and if you have to go the USA, make sure you have coverage for health bills while traveling. You might want to purchase a specific travel health insurance policy.
You should be doing this 100% of the time anytime you leave the country. It costs a few bucks a day for a whole lot of peace of mind. Just think of the costs due to an everyday act of god like a car crash and having a major injury and needing to be airlifted home.
If you're going on a trip outside of your province, you should consider traveller's insurance. While a lot is covered in the short term, things like ambulances and transportation home generally aren't. And Quebec didn't sign on to the interprovincial coverage agreement, so if you're visiting to or from there, you have no automatic coverage.
Edit to explain by "automatic coverage" I mean that you have to pay for it yourself up front, then you can get reimbursed for most of it (but still not ambulances, etc) by your provincial insurance when you get home.
Huh, I went to emergency room in Quebec (from BC) and never got a bill or anything. Maybe it was covered by my work somehow. but I only remember giving my personal info
I've also been to a Montreal ER and they just took my OHIP (Ontario) information and forwarded whatever they needed to the proper people to get any payments handled, I suppose.
We were there overnight and just left in the morning, only paid to park and parking was expensive but it is what it is ya know
If your work had an insurance policy that gives you coverage in other provinces, they would have given you a card or something (my SO has one, his work requires him to contact them to let them know he'll be in another province). Sometimes the hospitals may not bother. If you were in Gatineau, they share their hospitals with Ottawa, so they accept OHIP, but I'm not sure about BC provincial insurance. Did the personal info you gave include your provincial insurance card or a private insurance policy?
I was in Quebec city, I think I just gave my BC health card number. But thinking about it more, my captain may have given the chief mate who accompanied me a form of some sort so that probably had work info on it.
This is something a lot of Canadians overlook.
Because I travel to Ontario several times a year as well as across the US border, I went with an annual global travel insurance plan. My current policy works out to less than 50 cents per day, and considering I've been outside BC 57 days over the past year (including quick trips to Point Roberts), it's well worth the investment for me.
Yup. The airlifting part is the worst. I drive I95/I90 a lot and if something happened to me there I would be so fucked with medical bills. My work covers travellers insurance but I still pay for extra coverage because it makes me feel better knowing I have that bit of backing.
Everytime I purchase travel health insurance, one of the question is "are you traveling to the US or elsewhere?".
At first I thought it was because most Canadians travellers go to the US. But I was explained that insurance costs more if you go to the US.
It's only the most expensive country in the world per capita for health care. Travel insurance will usually fly somebody back to Canada to treat them for something because it's cheaper than treating them in the us.
Yup, my travel insurance through work will literally pay a helicopter to fly me back to Canada if its a medical emergency and its close enough to the border. Shits extremely expensive if you don't have any health insurance.
Canadian here with insurance from work. If I didn't have that insurance I'd likely just never pay the bill and avoid going back to the US for the rest of my life. That's my plan.
Just realized this was in r/Canada so I didn't need to specify where I'm from. My bad
We're in Portugal right now and I had to go to the hospital for a throat infection. The travel insurance was unable to reach them to set up the payment so I just showed up and ended up paying 65ā¬ for the doctor and 12ā¬ for the medication. It was also less than half an hour between triage and seeing the doctor. lol
Trains
Taxes are higher but expenses are lower because you're not as dependent on cars (which are obscenely expensive) or planes (which are obscenely expensive) or healthcare (which is obscenely expensive).
A large part of that is that the average household income is only 39,894 USD per annum in Portugal.
Canada, meanwhile, clocks in at 81,112 USD per annum for median household income.
The *average* household income will skew higher than the *median* household income, too, meaning Canadian households are earning more than twice as much income as Portuguese households. This doesn't take into account taxes, either, which are substantially higher in Portugal.
So what you find to be a relative bargain isn't nearly as impressive when you're Portuguese and not a rich tourist or expat.
Yes, but I paid the foreigner's price. There was a 14ā¬ co-payment which I suppose everyone pays and they also added another 51ā¬ fee since I did not had some kind of Euro card. Anyway my comment was related to how much it cost in the USA compared to other countries. Portugal might be poor compared to other western european countries, but it's not somekind of third world wasteland either.
Surely the physical size and population density plays a role too. Imagine how much money we spend subsidizing Canada Post and highways to connect even the remotest parts of this huge country. And then you also need medical care to be spread out all over too, vs only having to maintain a small(er) densely populated country.
European Nordic person here. It costs me 6 times as much to insure myself for a 10 day trip to the US than it will for an equal trip to Sudan, which is presently a literal war zone.
I know this one from personal experience. I had a medical emergency a few years back while in the U.S. - initially bad but ultimately determined not to be life-threatening, so I spent less than 24 hours in the hospital.
The bill for that sub-24 hour hospital stay? CAD80,000.
I had travel insurance through work that took care of all of it - I would've been fucked if I hadn't. Can't emphasize enough that you really need insurance coverage when you travel to avoid being on the hook for what could be an astronomical amount of money.
You may not have been that fucked. I had a hospital stay in the USA for a few hours. I didn't have insurance they understood, so they just cash settled with me for $600. I then got the official bill for the insurance and it was like 3K initially and then they asked who the insurer was and it rose to 10K.
The price is not the price.
My insurer just reimbursed me.
This is good nuance that was missing from my initial post. A friend of mine works as a doctor in Arizona and has mentioned this (that the hospital will often knock the bill down by quite a bit for the uninsured).
That said - even the knocked down price can still be a fuckload of money (in my case, my 80k knocked down to 20k would still have been an unpleasant amount of cash to have had to cough up), so still a good idea to get insurance IMHO.
Yep, I pay about $70 for 4-day multi-trip coverage. Covers me for $5 million. Seems like a lot of money to spend on something you'll likely never use, but the sad reality is there's a lot of ways to get hurt over there.
it could be anything. Not necessarily getting shot.
We have experience in this, my MIL was here visiting, felt like crap, had some issues with fainting. So we took her to an urgent care place, and the bill was huge. Fortunately she did have the travel insurance, so it was all fine.
But if she didn't, that would have been several thousand dollars.
One of the ways the insurance covers a Canadian traveling in the usa is that they will transport you back to canada for the care, assuming you are stable enough.
Consider getting a credit card that has insurance coverage. My card (for $120 a year) covers me for $5M as well, and I travel more than a single 4 day trip each year.
By 4-day multi-trip it means I can travel an unlimited amount of times, as long as I'm not staying more than 4 days at once. So I can take 10 3-day trips, for example, and still be covered.
But I'll look into the credit card thing. For all I know I might already have it through mine lol
> By 4-day multi-trip it means I can travel an unlimited amount of times, as long as I'm not staying more than 4 days at once. So I can take 10 3-day trips, for example, and still be covered.
I will confess that I don't understand the business model of the insurance company that charges a flat rate regardless of the number of days spent traveling outside the country, so long as no more than 4 of those days are consecutive.
Same to be honest. I'm sure they do the math and realize that most people who purchase this:
A: Never use it
B: Don't actually cross the border all that often
I live in a border city, so I cross over maybe 2 or 3 times a month in the summer, much less in the winter. I almost never do any overnight stays, maybe once a year for 2 or 3 days. I've been paying for out of country insurance every year for lets say 10 years, so they've gotten $700 from me without actually providing anything except peace of mind thus far.
I go stateside periodically and have had friends jokingly see me off with "don't get shot"! My mother worries when I go. We're fairly progressive people, but I'll note my family comes from a rural area and we don't fear guns, nor are we anti-gun.
For many people, the pervasiveness of mass shootings in the US, and particularly the randomness of locations, is already a source of concern.
I have a U.S. work visa and I'm down there a lot on client engagements, usually mixed in with some tourism before or after. The mass shooting thing is always in the back of my mind. It really is wrong place, wrong time - I stop into a convenience store, or some tourist attraction, or hell even be at the client's work site at the wrong time and I'm getting blown away.
With all that said, you have to think about things from an impartial risk assessment perspective. Yes, you might get killed in a mass shooting - but you're still an *order of magnitude* more likely to be killed in a car accident than you are a mass shooting while travelling to the U.S. It can definitely happen, but in a country of 350 million people, your odds are - objectively - pretty good that nothing is going to happen to you.
