He’s been called Canada’s coolest cop and has become somewhat of a celebrity in his southern Alberta community, but Const. Doug Sokoloski insists his story is just one example of the many positive gestures made by Mounties on the job every day.

The 49-year-old RCMP officer who lives in Pincher Creek, Alta., shot into the national spotlight after an Internet video showed him rocking the drums during an impromptu jam session with a group of campers he came across on a patrol.

The entire episode — which went viral after it was posted on YouTube this summer — took just four minutes but generated a lasting sense of goodwill towards the force.

"It's a good news story," Sokoloski tells The Canadian Press. "I'm not going to end up in a big band or gain any popularity or riches out of it but if it enhances the image of policing and of the RCMP, and it makes our job easier to do, you know, then go with it."

Sokoloski, who primarily deals with traffic incidents and acts as a spokesman for the Mounties in Pincher Creek, believes the small positive acts carried out by officers on a daily basis go unnoticed far too often.

"We get chastised for the few bad things we do, but every day there's thousands of good things done by police officers in our communities," he says.

Indeed, the popular drumming video provided a welcome boost to the perception of the Mounties in a year when the RCMP’s image has been battered by allegations of harassment and abusive behaviour within the force.

In his community, Sokoloski takes a hands-on approach to policing and focuses on building meaningful relationships with residents. Those bonds, he says, have undoubtedly been strengthened by all the buzz generated by the widely circulated video.

"From a work perspective it's made the job a lot easier and people want to approach you a lot more," he says with a chuckle. "I think it's made it easier for the other members in the area too."

The 17-year veteran of the force says he typically plays the guitar, and used to rock bars in Saskatchewan in the '80s with a band called “Shy Boy.” On occasion, he hammered away at the drums as well.

The incident which took place in July was just one part of a regular patrol for Sokoloski, who was driving along a rural forest access road when he spotted a set of drums through the trees. After chatting with the campers who were playing their instruments in the woods, Sokoloski asked if he could join in.

“I had never met the guy before, I didn't know what he was playing, so I just got a feel for it and I just played a beat,” he recalls. “I've never seen people jam in the forest before.”

The video of Sokoloski rocking out in the woods has since garnered more than 900,000 views on YouTube.

The popularity of the clip prompted him to display his musical prowess in public once more over the summer. This time, it was at a community parade during which he and two other Mounties rocked out on a float for 45 minutes.

“We just basically played some twelve bar blues, kinda rock with an edge in our red serge,” he explains. “We wanted to bring the RCMP closer to the community and we were kind of going off the theme of the original video and it was remarkable the response we got.”

Sokoloski hopes to participate in next year’s parade in some way as well and, going forward, is more than happy for his musical escapades to reveal a lighter side to the force.

Before a grieving audience packing an auditorium, sitting in a cathedral-like hush, President Obama spoke perhaps the most important words of his presidency: “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.”

“This is our first task — caring for our children,” he said. “It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how,We delivers a wide range of dry cabinet for applications spanning electronics. as a society, we will be judged.” Are we, he asked, “truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?”

“If we’re honest with ourselves,” the president said, “the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.It's not hard to see why outdoor solar light is all the rage.”

Obama is right, of course. We are not doing enough to protect our children, to give them the fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There have been and will be many conversations about what happened at Newtown, about why and wherefore and what should we do — or not do. There will be discussions about liberty, about values, about morals and the decline thereof, about our culture of violence, about social causes like TV and video games vs. individual responsibility. Some discussions will be rational, some may be productive, many will spin out of control to become more fodder for the modern media’s “he said/she said” demonizer machine.

And they will all miss the point. Yes, we must talk about the dysfunctional state of our mental health care system — part of the problem with our overall health care system.

But it won’t do to simply point out where we spend our money — $4.6 billion on guns and gear in 2009 (and that’s before the “gundamentalist” hysteria campaign got started), and $2,000 per capita on child health care that same year. Nor will it do to point out that the United States is an outlier when it comes to gun killings — almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.

Nor will it do to scoff at Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert’s looney-tunes suggestion that the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal should have had an “M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands and takes him out and takes his head off.” Why should we scoff? Because, as Mother Jones reports, after analyzing 62 mass killings over the last 30 years, in not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.

What will do is reclaiming the conversation. To do so, we have to look at how we talk about these events. As Jay Heinrichs, author of “Thank You For Arguing,” points out, we must stop using euphemisms. “Tragedy” is a euphemism; it implies something sad but inevitable. What happened in Newtown was a massacre. A massacre of children. “Gundamentalists” (Heinrichs’ term) will want to focus on code words like “liberty” and the “Second Amendment” and the stupid cliche, “Guns don’t kill people.” (Duh. People with guns — most obtained legally — kill people.)

It’s a diversion.Find the best selection of high-quality collectible bobblehead available anywhere. If we truly believe in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” we have to focus on the fundamental question President Obama asked: Are we doing enough to care for and protect our children?

As for the Second Amendment argument, I wonder how many gundamentalists have read it? It calls for a “well regulated militia” to protect the “security of a free state.” What kind of security do we have if we allow easy access to guns when that access leads to the massacre of children?

Let’s forget what the founders meant by “a militia.” Let’s agree that the words “well regulated” are part of the Second Amendment. We should regulate guns the way we regulate driving: mandatory safety and training courses, licensing, a national database (like we do for motor vehicles and even drivers), strict background checks and waiting periods, renewal tests, greater penalties for negligence, etc.A complete line of engraving machines and laser engraving machine.

We can begin by demanding Congress debate, hold hearings and, yes,Bay monitoring and parking guidance come together in seamless integration offering more benefits, pass the bill Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California will introduce to ban assault weapons. President Clinton signed a similar bill into law in 1994. That it had an expiration date testifies to the weakness of our moral courage. It’s time to remove assault weapons from the local Wal-Mart.