I saw some of the new pistol-carrying Transit police for the first time this morning. Certainly they are a far cry from the machine-gun toting soldiers you see in the subway stations in New York, but I can't say that the desired effect of "feeling safer" was was acheived.

This is not an improvement in safety, it is an escalation in violence. Of course there is a logic behind it; the same logic that is always used to make those tiny, reasonable-at-the-time slips down the slippery-slope.

"It is for our safety."

"We're lucky. It's much worse in other places."