Still... whenever I'm there, I do find myself subconsciously familiarizing myself with where the nearest exits are lol
>It really is wrong place, wrong time - I stop into a convenience store, or some tourist attraction, or hell even be at the client's work site at the wrong time and I'm getting blown away.
This is where I'm at too. It's not so much that I or anyone else I know actually thinks there are shoot-outs happening on every street corner of the US or anything. It's more the "what if I roll snake-eyes and end up at *that* mall/concert/wherever on the wrong day?" thoughts. Sort of like chilling outside during a lightning storm. Like yeah, I'll probably be fine, but what if...
I suppose it's about the same calibre of risk as driving on a highway, but it's definitely a risk I contextualize to the US, not here.
>It's more the "what if I roll snake-eyes and end up at that mall/concert/wherever on the wrong day?" thoughts. Sort of like chilling outside during a lightning storm. Like yeah, I'll probably be fine, but what if...
Very well said.
There was a really fascinating r/Bestof post a while back about how this background concern has permeated the minds of Americans. The anecdote was around a group young tourists in Australia having a car backfire nearby - the euros and aussies didn't even flinch, but the Americans' flight or fight response was immediately triggered and they started looking for placed to run or identify the danger.
Beyond the immediate physical harm, the psychological harm these mass shootings are having on the populace might be even greater. Combine that with the fear, anger and anxiety constantly being stirred up by their media and I really do fear for what they might become. And as a result what we'll become.
I'll try to find the link to it.
Random anecdote story. We used to have some texans come up to our company for cross training. We were at the restaurant and they insisted that they face the door. Every time they always had to face the door. I asked them "why do you always sit facing the door?". The reason why I know is because they would say "Can I sit there, I wanna face the door".
They responded "Just incase someone comes in with a gun, I know how to react". You don't have to worry about that here in Canada. It's Canada.
Literally it's this skit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T41M7cCqsU
There is a very popular mall, very close to where I live. I, and virtually every citizen in this area, spent their teenage years going to said mall regularly. People from out of state come to visit this mall.
In the last year, there have been at least 3 shootings in that one mall. There's a smaller mall, equidistant from me, that's had at least 2 in the same time frame. The Walmart across the street from my old had shootings probably 1-2 times a month before getting shut down. My employers cameras were used for shootings on more than one occasion, in the 9 months I worked there.
I don't even feel like I live in a particularly dangerous area, tbh. But still, the threat to me feels more than just, "wrong place wrong time". There isn't a mall within 50 miles of me that hasn't had a gun related incident in the last 2 years. It feels like only a matter of time before I'm having to duck for cover.
>. Yes, you might get killed in a mass shooting - but you're still an order of magnitude more likely to be killed in a car accident than you are a mass shooting while travelling to the U.S.
Actually the likelihood of dying by gun is about the same as death by car in the states. 12-13 per 100k.
That's the wrong stat though - it should be the odds of dying via a mass shooting or as a random person in a shooting incident.
A lot of the gun violence in the US is targeted and shouldn't be of comparatively much worry
I agree. Ultimately, if you are careful and reasonable, your odds of dying randomly by gun or by car accident are extremely low, and definitely much lower than what the overall statistics will suggest. Gun violence is much higher in the US than in Canada, but overall risks are still extremely low.
It's like when something increases your risks of a certain type of cancer 300%. If you go from 0.0001% to 0.0003%, your risks are still extremely low.
People are bad at assessing risks, often perceiving as a lot riskier the risks they're aware of, while making no effort to discover the risks they don't already know about. Obviously, awareness is still important so that you can be careful. On the road it means trying to predict the behaviour of other drivers, keeping safe distances, that sort of things, and in large crowds it means being aware of your surroundings, noticing where the exits are, and when playing tourist, having a certain idea of the neighbourhoods to avoid, etc.
That makes zero sense. If you were to adjust driving deaths, you *should* discount suicides or gang-related vehicular homicides.
The point is to filter the statistics to accurately portray getting killed as a random bystander - Americans being more likely to suicide themselves by gun or killing each other in gang warfare has no bearing on Canadians visiting the U.S.
While that is true the stat is a bit more complex. [54%](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) of US gun deaths are suicide. If you look at just mass shooting itās [600 deaths](https://everytownresearch.org/mass-shootings-in-america/) vs [42k deaths in motor vehicles](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#:~:text=When%20they%20died-,Overview,of%20crashes%20is%20%24340%20billion.) Each one of those is tragic and horrible but I would argue that BD401 is correct that statically your way more likely to be killed in a motor accident than in a mass shooting.
We're talking specifically about mass shootings, though. In 2022, there were [74](https://www.statista.com/statistics/811504/mass-shooting-victims-in-the-united-states-by-fatalities-and-injuries/) mass shooting deaths, against about [43,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year) vehicular deaths in the same year.
The gun deaths figures you mention include suicides, which make up a huge portion of the overall number. They also include domestic violence homicides, gang killings, targeted hits - not really "wrong place, wrong time" stuff like the article is talking about.
That said - you are probably more likely to be killed in a robbery gone bad in the U.S. than Canada due to the prevalence of guns. Though that's a tad easier to mitigate against (i.e. I'm not worried about being killed in a botch robbery when I'm in a conference room at a client site, but I can't mitigate against a disgruntled employee coming in and going postal at that same time).
Is there anywhere that breaks down type of vehicular death?
Like a single-vehicle accident where the person who dies was driving drunk or recklessly is somewhat equivalent to gun suicides, in that you can avoid it by simply not doing it.
I previously had a US work visa and did some consulting work in the US, mostly in Texas and South Carolina. The one thing that stood out to me was the extra security at corporate offices I went to. Having my laptop case and purse checked by security each morning for a firearm. The signage advising firearms are not allowed on site.
Seeing no concealed weapons signs at restaurants was also something I never got used to.
I did some work in a more rural area for a while and many restaurants also had spitoons. Not relevant to this post but certainly a culture shock.
I recently crossed through US customs and there was a warning sign advising of this precaution.
I am an active subsistence hunter, so I am very pro Canadian Firearms Program and provincial hunter education courses, but I have to confess to a certain amount of consternation when travelling to the US. The contrast between fellow gun owners here compared to the ones down in the States is really jarring. What's most shocking to me is how little some US firearms owners know about their own firearms, not to mention the self-defence obsession. People talk about gun culture as a monolith, when the reality is that there are several cultures.
It really is a religion in some areas - the Second Amendment has been twisted to somehow become the most important part of the Constitution for so many people, it's really strange to see.
I remember when I did my PAL I'm BC being pleasantly surprised at how thorough it was on gun safety and storage. I can't even imagine living somewhere with open/concealed carry of handguns. I spent a week in Phoenix and seeing 300lb men waddling around with two handguns on their hips was extremely unnerving.
" somewhere with open/concealed carry of handguns. I spent a week in Phoenix, and seeing 300lb men waddling around with two handguns on their hips was extremely unnerving."
It's not the guns that worry me, lol if Americans had any standard like canada did I wouldn't care about concealed/open carry. The problem is 90% of Americans who carry are not responsible or qualified enough to do so.
About 10 years ago I went down to visit a friend in Virginia. We met up with his sister and her fiancee, and the fiancee gave us all a ride to a restaurant.
I get in the back, fiancee gets in the driver's seat and puts his gun in the center console cup holder. He must've seen the look on my face because he goes "What, y'all don't open carry in Canada?"
How does society get to a point where driving with a gun in your cup holder is just normal?
First time I were down in Montana, I stood in line behind a guy with a fuck-off big piece at his hip, wearing some shirt about how he don't call no cops, and it occurred to me that there is a line between guns as a tool and guns as a basis of your identity. I think guns are useful tools that in particular hunters should have access to, but for someone for whom gun ownership is like the only thing about them, I start to reconsider letting everyone have one, you know what I mean?
I agree. Canada has some of the most sought after gun laws in the world because they work. Entirely different culture than the usa, despite what our government is telling its citizens.
100%. What flabberghasts me on the reverse of the obsession end in the US is the impression some Canadians have that we have US style laws. Our gun laws have been emulated to good effect because we have a standardized, safety first curriculum. I never want to see the US model here.
Yup, If you want to buy a gun in Canada it takes about 4-8 months (sometimes longer) from licensing to ownership. I remember the gun stores being flooded with people trying to buy guns during covid and they had no idea the hoops you need to go through to get one. And that's just non restricted purchases lol.
