Might as well wear a target on your hip

When cold weather began to take hold in the nation’s capital a couple years back, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy, attempting to dispense a bit of common-sense wisdom to readers and put in a dig at a consumer culture based on brand names, penned a piece titled, “Might as Well Wear a Target On Your Back.”
Now, with Memorial Day unofficially kicking off the summer season, the subject might well be mobile phones rather than popular North Face jackets. Both attract robbers young and old-sometimes holding guns, sometimes using them-on victims of all ages. Google it and see for yourself, which I did after continuing to come across stories of violent cellphone thefts while searching for something else.
Last week, WGAL of Lancaster, Pa., reported the arrest of several individuals allegedly tied to the shooting and killing of Ray Diener, 65. The only thing missing was his cellphone.
So far I cannot see a clear trend-demographic, geographic or otherwise-in these violent acts. The same week GMANews.TV reported Erving Lorenzana, 20, succumbed to gunshot wounds from thieves who stole his cell phone in Manila, Philippines.
The only common denominator appears to be the calculation that a cellphone for a human life is a fair exchange, at least when rationalized from the point of view of a would-be killer who’ll just die if he can’t have the other guy’s cellphone this very second.
Well, there’s no moral to the story. It’s not the fault of wireless manufactures and vendors, or even the billions on this planet that choose to carry a mobile phone on them for, among other reasons, safety.
Face it; cellphones are cool. Thugs will be thugs. Their tastes change with the times and-surprise, surprise-mirror ours. Indeed, they too love fancy cell phones, famous-label winter jackets and big-name basketball shoes that give you that superstar aura. The difference is they don’t buy into our system of commerce in which aggressive behavior is typically limited to creditors unleashed when bills aren’t paid.
Maybe, being the great age of convergence, they can integrate a pepper sprayer into 3G and 4G handsets. A killer app, if you will.