We can鈥檛 say for sure that the victims of Monday鈥檚 shooting spree were targeted because they were homeless. We can鈥檛 even say for sure that all of them were homeless.

But local homeless advocates quickly identified two of the victims as homeless. Local RCMP agreed that the victims were homeless. Two shooting scenes were in areas frequented by the homeless, and another was at Creek Stone Place, a supportive housing complex for people getting off the streets.

If the shooter wasn鈥檛 targeting the homeless, then he was simply going after people who were vulnerable and exposed in the early morning hours. Which means the homeless were the easiest possible targets.

It was in the frantic hours after the shooting that friends started to message me 鈥� had I heard about what Joe Rogan said?

I had not. I don鈥檛 have much respect for Rogan as it is, and I generally manage to ignore his low-level controversies.

But it turns out that back on July 14, he and comedian Tom Segura were talking, with some disgust, about the homelessness situation in Los Angeles, marvelling that it was illegal to simply steal from the homeless! You could get arrested if you took their stuff!

鈥淢aybe you should just go shoot the homeless people,鈥� Rogan said.

This is technically a joke, but only technically.

I鈥檓 not trying to draw any kind of direct line between Rogan鈥檚 words and the shootings in 91原创.

We may never know exactly what motivated these shootings. Perhaps, unlikely as it seems, there was some personal connection between the killer and all four of his victims.

But what we know is that homelessness makes people vulnerable.

It makes them vulnerable to the elements, to heat and cold. It makes them vulnerable to untreated health issues, both mental and physical. It makes them vulnerable to despair, and the deaths that follow despair 鈥� toxic drug deaths and self-harm.

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And it makes them vulnerable to predators, either those who despise the homeless, or those who are simply looking for someone to hurt.

There have been two incidents in B.C. since 2020 in which someone set a sleeping homeless person on fire 鈥� one in Vancouver and one in Campbell River. [Note: since this column was printed, a third such incident took place in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.)

The casually monstrous tone of Rogan鈥檚 joke is notable only because of his fame.

There are worse things said every day in comment threads and on social media.

People find the homeless off-putting. It鈥檚 easier to pretend they aren鈥檛 people at all.

This kind of talk, the steady drip-drip-drip of snide comments, and so-called jokes and hatred slowly strips people of personhood. We pretend they don鈥檛 have rights (What do you mean you鈥檇 get arrested if you took their stuff?) and eventually, we start wishing we could just get rid of them altogether.

Homelessness makes people vulnerable to dehumanization.

The answer is to treat the homeless like humans, and to acknowledge that all humans have a right to housing.