neighborhood and ended as the suspect was shot by the police. The 29 year old man shot 14 people, including a nine year old girl. No motive has been released but police suspect that it was not a random killing. No links to terrorism have been found so far but has also not been ruled out. The attacker used a handgun in the attack. 

My evening was nice until I heard shooting right out of my place on the danforth. So scary!! The gun violence in Toronto is crazy. pic.twitter.com/eNHLlUlp6r

— n💫 (@nsxoxoii) July 23, 2018

My Comment:

Very little information to go on in this attack, with local Canadian sources not having much other info either. The CBC didn't have any more information than the ABC report so it seems like nobody knows much right now. The motive is a total mystery and even things like the condition of the survivors have not been released.

With so little to go on, I won't speculate too much on motive. Of course the first thing you think of is terrorism but you would think that this many hours after the attack someone would have found proof of that. Still, we can't rule it out and I should point out that Canada has occasionally withheld motives for these kinds of attacks. Most notably the motive for the Toronto van attack this spring has never been released, other than a nonsensical twitter post we still don't know why he did what he did. Of course motive isn't always the most important thing in these kinds of situations. Finding out if this is terrorism is important, as the threat could be continuing, but other than that it's a moot point.

This attacker seems to have been stopped pretty quickly by police. He didn't rack up a major body count, fortunately, because the response time was pretty good. Had he not met resistance he probably would have been able to kill more people. Once again, it took a good guy with a gun to take this person down. Good work by the Toronto police taking him out.

His choice of target is odd to say the least. He seems to have targeted random restaurants and pedestrians and didn't seem to have a specific target in mind. This makes me think that this is less likely to be a terror plot and instead is likely some guy deciding to shoot random people. As far as targets go it was a pretty poor choice. Many people were able to escape from this shooter which wouldn't have happened if he had chosen a different target.

I do have to say that either this guy had some military or police training or he spent a lot of time at the gun range because he was fairly accurate with his fire. Though the clip I have seen could be misleading, he didn't seem very close to his victims and was using a full size handgun to shoot at them, which is more difficult that people realize. He seemed confident with his weapon and looked like he knew what he was doing, though with the caveat that a short clip might not be enough to judge.

I am sure this attack will contribute to the gun control debate in Canada. Canada already has strict laws in place for handguns and I bet that their gun control politicians will push new laws in the wake of this attack. I doubt they will do anything at all to prevent these kinds of attacks, as this attacker was able to get a gun with the current laws and people in other countries have no problem getting guns even under stricter laws, but that is what happens in the wake of mass shootings...