When you think about how often people tick you off - even over little things like being cut off in traffic - it's surprising that the big things -  like being fired or passed over for a promotion or being laid off by the greedy corporate CEO who's still taking million-dollar bonuses as he runs the company into the ground - don't set off more people in a pathological homicidal rampage.

Given the dearth of basic human kindness and the ready availability of automatic weapons, how is it that we don't have major bloodbaths on a regular basis?

I saw Michael Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine" the other week.  Somewhere between exposing Charlton Heston as an ill-prepared debater and trying to pin the entire American obsession with violence on Lockheed Martin, Moore overlooked the obvious:  most people, at one time or another, let loose and exercise their inherent capability to be cruel, selfish bastards.  If you want to understand what happened at Columbine, just think back to high school: if yours was anything like mine, it was full of cliques and outcasts and simmering animosity amplified way out of proportion by an adolescent lack of perspective.  If there's any big mystery, it's why these things seem to happen so much more often in the US than in other parts of the world.

Given that, who ever thought it was a good idea to let the average citizen own an uzi?  I mean, besides old Moses...