The PenOpticon

It pains me to admit I haven't been able to post regularly to this space over the past few months.  It seems that life got in the way: drismal weather, ambulances and doctors; a day job that sometimes bleeds into night.  Lot's of good stuff too: long walks around town, a few birding excursions and a few good books. Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Don DeLillo's Libra. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Also finished Jared Diamond's Collapse and David Orrell's Aollo's Arrow. Now I'm picking away at The Weather Makers. Maybe it's time to dive into some cheerier reading this summer! I was in the middle of DeLillo's Libra when the Virginia Tech massacre took place and this caught my eye:

After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers.

Beyond the mechanics of obtaining credit cards, exercising their Second Amendment rights and photographing themselves brandishing weapons, there is little similarity between LHO and Seung-Hui Cho. It seems that every shooter must be insane in his own particular fashion.  What is clear is that Ho's victims were not "in the wrong place at the wrong time", as Bush told Virginia Tech students last week.  On the contrary, as Slinger eloquently writes in the Toronto Star, they were in precisely where they were supposed to be.  With that tired old wrong place, wrong time phrase, Bush attempted to cut off substantive debate over U.S gun ownership and registration, while also  conveniently forgetting that dozens of American children are murdered with guns every day.

Paradoxically, crime rates — including homicides involving firearms — have been dropping across North America for the past twenty years. But, at the same time, because urban population densities are increasing, the effective rate of crime in many places is also rising. Perhaps crime statistics should be given in terms of crimes per square kilometre (mile or cubit if you prefer). Some jurisdictions have been reporting crime stats in this way for some time and the U.S. National Institute of Justice, which recently held their 9th Crime Mapping Research Conference, even offers free GIS crime mapping software.

As for me, I'd rather live with the assumption that the vast majority of people are "mostly harmless" and as unarmed as I am. Better that, than a world in which everyone and anyone may be concealing a Glock or a .38 — even if they happen to be angry, isolated or insane. 'Course I'd also rather we address crime,  crowding, poverty, pollution and climate change issues by allowing populations to fall (naturally I hope!) to sustainable levels, but that's a rant for another day.

All for now. Gotta get me a few hours of hiatus.