Flit

Mounties and mad trappers

For some reason, this CBC summary of Mountie deaths leaves out perhaps the most famous of them all: the killing of Const. Spike Millen by Albert Johnson ("The Mad Trapper of Rat River") in 1932, himself killed after a 48-day cross-Arctic manhunt which saw innovative uses of aircraft and radio in police work (and one of the first mass media crime dramas, occupying radio news programs across North America with updates) and confirmed the Mountie popular legend of "always getting their man."

The rifle in question in yesterday's quadruple shooting appears to have been of Heckler & Koch manufacture, probably the HK91... one of the rifles specifically covered by the elder Bush administration's 1989 assault weapons ban. I have no idea what a "rapid fire auto carbine assault style rifle" is, though.

UPDATE: It's purest speculation right now, but it's hard to see four immediately fatal shots against armed men while inside a Quonset hut, by a man armed with even a half-decent semi-auto rifle. It may be a while before we figure this out, but it sure would seem like the first two Mounties killed, the ones on overnight duty, had to have been bushwhacked earlier, at night or in the early morning, and that the next two were killed upon their arrival later.

I am baffled by Martin O'Malley, who seems to be arguing that marijuana should be legalized, but its illegal growers subject to martial law. Pick a side, ffs.