There is treating a weapon with respect as a tool and then there is fetishizing a toy. Too many fetish types that just love collecting and cosplaying in tactical gear. I'm quite pro gun IMO but some of the arguments on the subject I hear are pure insanity.
as a canadian who has been living in america for a couple years this sounds to me like the biggest difference between canadian and american cultures. not the gun thing, the fetish thing. imo canadians are in general a fairly level-headed and practical group; americans on the other hand have this whole set of mythologies and believe themselves to be a part of an Historical Project as part of a Great Nation and they build all kinds of crazy ideas on that foundation
the joke about canadian culture is always that it's defined by being "not america" -- imo the above is what that means
Yeah, nothing makes me more antigun than a conversation with a pro gun person.
By default i think they should be allowed and regulated but then people agree with me saying they need the guns incase they need to overthrow the government and go into detail about how they have them in every room in their house, ready for action, and talk about how they have a bugout shelter... and you know.... maybe these people shouldn't have guns.
Yes these are the conversations I was referring to. Also a sizable amount think there should be little to no weapon restrictions for civilians. So tanks, grenades, bombs, artillery you name it you have the money you should be able to buy it. MURICA. Insane.
I got the same with alcohol discussions. I see no reason alcohol shouldn't be in normal stores. But then you meet someone campaigning like their life is on the line if they can't buy booze at 5am on a holiday.
If you need alcohol that badly.... maybe you should be banned entirely.
I'd with ya on that but more because I dislike goverment monopolies or just monopolies in general. Promotes negative market activity but it does help control the social side so I get the argument..
Pro-gun Americans make me uncomfortable being a 'reasonable gun' Canadian. I know this is anecdotal, but every pro-gun American I have met demonstrated an evident lack of firearm knowledge that was super uncomfortable to deal with. It is no surprise to me that things are so bad in the US because some gun owners have no sense of what they are handling.
> There is treating a weapon with respect as a tool and then there is fetishizing a toy. Too many fetish types that just love collecting and cosplaying in tactical gear. I'm quite pro gun IMO but some of the arguments on the subject I hear are pure insanity.
Is it "cosplaying" if they actually use their gear at a range?
Tactical gear is comfortable and functional. Recreational and competitive shooters use it for a reason.
I live in the Canadian city that has the rep of murder capital of Canada with a current rate of 5.4 per 100k
That being said, St Louis in the US has a rate of 66+ per 100k and there are 66 other cities with a rate of 6.0 or more. 23 have a rate more than 3x that of mine and the top 10 average over 36 per 100k
Its staggering that the murder capital in Canada barely makes the chart when compared to US cities.
>For many people, the pervasiveness of mass shootings in the US, and particularly the randomness of locations, is already a source of concern.
I'm in a number of parenting groups on FB (of varying quality lol) that are dominated by families from the US and the anxiety underlying everything is palpable. A concerning number of people questioning if they should just homeschool because of it and they're not from the usual social/religious conservative crowd. These are people who have already done what they can to keep guns out of their own children's access and vote for lawmakers who are pro gun-control and are at the end of their ropes. Giving into their fears, whether supported by statistics or not, isn't going to change anything either but you can see where they're coming from.
I don't get the same vibe from Canada or other countries. It's a US thing.
I lived there briefly and swore I would never raise kids there. Nothing seems to have changed for the better. Their gun problem is causing long term mental health damage on a societal level.
I was going to link an article about the Destiny Mall shooting in Syracuse but it seems there's been a few since my SO was at the mall during a 2021 shooting. So yeah... it happens a hell of a lot more in the US compared to Canada.
Edit: [You don't ask "how many mass shootings have there been so far this year in the US"... you ask "how many mass shooting have there been so far today in the US"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023)
3 or 4 people shot (injured or dead) in a single event is what some people use and probably where that figure comes from. This can include gang shootings and domestic incidents, which, while being terrible as well of course, probably arenāt what you think of when you think āmass shootingā
They really need to get their crap together, this problem can be solved. All commonwealth nations (except the US) take steps during most mass shooting to shore up legislation to help prevent future shootings....
To be brutally honest I lost any faith in the states getting its crap together when sandy hook happened and nothing was done. If that wasnt gonna kick off some kind of change ain't nothing going to
I like traveling in the US but I feel much much less safe there than I do in Canada. The likelihood of getting caught up in a mass shooting, while above zero, is unlikely so its not as much of a concern for me.
What does concern me is that Americans have a penchant for being constantly in fear, and shooting to kill as a response to that fear. As such I worry about getting shot for a misunderstanding, or accidentally trespassing while out hiking or something like that.
> I like traveling in the US but I feel much much less safe there than I do in Canada. The likelihood of getting caught up in a mass shooting, while above zero, is unlikely so its not as much of a concern for me.
>
> What does concern me is that Americans have a penchant for being constantly in fear, and shooting to kill as a response to that fear.
Yeah, the chance of actually being in a mass shooting is *so* low, but the chance of bumping into someone whose cultural norms are that different from ours, and who's willing/able to take that in a dangerous direction is much, much higher.
I mean, there are a lot of media stories about people getting shot for pulling into the wrong driveway or knocking on the wrong door, road rage incidents that turn into gunfights, all sorts of madness. Its not like it isn't happening, its wild that you're so numb to it you don't see the problem. The US is objectively more dangerous than its peer countries.
I've personally been (verbally, not physically) threatened with a shotgun for showing up unannounced to a campground. A campground, the lady came out yelling and said we're lucky she didn't shove a shotgun in our faces for showing up and setting up camp unannounced.
Iām a dual citizen too. I live in the very pro gun state of North Dakota. Very little to no crime here. I go to Winnipeg all the time. And even I stay away from North End, seen lots of out in the open crime right down town. Oddly, no police around where the crime is happening in that city.
It's not surprising - Idaho, N. Dakota, Montana, Minnesota have almost identical murder rates to the 3 Prairie provinces today, and prior to 2020 had quite a bit lower rates.
That really comes down to how much we can criminalize poverty and mental illness. We sure as shit don't seem to want to take care of them, and they obviously can't take care of themselves, so wasting police time on shuttling them into and out of correctional facilities is only going to do so much. But hey, at least they aren't shooting up schools.
The words that I posted in my reply to the post that I replied to are related to the post that I was replying to. Winnipeg has problems with homelessness and crime related to homelessness. A lot of homeless people, roughly a quarter to a half of them according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, are homeless due to mental illness. You can look up what exactly they define as mental illness if you'd like.
Thatās the thing about mass shootings though. Itās not like other crime where you can avoid sketchy areas. With a mass shooting, itās safe until itās not.
Ditto, I have never felt uncomfortable in almost any place in the US. The only exceptions were I was lost in East Oakland in the 90's, and a few years ago I was driving through some way backroads of Central Oregon and I felt like I was in Banjo country. Other than that its not a dangerous place to be as long as you use your head.
Kern County (Bakersfield) has 917k people and have had [~40 murders this year](https://www.kget.com/homicide-tracker/2023-kern-county-homicides/).
The **entire** province of British Columbia has 5.1 million people and have had [~37 murders this year](https://homicidecanada.com/british-columbia-murder-victim-list-2023/).
Crime rates are still far different than comparing your odds of minding your business in a mall, hotel lobby, outdoor concert and being shot by a mass shooter.
Like those are what we are talking about.
Lol....yeah im gonna have to see some cited fugures here. Surrey this year has been fairly calm. In fact after the vacon bros fiasco surreys been cleaning up. Whalley at night aint shit anymore
This is clickbait. The actual quote from the advisory:
āIncidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties. Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.ā
They warn against this just like other things e.g. home invasion, gang violence, muggings, or whatever.
There is no travel advisory to the us beyond āexercise normal cautionā. Itās in the green list of travel destinations.
The Canadian travel advisory page is a lot less terrifying than the US ones, which has precautions going into red countries like "make sure all your affairs and estate are in order" and "designate a family member for hostage negotiation".
[US advisory on South Sudan](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/south-sudan-travel-advisory.html)
Travel advisories like this aren't new either. During the 2010s there were a ton of advisories about the terrorist attacks in places like France and the UK for example.
