|
The DC area sniper is really pissing me off.
And it's not because he's killing people. Well, ok, the fact that he's shooting people at random sickens me -- I hope he's caught and apprehended just as soon as possible. I hope he gets sent away for a long long time. But as for killing people goes, why should I hate him any more than the terrorist who just killed 14 people on a bus this morning in Israel? What he's doing is more than just shooting 12 people(1), he's fucking up the whole region. If you combine his long drawn out act of terror with the intense media coverage it has received, you get a spasm of inefficiency and blind over-reaction. Those who know me (or have read past cant articles of mine) know that one of the things that pisses me off the most is inefficiency. And what galls me about the coverage of the sniper isn't that he hasn't been caught (hell, it took years to catch the Son of Sam(2)) -- it's the fact that we the people are screwing up the entire way of life in the DC area because of this bastard. Look, even if we completely ignored this guy, and let him continue to shoot people at random at the rate he's been going -- the people of the DC area are still 113% more likely to be killed by any other homicide, and 203% more likely to be killed by a drunk driver(3). To date we have 400 FBI, 250 ATF, 100 US Marshals and 50 Secret Service agents pulled out of their regular jobs and all working on catching this lunatic -- and that's not counting however many DC, Maryland and Virginia police officers have been assigned to work the sniper case. Now, I realize we can't just ignore this bastard -- but honestly, do we really need to derail that many other investigations in order to work on catching this media darling? When you think that the people of the DC area are 53% more likely to die of accidently poisoning than to be shot by the sniper, can you honestly say that you'd prefer to have those massive amounts of funds spent on stopping this bastard? Or would you rather some of those funds went to posting clearer warning signs on poisonous substances? What about spending some of that money and manpower on preventing outbreaks of e.coli (477% more likely to catch this bug than a sniper's bullet), preventing the spread of AIDS (583% more likely), improving road conditions (584% more likely to die in some transportation related accident), or monitoring hospital procedures (846% more likely to die due to a medical error in a hospital). I think the straw that broke this camel's back was that so many of the schools in the area were shutting down because of the sniper's attacks. Give me a break, these kids are 927% more likely to die in an alcohol related death than be shot by the sniper -- what do you think these kids will be doing with no school to go to in the morning? Not going to school actually drasticly increases their chances of dying. And the scariest statistic of all is that the people of the DC area are 7140% more likely to die of a heart attack than be killed by the sniper. Seventy One times as likely! Do you think any of them worry that they might have a heart attack while out shopping? or picking up the kids from school? No. But then, heart attacks don't get massive media feeding frenzies. What I'm saying is that this sniper should be persued with all due dilligence, but the case should be covered with an appropriate amount of officers and agents. For the majority of the people who have been assigned to this case, there are far better and more effective things they could be doing with their time -- if it weren't for the fact that the government must appear to being doing everything it can to stop this darling of the media. To be perfectly fair, I probably wouldn't be writing this article if I lived in the DC area... I remember the Loma Prieta earthquake of '89, and although I'd rode out the quake itself with innate California instincts like it was nothing, it was the days of countless aftershocks that scared me absolutely buggo. Even the low rumbling of passing buses would give me the willies. There's something about the long sustained terror that works it's way into your gut. And I have friends who live in the DC area and I care for them and worry about them with this fucker running around on the loose. And it's for this sustained level of terror that the sniper and his media coverage is earning -- and the sprawling inefficiency it causes -- that I hate that little rat bastard. i,jasona
PS: Oh, and I hate Rumsfeld for taking advantage of the public hysteria to
chip away at the Posse Comitatus Act(4).
|