BELLEVUE, WA – Once again, innocent lives have been lost in a country with the sort of strict firearm regulations the gun prohibition lobby and anti-gun politicians advocate for here in the United States, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. proves how wrong they are.
“Eight people are dead because Canadian politicians haphazardly believed that restricting millions of honest gun owners would somehow prevent a madman from committing mayhem,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “That has never worked before, it didn’t work in northeast British Columbia, and it won’t work tomorrow in Canada, the United States or anywhere else, and by now, gun control zealots in both countries should have figured that out.”
The suspect, who took his own life, has been identified as an 18-year-old transgender individual who reportedly was known to police, according to the BBC. Authorities have described the shooter as having been born a biological male, “but identified as a woman.” The suspect previously had a gun license, but it expired in 2024, and police had previously visited the suspect’s home and seized guns, which were later returned when the owner petitioned for them. Neither of the guns recovered by police at the crime scene were registered to the shooter.
“As more information about the suspected shooter is made public,” Gottlieb observed, “it is clear this individual had some serious mental and emotional problems. He reportedly murdered his mother and 11-year-old brother before going to the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School to continue the deadly rampage.
“What this and other incidents have shown us is that banning certain types of guns, requiring all sorts of paperwork, creating so-called ‘gun-free zones,’ and adopting safe storage mandates will not prevent deranged individuals from committing deadly crimes,” he continued. “Anyone who thinks otherwise is horribly mistaken, if not completely delusional.
“It is time for the gun control crowd on both sides of the border to come to their senses,” Gottlieb stated. “Penalizing law-abiding citizens with onerous gun restrictions is a social experiment which was obviously fatally flawed from the beginning, and we can only hope Canadian authorities will finally recognize that, and try some other strategy.”