[Brian McIlmoyle]

For the same reason everybody else does

Every shooting, every attack, every robbery at gun point virtually in the world ,, get reported in the news as if it happened in your back yard.

The Mass shooting in Norway dominated the news on every channel for 2 weeks straight..

30 years ago such a thing would have been mentioned in passing in National news here.. and not at all in local news.

the police just like everyone else have been caught up in the 24 hour news cycle.

Police watch the news.. and they are inculcated with the same images and perceptions as everyone else. Over the past decade there have been it seems a lot of mass shootings.. but strangely the number of mass shootings has decreased in the USA over the past decades.. not increased.

The issue is we see and hear about every mass shooting on the planet, regardless of where it happens and how far away.

The public has a perception of Crime out of control , despite the fact that there is less crime and less gun crime in Canada now then there was 30 years ago. and all this in the face of a large population, increasing urbanization..

So now we have a skewing in perception of the threat that guns present.

When the police get a gun call, they used to investigate then react .. and most calls were resolved as false alarms, not a crime or a misunderstanding.

Now all gun calls are treated like terrorist attacks.. Because everyone equates guns with Mass Murder..