Back burning works to control and decrease the available amount of brush and kindling for an oncoming fire wave. A fire can't burn what's already charred. Or at least when it tries to there is much resistance. Same as it is with humans running crimson with anger and shaking arms in public places. Fumaroles, everywhere.
The motive for originality and fear of being labelled a copycat seems to have cleared up a few more places for both tourists and locals in the United States. In a short span of a couple of months, or an ammo clip of weeks, the public has been treated to the once again open tour of movie theatres, temples and places of worship, standing outside the building of a famous landmark and wandering the surrounds of supermarkets during stock times. This is safety from numbers.
Not unlike the screeching leg chirps against Dolbear's Law, the reports of wanton mass shootings that blip in an otherwise steady stream of gun downs instead of guns down at first keep the public away. But in the aftermath, the security hops up on one leg and the media chews on another handful of coffee beans to refocus their attention alongside another celebrity divorce or news about them illegals at the border.
Eventually the next target is hit and the public moves on. Impotent flags everywhere, stuck forever at half mast because not a week goes by without new ground breaking on the sounds of empty shell casings.
And it's these chirps of expended bullets that rise up and signal to all that are visiting, "this place is probably okay for a while now." It's the principle of keeping the location of kills fresh. Of gunpersons feeling the glory of the press that isn't so marred by a quick "in a similar location" but well to do enough for "in a similar shooting just last week" and you have the compromise of short fuses and the 24-hour news cycle making everyone a star for anything.
When a mass shooting happens in a typical location, it's a safe enough place to wander around eating your lunch out of a Pyrex box and a flask bottle you filled up from the toilets. Someone has died where you're taking photos. And while they may not be original in how they slain in public, the perpetrators at least for now are managing to stay away from each other's killzone templates.
But if you're gathering around any kind of family function, better make sure it's not in the desert. You can't calculate the sound and shockwaves of safety of falling shells when your ears are bleeding from a sandstorm.
Written on Wednesday, 5 September 2012