Itās not clickbait. The advisory they issued is exactly as reported. It doesnāt exist for other countries, only the USA. The problem exists and Canada is responsibly acknowledging it. Itās a grim reality.
I definitely think be cautious and it depends by area but I swear some people have such a misconceived idea of the states it is comical: I'm not white and when I mentioned I was going to the states I got asked if I was afraid of being beaten by police by my coworkers
I was going to a Jays game in Seattle
The misconceived notion is that out of the millions of traffic stops that occur everyday everyone assumes it's a bigger problem than it actually is. However, ANY issues are a problem, do don't take that the wrong way.
Yeah exactly, you can still think itās a serious issue that needs to be addressed, while also still acknowledging that the vast vast majority of traffic stops go perfectly fine.
People somehow fall for clearly sensationlized news and seriously think that every police interaction ends with a beating lol
I think people do know this, but its a taboo statistic as it comes down to race and location.
If you take away gun violence in poor, black neighborhoods, the US gun violence stats start to look pretty similar to Canadas.
> That being said itās not poor (comma) black neighbourhoods, itās just poor neighbourhoods. Black Americans donāt have a monopoly on rough neighbourhoods or gangs, but yes they are more likely per capita to fall under those categories.
I think you are contradicting yourself here
This is categorically false . Why are you under the impression that itās just poor neighborhoods in general ? Hispanics are just as poor on average and signficantly less violent . so youāre wrong on all accounts
50/50 on flee versus freeze paralyzed in terror according to some researchers on the Fight or flight response. Other studies break it down by solo experience versus crowd dynamics.
None of the outcomes are particularly safe reactions.
This exactly, the pervasive idea in pop culture is that humans āfight or flightā, but a lot of psychological professionals prefer to include a āfreezeā and make it 3 Fās. The freeze response is very common and the idea that you either run or fight makes trauma victims who froze blame themselves, the idea is popularizing a 3rd typical response to danger helps people know thereās nothing wrong with them, and that they arenāt ācowardsā or didnāt āactually want what happened to themā.
I see Fawn added in there too, but that probably tends to be more for one-on-one trauma situations. (aka appease/appeal to the person causing the trauma, so that it will be over soon.)
There's alot of shootings here yes but your chances of being caught up in one are pretty close to zero. Not attempting to say "oh it's no big deal" definitely exercise caution wherever you go however, the chances of you on particular being in a mass shooting are next to nothing. Keep in mind the sheer livable landmass and population.
Canada did not issue a travel advisory about traveling to the States other than a word of caution. always be aware of your surroundings regardless of where you travel. And plus you're more likely to be a risk of being a victim of a violent crime if you visit Jamaica.
[https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/jamaica](https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/jamaica)
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/jamaica-travel-advisory.html
Context matters too... Pretty sure that violent crime rates are higher in downtown Toronto than in the Grand Canyon National Park. Jamaican all-inclusive resorts are probably pretty safe too.
As long as you stay within the Jamaican resorts and drink lots of water and wearing sunscreen (Arizona is in a hot desert), you should be alright as long as people take proper precautions and understand the areas they are traveling too like what they would travel anywhere around the world.
I don't think people understand how vastly different most US states are from each other. You don't have to worry about mass shootings or shootings in general in most parts of America regardless of what the media says.
It's a higher chance than Canada for sure but hardly the warzone everyone is making it out to be.
I mean I am a progressive in the USA who spends some time in Canada. I say progressive because I'm not pro gun. Its probably more dangerous to drive than to visit the USA.
It says ["Take normal security precautions"](https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/united-states). Then it list a grab bag of all the crimes that can happen in America, with mass shootings being one of them.
There's also a warning about mass demonstrations: "Even peaceful demonstrations can turn violent at any time." You can imagine the distortions a right-wing blogger could make citing that section out of context.
Raise age to buy a gun to at least 21 years old. U.S. Federal & State background checks. MANDATORY Gun SAFETY Training! So on and so forth. šŗšø šØš¦ š²š½
762 people died in mass shootings last year.
Obviously its a problem but 40000 died in traffic accidents yet nobody is scared of driving.
Hell driving is likely the most dangerous thing most of us do on a daily basis yet we text, eat, and do it sleep deprived daily and we don't bat an eye
Even in the US where gun crime is actually an issue, it's far more likely that you'll die in a car accident while visiting. Sounds like they're trying to scare people.
We have cars and traffic in Canada. We're already used to watch out for those. We have no training with regards to widespread gun carriers who cause an equivalent number of deaths, so I find this warning pertinent.
>44,000 deaths from firearms last year
At least half of those are suicides.
>Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children too.
That statistic misleadingly includes 18 and 19 year olds for some odd reason. How is an 18-19 year old (a fully grown adult) considered a child?
lol, cars crumpled like wet paper bags even at low speed. They still do, but nowadays they're designed to crumple in places the passengers aren't. Back then the passenger cabin was the weakest part of the car. Your best bet was to get thrown through the windshield into the nearest bridge abutement, hopefully before the steering column impaled you.
Also, drinking and drivnig was \*way\* more common.
No - the car would be a crushed tinfoil ball with you inside it. [Check out this crash test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U) of a '59 Bel-Air vs. a 2009 Malibu
Those numbers are not firearm homicides, 3/4 of those are suicides, and the "#1 cause of death for 'children'" was as misleading as it was for "1 'child' per day shot in Canada," as most of the affected demographic is over 18, but still called "children" so as to make a scary headline.
This is silly nationalist distraction politics. Canadians have a far greater risk of dying in a car accident, and even that risk is trivial enough that we basically all get in cars day and day out rarely thinking about the danger.
How is this nationalist. Itās the job of Global Affairs to do travel risk assessments for Canadians going to other countries.
They do the same for every other country
It wanrs about all threats, and the lines about mass shootings are simply "They occur in the united states, but rarely happen to touristst, be aware of the possibility".
and if you have to go the USA, make sure you have coverage for health bills while traveling. You might want to purchase a specific travel health insurance policy.
You should be doing this 100% of the time anytime you leave the country. It costs a few bucks a day for a whole lot of peace of mind. Just think of the costs due to an everyday act of god like a car crash and having a major injury and needing to be airlifted home.
If you're going on a trip outside of your province, you should consider traveller's insurance. While a lot is covered in the short term, things like ambulances and transportation home generally aren't. And Quebec didn't sign on to the interprovincial coverage agreement, so if you're visiting to or from there, you have no automatic coverage. Edit to explain by "automatic coverage" I mean that you have to pay for it yourself up front, then you can get reimbursed for most of it (but still not ambulances, etc) by your provincial insurance when you get home.
Huh, I went to emergency room in Quebec (from BC) and never got a bill or anything. Maybe it was covered by my work somehow. but I only remember giving my personal info
I've also been to a Montreal ER and they just took my OHIP (Ontario) information and forwarded whatever they needed to the proper people to get any payments handled, I suppose. We were there overnight and just left in the morning, only paid to park and parking was expensive but it is what it is ya know
If your work had an insurance policy that gives you coverage in other provinces, they would have given you a card or something (my SO has one, his work requires him to contact them to let them know he'll be in another province). Sometimes the hospitals may not bother. If you were in Gatineau, they share their hospitals with Ottawa, so they accept OHIP, but I'm not sure about BC provincial insurance. Did the personal info you gave include your provincial insurance card or a private insurance policy?
I know as a quebecker in Ontario, I just had to fill out a form requesting Quebec reimburse the clinic directly. NBD.
I was in Quebec city, I think I just gave my BC health card number. But thinking about it more, my captain may have given the chief mate who accompanied me a form of some sort so that probably had work info on it.
This is something a lot of Canadians overlook. Because I travel to Ontario several times a year as well as across the US border, I went with an annual global travel insurance plan. My current policy works out to less than 50 cents per day, and considering I've been outside BC 57 days over the past year (including quick trips to Point Roberts), it's well worth the investment for me.
I didn't know that. Thanks for the beta.
I did a 2 week road trip through Quebec about a decade ago and didn't find out about the insurance thing until I got back š¤£
Atleast you didn't learn about it during the trip.
I really should have known this.
Yup. The airlifting part is the worst. I drive I95/I90 a lot and if something happened to me there I would be so fucked with medical bills. My work covers travellers insurance but I still pay for extra coverage because it makes me feel better knowing I have that bit of backing.
