So right across from my lab, about 10 minutes ago, there was a shooting. According to the 911 logs, it was an assault with a weapon. We all heard the gun shot then heard (and saw, cause my lab door is open) a bunch of girls go running into the bank for cover.

This is the 3rd shooting in 2 years. This neighborhood hasn’t always been quite so violent (despite it’s reputation). But the worse the economy gets, the more stressed out people get and the more trigger happy they become. And since this is a poor neighborhood, we are always close to the violence tipping point.

It’s not endemic to a certain race. Look at our oil wars. When resources get scarce, people fight and kill. It’s part of the anthropological idea of collapse (Jarred Diamond readers will be familiar with the term, so will anyone who has taken a class in anthropology or sociology or looked at the carrying capacity lately).Poor people are war fodder because it is easy to push us into reacting violently over scarce resources. In the shopping center where the shooting just happened is a recruitment office for the army, navy and marines. That is no accident.

UPDATE: The guy who got shot just got grazed (he’s the son of a friend of the school janitor) and the shooter got caught. But for the 2 hours of fuel for 5 helicopters and the costs of the 7 police cars, 3 fire engines and 2 ambulances that showed up, we could probably pay for an officer to patrol this neighborhood after school (when most of the trouble happens) and during the summer.