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Hateful ideas, mental instability and guns.

That lethal combination seems to be what motivated Alexandre Bissonnette to walk into a Quebec City mosque just over a year ago and open fire on worshippers as they finished their evening prayers. Or at least that’s what we are left to conclude.

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Bissonnette took responsibility for his shocking crime Wednesday, pleading guilty to the murders of Azzedine Soufiane. Ibrahima Barry. Mamadou Tanou Barry. Khaled Belkacemi. Abdelkrim Hassane and Aboubaker Thabti.

The mass killing injured many others, paralyzed one, turned six wives into widows, orphaned 17 children and left the Muslim community reeling. His actions also forced a reckoning in Quebec society about the consequences of a decade of divisive rhetoric and identity politics about the accommodation of minorities — lessons we are still struggling to comprehend.

Bissonnette’s guilty plea will spare the survivors, victims’ families — and all of us, really — having to relive the tragedy during trial, a prospect that threatened to rip open fresh wounds. But we are now left to try to comprehend an evil deed that Bissonnette himself admits was “unforgivable.”