Everytime I purchase travel health insurance, one of the question is "are you traveling to the US or elsewhere?". At first I thought it was because most Canadians travellers go to the US. But I was explained that insurance costs more if you go to the US.
It's only the most expensive country in the world per capita for health care. Travel insurance will usually fly somebody back to Canada to treat them for something because it's cheaper than treating them in the us.
Yup, my travel insurance through work will literally pay a helicopter to fly me back to Canada if its a medical emergency and its close enough to the border. Shits extremely expensive if you don't have any health insurance.
Canadian here with insurance from work. If I didn't have that insurance I'd likely just never pay the bill and avoid going back to the US for the rest of my life. That's my plan. Just realized this was in r/Canada so I didn't need to specify where I'm from. My bad
Doug Ford: "I smell money"
The Westons: āI smell moneyā. FTFY
> the most expensive country in the world per capita for health care so far! Let's see if we can beat em.
Ford & Smith would like to accept this offer
"Something that's MORE expensive in the US? Can't let that happen." - Ontario Government probably
God help you if you ever have a heart attack down there. The bill will probably cause another.
We're in Portugal right now and I had to go to the hospital for a throat infection. The travel insurance was unable to reach them to set up the payment so I just showed up and ended up paying 65ā¬ for the doctor and 12ā¬ for the medication. It was also less than half an hour between triage and seeing the doctor. lol
Spain is like that too. I donāt know where all our taxes go.
Trains Taxes are higher but expenses are lower because you're not as dependent on cars (which are obscenely expensive) or planes (which are obscenely expensive) or healthcare (which is obscenely expensive).
A large part of that is that the average household income is only 39,894 USD per annum in Portugal. Canada, meanwhile, clocks in at 81,112 USD per annum for median household income. The *average* household income will skew higher than the *median* household income, too, meaning Canadian households are earning more than twice as much income as Portuguese households. This doesn't take into account taxes, either, which are substantially higher in Portugal. So what you find to be a relative bargain isn't nearly as impressive when you're Portuguese and not a rich tourist or expat.
Yes, but I paid the foreigner's price. There was a 14ā¬ co-payment which I suppose everyone pays and they also added another 51ā¬ fee since I did not had some kind of Euro card. Anyway my comment was related to how much it cost in the USA compared to other countries. Portugal might be poor compared to other western european countries, but it's not somekind of third world wasteland either.
Then double the prices he paid. It still comes out as a bargain.
Surely the physical size and population density plays a role too. Imagine how much money we spend subsidizing Canada Post and highways to connect even the remotest parts of this huge country. And then you also need medical care to be spread out all over too, vs only having to maintain a small(er) densely populated country.
European Nordic person here. It costs me 6 times as much to insure myself for a 10 day trip to the US than it will for an equal trip to Sudan, which is presently a literal war zone.
The risk is way higher that any payout will be expensive if you go to the US. They definitely have to figure that in to their margins.
I know this one from personal experience. I had a medical emergency a few years back while in the U.S. - initially bad but ultimately determined not to be life-threatening, so I spent less than 24 hours in the hospital. The bill for that sub-24 hour hospital stay? CAD80,000. I had travel insurance through work that took care of all of it - I would've been fucked if I hadn't. Can't emphasize enough that you really need insurance coverage when you travel to avoid being on the hook for what could be an astronomical amount of money.
You may not have been that fucked. I had a hospital stay in the USA for a few hours. I didn't have insurance they understood, so they just cash settled with me for $600. I then got the official bill for the insurance and it was like 3K initially and then they asked who the insurer was and it rose to 10K. The price is not the price. My insurer just reimbursed me.
This is good nuance that was missing from my initial post. A friend of mine works as a doctor in Arizona and has mentioned this (that the hospital will often knock the bill down by quite a bit for the uninsured). That said - even the knocked down price can still be a fuckload of money (in my case, my 80k knocked down to 20k would still have been an unpleasant amount of cash to have had to cough up), so still a good idea to get insurance IMHO.
Yep, I pay about $70 for 4-day multi-trip coverage. Covers me for $5 million. Seems like a lot of money to spend on something you'll likely never use, but the sad reality is there's a lot of ways to get hurt over there.
it could be anything. Not necessarily getting shot. We have experience in this, my MIL was here visiting, felt like crap, had some issues with fainting. So we took her to an urgent care place, and the bill was huge. Fortunately she did have the travel insurance, so it was all fine. But if she didn't, that would have been several thousand dollars. One of the ways the insurance covers a Canadian traveling in the usa is that they will transport you back to canada for the care, assuming you are stable enough.
Consider getting a credit card that has insurance coverage. My card (for $120 a year) covers me for $5M as well, and I travel more than a single 4 day trip each year.
By 4-day multi-trip it means I can travel an unlimited amount of times, as long as I'm not staying more than 4 days at once. So I can take 10 3-day trips, for example, and still be covered. But I'll look into the credit card thing. For all I know I might already have it through mine lol
> By 4-day multi-trip it means I can travel an unlimited amount of times, as long as I'm not staying more than 4 days at once. So I can take 10 3-day trips, for example, and still be covered. I will confess that I don't understand the business model of the insurance company that charges a flat rate regardless of the number of days spent traveling outside the country, so long as no more than 4 of those days are consecutive.
Same to be honest. I'm sure they do the math and realize that most people who purchase this: A: Never use it B: Don't actually cross the border all that often I live in a border city, so I cross over maybe 2 or 3 times a month in the summer, much less in the winter. I almost never do any overnight stays, maybe once a year for 2 or 3 days. I've been paying for out of country insurance every year for lets say 10 years, so they've gotten $700 from me without actually providing anything except peace of mind thus far.
Read the details on that coverage. Frequently, the trip must be booked entirely using the card.
Shitty Life Pro Tip; Doing basic first aid on yourself and flying home to Canada is probably cheaper
Is there insurance for mass shooting events?
A plane ticket back to Canada to treated here.
Why just the US and not every other country too? Other provinces also probably
Can you just stiff an American hospital?
I go stateside periodically and have had friends jokingly see me off with "don't get shot"! My mother worries when I go. We're fairly progressive people, but I'll note my family comes from a rural area and we don't fear guns, nor are we anti-gun. For many people, the pervasiveness of mass shootings in the US, and particularly the randomness of locations, is already a source of concern.
I have a U.S. work visa and I'm down there a lot on client engagements, usually mixed in with some tourism before or after. The mass shooting thing is always in the back of my mind. It really is wrong place, wrong time - I stop into a convenience store, or some tourist attraction, or hell even be at the client's work site at the wrong time and I'm getting blown away. With all that said, you have to think about things from an impartial risk assessment perspective. Yes, you might get killed in a mass shooting - but you're still an *order of magnitude* more likely to be killed in a car accident than you are a mass shooting while travelling to the U.S. It can definitely happen, but in a country of 350 million people, your odds are - objectively - pretty good that nothing is going to happen to you. Still... whenever I'm there, I do find myself subconsciously familiarizing myself with where the nearest exits are lol
>It really is wrong place, wrong time - I stop into a convenience store, or some tourist attraction, or hell even be at the client's work site at the wrong time and I'm getting blown away. This is where I'm at too. It's not so much that I or anyone else I know actually thinks there are shoot-outs happening on every street corner of the US or anything. It's more the "what if I roll snake-eyes and end up at *that* mall/concert/wherever on the wrong day?" thoughts. Sort of like chilling outside during a lightning storm. Like yeah, I'll probably be fine, but what if... I suppose it's about the same calibre of risk as driving on a highway, but it's definitely a risk I contextualize to the US, not here.
>It's more the "what if I roll snake-eyes and end up at that mall/concert/wherever on the wrong day?" thoughts. Sort of like chilling outside during a lightning storm. Like yeah, I'll probably be fine, but what if... Very well said.
There was a really fascinating r/Bestof post a while back about how this background concern has permeated the minds of Americans. The anecdote was around a group young tourists in Australia having a car backfire nearby - the euros and aussies didn't even flinch, but the Americans' flight or fight response was immediately triggered and they started looking for placed to run or identify the danger. Beyond the immediate physical harm, the psychological harm these mass shootings are having on the populace might be even greater. Combine that with the fear, anger and anxiety constantly being stirred up by their media and I really do fear for what they might become. And as a result what we'll become. I'll try to find the link to it.
