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29
Jul
2018
At the end of a press conference, right after the shootings on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue, a reporter tossed a final question at Police Chief Mark Saunders. Saunders was already heading off-camera. I didn’t catch the question, but I’m fairly sure I heard Saunders say, “There is no magic bullet.”
And if he didn’t say it, he should have.
Because although it was a singularly inappropriate cliché – after all, 15 people had just been shot with bullets – it was also exactly the right answer.
Because a magic bullet is what everyone wants.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: shooting, guns, Saunders, Danforth, bullets, mental illness. Toronto
15
Oct
2017
We humans are contradictory creatures.
Although many animals will assist the vulnerable among their own members, and a few will even adopt orphans of other species, we humans seem to be the only ones who will band together to help total strangers -- people we have never met and may never meet, people of different religion, culture, and origins. So we organize to help refugees in Syria and Myanmar. We fund charities that work in distant lands. And when a hailstorm of bullets felled a crowd in Las Vegas, we throw ourselves on top of others to protect them; we ruin the upholstery in our cars by rushing bleeding victims to hospitals; we risk our own lives to help others escape.
We have made compassion a primary virtue.
At the same time, we are the only species that kills for pleasure. Not even scorpions and cobras kill for the sake of killing.
Tags: Las Vegas, massacre, shooting, mass shooting, Stephen Paddock, Cecil the lion. Zanda