Homicide: is this year a bad one?

The Journal has a piece headlined Montréal se dirige vers une année meurtrière and the big picture of a truck made me expect a report on pedestrian deaths. But no, it’s about homicide. We’ve had 27 so far this year, of which about half have been due to guns. But the actual total (compared to the numbers given for the previous ten years) is not the big deal the headline suggests. Varying from highs of 35 in 2011 and 2012 to a low of 23 in 2016, it’s probably unavoidable that a city this size will have two to three dozen murders a year, of all types. People get mad, and people get even.