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Stone: Montreal gunman must have 'lacked love'

2006-09-16 11:02

TORONTO (CP) - Actress Sharon Stone has never hesitated to offer her opinions on the weighty matters of the world - and Montreal's latest shooting rampage was no exception.

Stone said Thursday that a lack of love in the life of 25-year-old gunman Kimveer Gill - and not his fondness for violent films and video games - likely prompted him to start firing indiscriminately at a Montreal college on Wednesday in an attack that claimed his life and that of a young woman.

"I would venture to guess that the person who did the shooting in Montreal is reacting much more to the fact that they're not loved, and that they're having (an) incredible chasm and hollow desperate feeling of a lack of love," the loquacious Stone said as she promoted her new film, "Bobby," at the Toronto International Film Festival.

As her co-stars in the film about Robert F. Kennedy looked on - Demi Moore, Christian Slater and William H. Macy among them - Stone continued.

"And the violence in them comes from that incredible outcry of desperation more than the fact that they saw a violent film," said Stone, wearing a black dress with gold stripes.

"The violence that they feel may be reflecting back to them on film, but the violence is innately coming from a desperate feeling of a lack of love."

That's why it's important, Stone says, for parents to give their children as much love as possible during their formative years.

"It's very important that we nurture our children and teach them compassionate behaviour and mindful and thoughtful behaviour," she said. "It's important as a society that we remain compassionate, mindful and thoughtful to one another."

The problem, Stone says, is that people no longer look out for their fellow man.

"I don't think it's so much whether we look at art or we look at films or we look at a building and our reactivity to it. I think it's about that we're not having reactivity to the people sitting next to us ... it is very, very, very important that we have not lost the art of noticing the person next to us, of noticing and being present with the people who are near us."

Her comments came shortly after another long-winded answer to a question from a Mexican journalist about how she stayed so beautiful and so happy.

In summation? Stone credited the teachings of the Dalai Lama for helping her find joy not in moments of pleasure, but in day-to-day living.