Wow. Well, yesterday was kind of terrifying, huh? I haven't got anything original to say but of course like everyone else I'm extremely glad that Brian is okay and seems poised to have an improbably, miraculously complete recovery. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: he's pretty much the most unflappable guy I know. That his body is greeting three bullets with what amounts to an unimpressed shrug seems perfectly in character.

Beyond gratitude for his well-being, though, I'm not sure how to react. My instinct is to resist the urge to draw new conclusions about crime and guns and the city based upon this one horrible incident. Don't let the immediacy of the thing confuse you, I tell myself. Yet on the same day I read about someone else using the purely experiential to arrive at what I consider to be the truth, and it doesn't seem like he could have gotten there any other way.

I can rationalize together a system for how I've decided to discriminate between these two potential lessons, but I'm not really sure I buy it.