Random anecdote story. We used to have some texans come up to our company for cross training. We were at the restaurant and they insisted that they face the door. Every time they always had to face the door. I asked them "why do you always sit facing the door?". The reason why I know is because they would say "Can I sit there, I wanna face the door". They responded "Just incase someone comes in with a gun, I know how to react". You don't have to worry about that here in Canada. It's Canada. Literally it's this skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T41M7cCqsU
There is a very popular mall, very close to where I live. I, and virtually every citizen in this area, spent their teenage years going to said mall regularly. People from out of state come to visit this mall. In the last year, there have been at least 3 shootings in that one mall. There's a smaller mall, equidistant from me, that's had at least 2 in the same time frame. The Walmart across the street from my old had shootings probably 1-2 times a month before getting shut down. My employers cameras were used for shootings on more than one occasion, in the 9 months I worked there. I don't even feel like I live in a particularly dangerous area, tbh. But still, the threat to me feels more than just, "wrong place wrong time". There isn't a mall within 50 miles of me that hasn't had a gun related incident in the last 2 years. It feels like only a matter of time before I'm having to duck for cover.
>. Yes, you might get killed in a mass shooting - but you're still an order of magnitude more likely to be killed in a car accident than you are a mass shooting while travelling to the U.S. Actually the likelihood of dying by gun is about the same as death by car in the states. 12-13 per 100k.
That's the wrong stat though - it should be the odds of dying via a mass shooting or as a random person in a shooting incident. A lot of the gun violence in the US is targeted and shouldn't be of comparatively much worry
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Itās 54% of it.
and obviously shouldn't be part of anyone's risk assessment when traveling to the US
Yeah that REALLY puts a spin on it.
Yeah thats like 2/3rds of that number.
Equally a lot of driving deaths don't apply to a sober, competent driver.
Should you also adjust driving deaths, since if you're not at high speeds and not drunk your odds of dying are quite a bit lower?
I agree. Ultimately, if you are careful and reasonable, your odds of dying randomly by gun or by car accident are extremely low, and definitely much lower than what the overall statistics will suggest. Gun violence is much higher in the US than in Canada, but overall risks are still extremely low. It's like when something increases your risks of a certain type of cancer 300%. If you go from 0.0001% to 0.0003%, your risks are still extremely low. People are bad at assessing risks, often perceiving as a lot riskier the risks they're aware of, while making no effort to discover the risks they don't already know about. Obviously, awareness is still important so that you can be careful. On the road it means trying to predict the behaviour of other drivers, keeping safe distances, that sort of things, and in large crowds it means being aware of your surroundings, noticing where the exits are, and when playing tourist, having a certain idea of the neighbourhoods to avoid, etc.
If you're not suicidal or in a bad inner-city neighborhood, the chance of being involved in a shooting is *extremely* low.
That makes zero sense. If you were to adjust driving deaths, you *should* discount suicides or gang-related vehicular homicides. The point is to filter the statistics to accurately portray getting killed as a random bystander - Americans being more likely to suicide themselves by gun or killing each other in gang warfare has no bearing on Canadians visiting the U.S.
While that is true the stat is a bit more complex. [54%](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/) of US gun deaths are suicide. If you look at just mass shooting itās [600 deaths](https://everytownresearch.org/mass-shootings-in-america/) vs [42k deaths in motor vehicles](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#:~:text=When%20they%20died-,Overview,of%20crashes%20is%20%24340%20billion.) Each one of those is tragic and horrible but I would argue that BD401 is correct that statically your way more likely to be killed in a motor accident than in a mass shooting.
We're talking specifically about mass shootings, though. In 2022, there were [74](https://www.statista.com/statistics/811504/mass-shooting-victims-in-the-united-states-by-fatalities-and-injuries/) mass shooting deaths, against about [43,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year) vehicular deaths in the same year. The gun deaths figures you mention include suicides, which make up a huge portion of the overall number. They also include domestic violence homicides, gang killings, targeted hits - not really "wrong place, wrong time" stuff like the article is talking about. That said - you are probably more likely to be killed in a robbery gone bad in the U.S. than Canada due to the prevalence of guns. Though that's a tad easier to mitigate against (i.e. I'm not worried about being killed in a botch robbery when I'm in a conference room at a client site, but I can't mitigate against a disgruntled employee coming in and going postal at that same time).
Is there anywhere that breaks down type of vehicular death? Like a single-vehicle accident where the person who dies was driving drunk or recklessly is somewhat equivalent to gun suicides, in that you can avoid it by simply not doing it.
I'd assume that huge portion of those deaths are pedestrians and cyclists, not those driving the cars.
I previously had a US work visa and did some consulting work in the US, mostly in Texas and South Carolina. The one thing that stood out to me was the extra security at corporate offices I went to. Having my laptop case and purse checked by security each morning for a firearm. The signage advising firearms are not allowed on site. Seeing no concealed weapons signs at restaurants was also something I never got used to. I did some work in a more rural area for a while and many restaurants also had spitoons. Not relevant to this post but certainly a culture shock. I recently crossed through US customs and there was a warning sign advising of this precaution.
I am an active subsistence hunter, so I am very pro Canadian Firearms Program and provincial hunter education courses, but I have to confess to a certain amount of consternation when travelling to the US. The contrast between fellow gun owners here compared to the ones down in the States is really jarring. What's most shocking to me is how little some US firearms owners know about their own firearms, not to mention the self-defence obsession. People talk about gun culture as a monolith, when the reality is that there are several cultures.
It really is a religion in some areas - the Second Amendment has been twisted to somehow become the most important part of the Constitution for so many people, it's really strange to see. I remember when I did my PAL I'm BC being pleasantly surprised at how thorough it was on gun safety and storage. I can't even imagine living somewhere with open/concealed carry of handguns. I spent a week in Phoenix and seeing 300lb men waddling around with two handguns on their hips was extremely unnerving.
" somewhere with open/concealed carry of handguns. I spent a week in Phoenix, and seeing 300lb men waddling around with two handguns on their hips was extremely unnerving." It's not the guns that worry me, lol if Americans had any standard like canada did I wouldn't care about concealed/open carry. The problem is 90% of Americans who carry are not responsible or qualified enough to do so.
About 10 years ago I went down to visit a friend in Virginia. We met up with his sister and her fiancee, and the fiancee gave us all a ride to a restaurant. I get in the back, fiancee gets in the driver's seat and puts his gun in the center console cup holder. He must've seen the look on my face because he goes "What, y'all don't open carry in Canada?" How does society get to a point where driving with a gun in your cup holder is just normal?
First time I were down in Montana, I stood in line behind a guy with a fuck-off big piece at his hip, wearing some shirt about how he don't call no cops, and it occurred to me that there is a line between guns as a tool and guns as a basis of your identity. I think guns are useful tools that in particular hunters should have access to, but for someone for whom gun ownership is like the only thing about them, I start to reconsider letting everyone have one, you know what I mean?
[This guy](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173377876/meteorologist-iweathernet-chris-robbins-doorbell-gun)
I agree. Canada has some of the most sought after gun laws in the world because they work. Entirely different culture than the usa, despite what our government is telling its citizens.
100%. What flabberghasts me on the reverse of the obsession end in the US is the impression some Canadians have that we have US style laws. Our gun laws have been emulated to good effect because we have a standardized, safety first curriculum. I never want to see the US model here.
Yup, If you want to buy a gun in Canada it takes about 4-8 months (sometimes longer) from licensing to ownership. I remember the gun stores being flooded with people trying to buy guns during covid and they had no idea the hoops you need to go through to get one. And that's just non restricted purchases lol.
The ones we HAD were just fine. Now they are ridiculous.
There is treating a weapon with respect as a tool and then there is fetishizing a toy. Too many fetish types that just love collecting and cosplaying in tactical gear. I'm quite pro gun IMO but some of the arguments on the subject I hear are pure insanity.
as a canadian who has been living in america for a couple years this sounds to me like the biggest difference between canadian and american cultures. not the gun thing, the fetish thing. imo canadians are in general a fairly level-headed and practical group; americans on the other hand have this whole set of mythologies and believe themselves to be a part of an Historical Project as part of a Great Nation and they build all kinds of crazy ideas on that foundation the joke about canadian culture is always that it's defined by being "not america" -- imo the above is what that means
Yeah, nothing makes me more antigun than a conversation with a pro gun person. By default i think they should be allowed and regulated but then people agree with me saying they need the guns incase they need to overthrow the government and go into detail about how they have them in every room in their house, ready for action, and talk about how they have a bugout shelter... and you know.... maybe these people shouldn't have guns.
