I’m conflicted.

Last night, the Lovely Claire and I were sitting together on the couch, watching the news. The big story was how a couple of rival thug herds began shooting at each other in a crowded Yonge Street shopping area. Several innocent bystanders were injured, and a 15-year-old girl out shopping with her mom and dad was killed.

This made me quite livid. How dare these f*#king punks start a gunfight in our peaceful city? Claire and Leo could easily have been among the Boxing Day bargain hunters that were shot. I began to tell Claire what I’d like to do to these sheep-molesting morons to fix their wagons, but she interrupted me:

“Don’t let this eat at you like that. I don’t like what it does to you.”

She was right, of course. I’m not very pleasant when I’m angry. I simmered a bit, but for a few brief moments I forgot most of my liberal political views and began to think a candidate with a law-and-order agenda was the one to vote for in the upcoming election. What was the name of the conservative guy, again? Is there anyone further to the right than he?

The next news story came on the TV. It was about the problems being experienced by the New Orleans police force. Not the least of which was how a few of their members went to work on a 64-year-old retired schoolteacher for “resisting arrest”. As a camera rolled, a couple of officers served and protected this guy to a bloody pulp.

OK, perhaps giving the police more power isn’t the way to go.

The crime problem facing Toronto evidently required some deeper thought. I ruminated on this a while more, and came up with the following half-baked ideas. These are actually quite terrible ideas that I could never suggest with a straight face, but writing about them helps me cope with my anger and sadness over recent events:

1. This one’s inspired by the Russians and the Brits. Let the cops drive around in their paddywagons, picking up anyone wearing judicially recognized gang colors, and send them off to colonize Ellesmere Island, up in Nunavut. Let ‘em take their guns, so they have at least a sporting chance against charging polar bears.Who knows? Maybe in a hundred years there’ll be a thriving community up there, kinda like Australia is now. But colder.
2. We’re obviously having trouble keeping guns out of the country and out of the hands of the thugs, so let’s just give these guys marksmanship training. More accurate shooting will help prevent innocent bystanders from getting hit. Best of all, with more bullets finding their intended target, the bad guys’ numbers will eventually dwindle as they kill each other off.
3. Whenever someone is caught carrying an illegal handgun, take his gun away. Then, fit the offender with a high-voltage, remote-controlled genital cuff that is tamper-proof and can’t be removed. Powerful current would be automatically applied to his testicles whenever his cuff is within 250ft of another cuff wearer. It would also be triggered by loud noises, like, say, a gunshot.This technique may eventually curb the demand for guns, and discourage meetings of gun-toting bad guys. Backfiring cars may cause the occasional unintended ball-zapping, which should be good for a few giggles.
4. On a slightly more serious note, the biggest problem with swift and severe punishment as a means to deter crime is that there’s:
   (a) a chance guilty people won’t get caught, so they risk doing bad things on this premise, and
   (b) a chance that innocent people will get Rodney King’ed.
   The only way I can see to solve this is to get the general population to buy into intensive surveillance for everyone, 24/7, similar to that in the utopian society described in Robert Sawyer’s Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy. The (big) trick here is to determine who gets access to the recordings, and when.
5. Figure out some way to make everyone like each other and only do good. I think the pharmaceutical industry could contribute significantly to this solution, with a little help from the city water works.

OK, my head is starting to hurt from all this thinking, and I’m evidently not any closer to solving the issue. But ranting felt good.