Or not.
As I write this, a murderer, who is armed and dangerous, is currently on the loose in Denver, after murdering someone last night.
So, shouldn’t the whole city be shut down now? Shouldn’t the swat team be going house to house threatening every citizen at gunpoint to catch this guy? What’s the difference between this fugitive and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? If you murder a handful of people the city gets shut down? If you murder only one (that we know of), then it’s business as usual? Is it just arithmetic?
It’s not the math, of course. When I was a kid, I remember my father installing new window locks in my bedroom because Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker) was on the loose in our town. By then, Ramirez had already murdered at least 8 or 9 people and raped 10 people or so. Most of them were strangers to Ramirez, so we were all at risk.
It didn’t even occur to us that the police should go door to door forcing everyone out of their homes at gunpoint. But then again, Americans then were not a bunch of hysterical sheep craving government violation of all their rights in the name of safety.
In the end, the cops didn’t even catch Ramirez of course. An angry mob chased him down and nearly beat him to death before the cops showed up.
9:56 am on April 25, 2013