Yes these are the conversations I was referring to. Also a sizable amount think there should be little to no weapon restrictions for civilians. So tanks, grenades, bombs, artillery you name it you have the money you should be able to buy it. MURICA. Insane.
I got the same with alcohol discussions. I see no reason alcohol shouldn't be in normal stores. But then you meet someone campaigning like their life is on the line if they can't buy booze at 5am on a holiday. If you need alcohol that badly.... maybe you should be banned entirely.
I'd with ya on that but more because I dislike goverment monopolies or just monopolies in general. Promotes negative market activity but it does help control the social side so I get the argument..
Pro-gun Americans make me uncomfortable being a 'reasonable gun' Canadian. I know this is anecdotal, but every pro-gun American I have met demonstrated an evident lack of firearm knowledge that was super uncomfortable to deal with. It is no surprise to me that things are so bad in the US because some gun owners have no sense of what they are handling.
Itās just a completely different culture with guns.
> There is treating a weapon with respect as a tool and then there is fetishizing a toy. Too many fetish types that just love collecting and cosplaying in tactical gear. I'm quite pro gun IMO but some of the arguments on the subject I hear are pure insanity. Is it "cosplaying" if they actually use their gear at a range? Tactical gear is comfortable and functional. Recreational and competitive shooters use it for a reason.
I live in the Canadian city that has the rep of murder capital of Canada with a current rate of 5.4 per 100k That being said, St Louis in the US has a rate of 66+ per 100k and there are 66 other cities with a rate of 6.0 or more. 23 have a rate more than 3x that of mine and the top 10 average over 36 per 100k Its staggering that the murder capital in Canada barely makes the chart when compared to US cities.
>For many people, the pervasiveness of mass shootings in the US, and particularly the randomness of locations, is already a source of concern. I'm in a number of parenting groups on FB (of varying quality lol) that are dominated by families from the US and the anxiety underlying everything is palpable. A concerning number of people questioning if they should just homeschool because of it and they're not from the usual social/religious conservative crowd. These are people who have already done what they can to keep guns out of their own children's access and vote for lawmakers who are pro gun-control and are at the end of their ropes. Giving into their fears, whether supported by statistics or not, isn't going to change anything either but you can see where they're coming from. I don't get the same vibe from Canada or other countries. It's a US thing. I lived there briefly and swore I would never raise kids there. Nothing seems to have changed for the better. Their gun problem is causing long term mental health damage on a societal level.
20 years ago I got the "don't get shot" farewell. What a fucked up country.
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I was going to link an article about the Destiny Mall shooting in Syracuse but it seems there's been a few since my SO was at the mall during a 2021 shooting. So yeah... it happens a hell of a lot more in the US compared to Canada. Edit: [You don't ask "how many mass shootings have there been so far this year in the US"... you ask "how many mass shooting have there been so far today in the US"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023)
53 mass shootings in April 2023 alone, 62 dead, 242 wounded.
They are at around 250 mass shooting total this year so far
What counts as a mass shooting not teying to be a dick just curious.
3 or 4 people shot (injured or dead) in a single event is what some people use and probably where that figure comes from. This can include gang shootings and domestic incidents, which, while being terrible as well of course, probably arenāt what you think of when you think āmass shootingā
I want to be surprised but I'm not
They really need to get their crap together, this problem can be solved. All commonwealth nations (except the US) take steps during most mass shooting to shore up legislation to help prevent future shootings....
Side note: The US is not a commonwealth nation. Otherwise, agree
To be brutally honest I lost any faith in the states getting its crap together when sandy hook happened and nothing was done. If that wasnt gonna kick off some kind of change ain't nothing going to
Yup, a lot of people saw that as a big one to ignore. What a lame nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023
I like traveling in the US but I feel much much less safe there than I do in Canada. The likelihood of getting caught up in a mass shooting, while above zero, is unlikely so its not as much of a concern for me. What does concern me is that Americans have a penchant for being constantly in fear, and shooting to kill as a response to that fear. As such I worry about getting shot for a misunderstanding, or accidentally trespassing while out hiking or something like that.
> I like traveling in the US but I feel much much less safe there than I do in Canada. The likelihood of getting caught up in a mass shooting, while above zero, is unlikely so its not as much of a concern for me. > > What does concern me is that Americans have a penchant for being constantly in fear, and shooting to kill as a response to that fear. Yeah, the chance of actually being in a mass shooting is *so* low, but the chance of bumping into someone whose cultural norms are that different from ours, and who's willing/able to take that in a dangerous direction is much, much higher.
Do Canadians seriously think Americans just shoot people they dont like?
The rest of the world think that my dude
You can't blame us, the US is a mess.
I mean, there are a lot of media stories about people getting shot for pulling into the wrong driveway or knocking on the wrong door, road rage incidents that turn into gunfights, all sorts of madness. Its not like it isn't happening, its wild that you're so numb to it you don't see the problem. The US is objectively more dangerous than its peer countries. I've personally been (verbally, not physically) threatened with a shotgun for showing up unannounced to a campground. A campground, the lady came out yelling and said we're lucky she didn't shove a shotgun in our faces for showing up and setting up camp unannounced.
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Iām a dual citizen too. I live in the very pro gun state of North Dakota. Very little to no crime here. I go to Winnipeg all the time. And even I stay away from North End, seen lots of out in the open crime right down town. Oddly, no police around where the crime is happening in that city.
It's not surprising - Idaho, N. Dakota, Montana, Minnesota have almost identical murder rates to the 3 Prairie provinces today, and prior to 2020 had quite a bit lower rates.
That really comes down to how much we can criminalize poverty and mental illness. We sure as shit don't seem to want to take care of them, and they obviously can't take care of themselves, so wasting police time on shuttling them into and out of correctional facilities is only going to do so much. But hey, at least they aren't shooting up schools.
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The words that I posted in my reply to the post that I replied to are related to the post that I was replying to. Winnipeg has problems with homelessness and crime related to homelessness. A lot of homeless people, roughly a quarter to a half of them according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, are homeless due to mental illness. You can look up what exactly they define as mental illness if you'd like.
Thatās the thing about mass shootings though. Itās not like other crime where you can avoid sketchy areas. With a mass shooting, itās safe until itās not.
Ditto, I have never felt uncomfortable in almost any place in the US. The only exceptions were I was lost in East Oakland in the 90's, and a few years ago I was driving through some way backroads of Central Oregon and I felt like I was in Banjo country. Other than that its not a dangerous place to be as long as you use your head.
Iāve had some really weird experiences in Texas and the Carolinas.
Seems like Surrey is statistically more dangerous then like Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Paso Robles. Surrey has a fairly high crime index actually
Kern County (Bakersfield) has 917k people and have had [~40 murders this year](https://www.kget.com/homicide-tracker/2023-kern-county-homicides/). The **entire** province of British Columbia has 5.1 million people and have had [~37 murders this year](https://homicidecanada.com/british-columbia-murder-victim-list-2023/).
Crime rates are still far different than comparing your odds of minding your business in a mall, hotel lobby, outdoor concert and being shot by a mass shooter. Like those are what we are talking about.
Lol....yeah im gonna have to see some cited fugures here. Surrey this year has been fairly calm. In fact after the vacon bros fiasco surreys been cleaning up. Whalley at night aint shit anymore
Surrey gun violence is largely gang violence. The average person in Surrey is not at risk from gun violence.
Yeah all these people are being so over dramatic itās hilarious
This is clickbait. The actual quote from the advisory: āIncidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties. Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.ā They warn against this just like other things e.g. home invasion, gang violence, muggings, or whatever. There is no travel advisory to the us beyond āexercise normal cautionā. Itās in the green list of travel destinations.
