In the wake of the execution-style murders of eight members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club last weekend in a rural area of Southwestern Ontario, aM640 radio in Toronto asked the following question on the station's website, "Do you care if biker gang members are killing each other off?" Like similar Internet polls, this poll does not purport to be scientific; yet it was not surprising that 70 per cent of the respondents answered "no".
The worst mass murder in the history of Ontario was certainly a big deal to the media. Days after the bodies of the eight men were discovered, newspapers were still devoting pages and pages to biographies of the victims and accused and various theories about how and why the killings occurred. But consistent with the answers to the poll question, it seemed to be no big deal to the average Canadian.
When the Ontario Provincial Police announced quite early on in the investigation that residents of the area where bodies were found had nothing to fear it didn't appear that they had been fearful to begin with. This was not the violent act committed by those with links to organized crime that occurred in the normally peaceful rural area. Local residents seemed more concerned about the influx of all the international media such as CNN and BBC than they did about the possibility that there were killers on the loose. The reaction to the mass murder throughout the country was nothing like the aftermath of some high profile shootings that have occurred in Toronto and other major Canadian cities.
Now it's true that all of the deceased had connections to an outlaw biker gang. and let's face it; a year from now there will not be any candlelight vigils taking place for the victims. The ordinary person is not overly sympathetic to criminals. But it is too simplistic to assume that the all of the 70 per cent who indicated that they didn't care can be written off to an indifference to the fact that the deceased had ties to outlaw biker clubs.
The reality is that gun crime has become so prevalent these days that Canadians have become blasé about the carnage. Unless the victim is someone like Shaquan Cadougan, the 4-year-old who was shot in front of his family's home last summer or Jane Creba, the 15-year-old accomplished student and athlete who died on Yonge Street while shopping with her mother and sister last December, we tend not to get too excited about people getting shot any more. Where only a few years ago, shootings were extraordinary events, today they are common occurrences like fatal traffic accidents. If it doesn't directly affect us or we can't identify with the players, we tend not to pay too much attention.
The shootings didn't seem to faze the provincial government either. Eight men get shot to death and the government suddenly becomes worried about regulating tow trucks. Many members of motorcycle gangs work in the towing industry and two of the dead men were tow truck drivers who were full patch members of the Bandidos. The politicians that praise the gun registry on the grounds that if it saves just one life it is worth the billions of dollars that has been spent on it are suddenly now more worried about what kind of "clubs" those who operate tow trucks belong to than they are about violent crime. Even the politicians are accepting shootings as a given; as an everyday part of life.
We are so inundated with shootings and gun murders that except in special cases where the circumstances of the victim tugs at the heartstrings even multiple murders don't register more than a blip. as the poll indicated, most of us just don't care.
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