Originally Posted by Steve_P (Post 7133884)

...it has now been confirmed that one of those killed on New Years day was an innocent bystander. I wonder if that will actually make any change in attitudes toward these killings.

Originally Posted by greenbwoy (Post 7133914)

The student (Jose Netto) was a total freak occurance (hit by a stray bullet downtown) and shouldn't be used as a springboard for hysteria. It happened, it's tragic, but you're as likely to be killed by any number of other freak accidents in Calgary. It illustrates gun crime CAN effect innocent people, but it's ridiculously unlikely. Also using the word 'epidemic' to describe a handful of shooting deaths is just crazy talk, as much as the newspapers love using words like that (look at the knife crime headlines in Britain!). There were more murders in Calgary one year in the late 70's than now with a population of a few hundred thousand people, and it's still around 30 people per year on average now, which is a pretty good stat for a city of over a million people...and only some of those are gang/gun-related. Some are domestics etc too. As for initiation rites...you may have been watching too many movies. This simply doesn't happen in Calgary. I find people who knock downtown watch too much OTT north american-style news and never spend any time downtown anyway. Oh, and homeless people tend to be victims of crime more than perpetrators.

Originally Posted by Getting There (Post 7133937)

It's terrible but rightly or wrongly, we perceive such innocent bystander occurrences to be so irregular as to not merit adjusting our habits and how we live our lives here. Our perception in the UK was that the threat was real and near at hand (not of being shot, more of being a victim of crime of some description) and it did influence our day to day lives. It is that perceived threat of day to day crime (poor wording but you know what we mean) that seems much less "in our face" here.

Eamonn & Janet.