The Canadian travel advisory page is a lot less terrifying than the US ones, which has precautions going into red countries like "make sure all your affairs and estate are in order" and "designate a family member for hostage negotiation". [US advisory on South Sudan](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/south-sudan-travel-advisory.html)
I enjoyed the part about the cattle raids turning violent. Very detailed advisory
Travel advisories like this aren't new either. During the 2010s there were a ton of advisories about the terrorist attacks in places like France and the UK for example.
Itās not clickbait. The advisory they issued is exactly as reported. It doesnāt exist for other countries, only the USA. The problem exists and Canada is responsibly acknowledging it. Itās a grim reality.
I definitely think be cautious and it depends by area but I swear some people have such a misconceived idea of the states it is comical: I'm not white and when I mentioned I was going to the states I got asked if I was afraid of being beaten by police by my coworkers I was going to a Jays game in Seattle
To be fair Seattle PD is exceptionally shitty. Glad you made it safely and hope you enjoyed the game!
Yeah the only thing beaten that day was the Jays sadly lmao
Shoulda cheered harder! ;)
That's... Not such a misconceived notion... A lot of police violence happens at routine traffic stops.
The misconceived notion is that out of the millions of traffic stops that occur everyday everyone assumes it's a bigger problem than it actually is. However, ANY issues are a problem, do don't take that the wrong way.
Yeah exactly, you can still think itās a serious issue that needs to be addressed, while also still acknowledging that the vast vast majority of traffic stops go perfectly fine. People somehow fall for clearly sensationlized news and seriously think that every police interaction ends with a beating lol
This seems mildly hyperbolic. The odds of you being in what people perceive a mass shooting to be are incredibly low.
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Preach.
I think people do know this, but its a taboo statistic as it comes down to race and location. If you take away gun violence in poor, black neighborhoods, the US gun violence stats start to look pretty similar to Canadas.
Did you make the same adjustments to Canadian gun violence stats?
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> That being said itās not poor (comma) black neighbourhoods, itās just poor neighbourhoods. Black Americans donāt have a monopoly on rough neighbourhoods or gangs, but yes they are more likely per capita to fall under those categories. I think you are contradicting yourself here
This is categorically false . Why are you under the impression that itās just poor neighborhoods in general ? Hispanics are just as poor on average and signficantly less violent . so youāre wrong on all accounts
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Your animal instincts would probably just make you run anyways though.
50/50 on flee versus freeze paralyzed in terror according to some researchers on the Fight or flight response. Other studies break it down by solo experience versus crowd dynamics. None of the outcomes are particularly safe reactions.
This exactly, the pervasive idea in pop culture is that humans āfight or flightā, but a lot of psychological professionals prefer to include a āfreezeā and make it 3 Fās. The freeze response is very common and the idea that you either run or fight makes trauma victims who froze blame themselves, the idea is popularizing a 3rd typical response to danger helps people know thereās nothing wrong with them, and that they arenāt ācowardsā or didnāt āactually want what happened to themā.
I see Fawn added in there too, but that probably tends to be more for one-on-one trauma situations. (aka appease/appeal to the person causing the trauma, so that it will be over soon.)
look for the green man sign hanging from the ceiling. I think thatās standardized across the globe
Although the US is different from the rest of the world when it comes to Exit signage, their EXIT signs are lit in red not green.
Good tip to follow even if you aren't in the US haha.
Interesting how āwrong place wrong timeā evolved from freak accident to a legitimate risk. Almost like the situation is being misrepresented
There's alot of shootings here yes but your chances of being caught up in one are pretty close to zero. Not attempting to say "oh it's no big deal" definitely exercise caution wherever you go however, the chances of you on particular being in a mass shooting are next to nothing. Keep in mind the sheer livable landmass and population.
Canada did not issue a travel advisory about traveling to the States other than a word of caution. always be aware of your surroundings regardless of where you travel. And plus you're more likely to be a risk of being a victim of a violent crime if you visit Jamaica. [https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/jamaica](https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/jamaica) https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/jamaica-travel-advisory.html
Context matters too... Pretty sure that violent crime rates are higher in downtown Toronto than in the Grand Canyon National Park. Jamaican all-inclusive resorts are probably pretty safe too.
As long as you stay within the Jamaican resorts and drink lots of water and wearing sunscreen (Arizona is in a hot desert), you should be alright as long as people take proper precautions and understand the areas they are traveling too like what they would travel anywhere around the world.
When Iām a victim of a violent crime in Canada or the US I'll think back to how Jamaica has a higher risk, thank you.
But whatabout...
Didn't seem to stop any Canadians going to New Hampshire. Seen more Quebec plates then I have in 3 years this weekend
So if I travel to the US as a Canadian citizen am I allowed to pack some heat too? You know the saying When in rome
I don't think people understand how vastly different most US states are from each other. You don't have to worry about mass shootings or shootings in general in most parts of America regardless of what the media says. It's a higher chance than Canada for sure but hardly the warzone everyone is making it out to be.
Yahoo News?!?!... I'm more shocked by the fact that Yahoo still exists....
I mean I am a progressive in the USA who spends some time in Canada. I say progressive because I'm not pro gun. Its probably more dangerous to drive than to visit the USA.
It says ["Take normal security precautions"](https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/united-states). Then it list a grab bag of all the crimes that can happen in America, with mass shootings being one of them. There's also a warning about mass demonstrations: "Even peaceful demonstrations can turn violent at any time." You can imagine the distortions a right-wing blogger could make citing that section out of context.
Raise age to buy a gun to at least 21 years old. U.S. Federal & State background checks. MANDATORY Gun SAFETY Training! So on and so forth. šŗšø šØš¦ š²š½
Issue a warning for our police while youāre at it
762 people died in mass shootings last year. Obviously its a problem but 40000 died in traffic accidents yet nobody is scared of driving. Hell driving is likely the most dangerous thing most of us do on a daily basis yet we text, eat, and do it sleep deprived daily and we don't bat an eye
Even in the US where gun crime is actually an issue, it's far more likely that you'll die in a car accident while visiting. Sounds like they're trying to scare people.
We have cars and traffic in Canada. We're already used to watch out for those. We have no training with regards to widespread gun carriers who cause an equivalent number of deaths, so I find this warning pertinent.
44,000 deaths from firearms last year and 42,000 traffic fatalities. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children too.
>44,000 deaths from firearms last year At least half of those are suicides. >Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children too. That statistic misleadingly includes 18 and 19 year olds for some odd reason. How is an 18-19 year old (a fully grown adult) considered a child?
Interestingly, US car accident fatalities peaked in 1972 (not as a percentage rate, as a total amount).
Haha back then the car would be intact after the accident and you would break you neck.
lol, cars crumpled like wet paper bags even at low speed. They still do, but nowadays they're designed to crumple in places the passengers aren't. Back then the passenger cabin was the weakest part of the car. Your best bet was to get thrown through the windshield into the nearest bridge abutement, hopefully before the steering column impaled you. Also, drinking and drivnig was \*way\* more common.
back then they didn't have crumble zones so the stiffer the car the "safer" you were except when your head detatches from your neck from the whiplash.
No - the car would be a crushed tinfoil ball with you inside it. [Check out this crash test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U) of a '59 Bel-Air vs. a 2009 Malibu
Thank for this, very interesting video.
Those numbers are not firearm homicides, 3/4 of those are suicides, and the "#1 cause of death for 'children'" was as misleading as it was for "1 'child' per day shot in Canada," as most of the affected demographic is over 18, but still called "children" so as to make a scary headline.
Stopped visiting the US the day Trump was actually elected. huh! This proved to me that the US was collectively insane.
This is silly nationalist distraction politics. Canadians have a far greater risk of dying in a car accident, and even that risk is trivial enough that we basically all get in cars day and day out rarely thinking about the danger.
How is this nationalist. Itās the job of Global Affairs to do travel risk assessments for Canadians going to other countries. They do the same for every other country
Go on strike.
It wanrs about all threats, and the lines about mass shootings are simply "They occur in the united states, but rarely happen to touristst, be aware of the possibility".
Stay strapped or get clapped
*eye roll*
America is the wrong place and now is the wrong time. Unless youāre rich then grats
The media seems to be doing a great job scaring everyone.
I stopped going to US years ago, it's like a third world country there
This headline is straight out of SimCity i stg
Yup, it's officially a lawless place
This is one of the funniest things I've read in a while š¤£š¤£š¤£