It seems like every day, someone wanders into their office and offs a few ex-compadres. For a couple days last week, that was literally true.

One day it happened in Honolulu, and the next it happened in Seattle. I thought this eastern migration might continue, but luckily, it subsided. For the moment.

The generally non-random acts of violence are really beginning to add up. In the olden days (like, say, the 1980s), the mass shootings were almost always committed against total strangers. Like the McDonald's in California or the Luby's in Texas.

It seems to me that there are two particularly relevant facts to consider here. First, every day there are more people on the planet than the day previous. Population growth may have slowed, but the peoplemeter is still inching up every day. The second fact is that there are more guns around than ever before. "Gun control" notwithstanding, it's easier to buy a gun these days than ever before. Don't give me any of that whining about background checks or the Brady Bill. There's no reason to go to a dealer for a gun when there are millions on the street.

As for the population issue, perhaps it's because I grew up in a series of small cities (and one larger one), but I just don't remember people being so crammed together when I was younger. Even if the population of a given town or city hasn't increased, the population density has. It takes longer to "get out of town." When I lived in Lawrence, Kan., there was a lot of countryside between it and Kansas City (K.C. was officially 45 miles away, or something like that). Highway 10 was a two-lane road which adhered to the hills and valleys. Now it's a four-lane limited-access freeway, as flat as the Trinity Site. There is no noticeable countryside between the explicit suburbs of Kansas City and Lawrence any more. A number of my friends, many who grew up in cities, also have noticed this trend toward massive urbanization. So either this perception is a function of getting older (which is possible, though there's not much of a control for the experiment, is there?), or it just might be correct.

I've noticed that people generally take to the outside world in three basic ways. The first is to embrace reality in all of its wonder and diversity. Some might call this approach "tolerant" or "liberal" or stuff like that. Folks in this camp generally are not afraid of that which is unusual, and thus are able to acknowledge differences without insecurity and the attendant fear. These people also view ignorance as something that should be attacked at all costs. Whether through direct action or passive study, these people work all their lives to try and understand as much of the world as possible.

The second sort of folks simply want to be left alone. They think that if they sit inside their homes (or, at best, their neighborhoods), they can shut out the world and make all the bad things go away. These are also the folks who buy house alarms and car alarms and bike alarms and dog alarms and UHF transmitters to drive away the bugs. They seem to have a notion that the world can be "sanitized," or, at least, their small corner of the world can be sanitized. There is a simple word for this: Denial.

The third set contains the potentially dangerous people. These combine the fear of the second group with a sometimes scary self-righteous fervor. Some might refer to this as "a big-ass chip on the shoulder." In other words, these people think the world can be perfected, if only everybody listened to them. That part alone isn't dangerous. The real problems start when one of these people realizes that the world cannot be perfected, or even worse, that no one is listening. Already a prime candidate for alienation, this recognition could send a person right over the edge.

In an unusual display of intelligence and perception, a police spokesman in Cleveland attributed the mass-murder plot of a few high school students to this same "alienation." There has been so much psychobabble surrounding Columbine and the other school shootings that we seem to forget that depersonalization is necessary to commit these acts of terror. It is pretty much impossible to kill a person if you recognize that person as a sentient human being. Now, through anger or psychosis or other various means, everyday folks lose sight of humanity and kill. They depersonalize their targets and commit horrific acts of violence. Most often against people they love.

It takes a special person to turn ignorance into hate into alienation, and then to turn that outward instead of inward (like, say, a suicide). Most folks couldn't and wouldn't. But until the majority of people take a tolerant approach to the world (and, looking at my categories, it's quite apparent that the majority of folks lie in the second, hermit-like category), more people and more guns will equal more big shootings.

Just to be clear here: I do not believe that greater gun control would have stopped any of these shootings. At this point, there are far too many guns in our society for any sort of law to make a difference. Even if every person handled their guns in exemplary ways and didn't use them against other people, accidents happen. And more people plus more guns will always equal more shootings. There is no mutual-assured destruction logic when it comes to guns. The safeties aren't that effective.

Sorry to be so bleak here, but there is no "magic bullet" solution to this problem. I don't think people are going to start being more tolerant on a mass scale any time soon, and I don't think people are going to stop buying guns in mass quantities any time soon. I guess we'd better just get used to the mayhem.

Jon Worley works at a company where high stress is the norm. He always makes sure his co-workers aren't packing heat before he farts in the breakroom.