Assault with a deadly hedgehog

The story: Police in the New Zealand town of Wakatane arrested a man this week for hurling a hedgehog at a fifteen-year-old boy. A police spokesman said police nabbed the suspect “”for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog.””

The response: This story highlights a far underreported, but all too tragic phenomenon: hedgehog violence. While debates over gun control have dominated media coverage for quite some time, hedgehog violence is surreptitiously threatening to rend this country in two.

It is high time this country institute some hedgehog control: We must have a database of all hedgehog owners, and must prevent the mentally unstable and convicted criminals from possessing hedgehogs. Congress must act now in banning assault hedgehogs, such as that nefarious rogue known as Sonic. The government must release a series of public service announcements, reminding citizens that despite their cute faces, these creatures of mayhem threaten the law and order of the land. We also must work to ensure that campuses across the nation are hedgehog-free zones. This country cannot risk having its best and brightest trapped in a room where hedgehogs could ricochet off the walls at any moment.

Some say that if you criminalize hedgehogs, then only criminals will have hedgehogs. Yet I truly believe that our children can live in a hedgehog-free world, where they do not have to live in daily fear of being punctured.

– Evan Lisull is a sophomore majoring in economics and political science.

Mugging it up for surveillance cameras

The story: A study of 68 public surveillance cameras in San Francisco, released by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley this week, found that closed-circuit cameras lowered nonviolent theft by 22 percent within 100 feet of each camera, but had no measurable effect on burglary, car theft or violent crime.

The response: In addition to significantly reducing theft within the radius of their ever-vigilant electronic eyes, researchers found that “”murders went down within 250 feet of the cameras.”” Of course, “”the reduction was completely offset by an increase 250 to 500 feet away, suggesting people moved down the block before killing each other.””

Bleeding heart criminal-coddlers point to the findings as evidence that closed-circuit cameras are ineffective and invasive, and like to bring up the fact that footage has only been used in one arrest during the three years they’ve been installed, but they’re dead wrong. The solution to spotty surveillance is quite clear: we simply need a whole bunch more cameras.

Crime drops outside a 100-foot radius of government surveillance? That’s a no-brainer – just install cameras every 100 feet. Murderers sneak around the corner for a few quick off-the-record kills? Easy – throw up a few cameras in Stab Alley, too! Car theft? Try two cameras! Burglary? A camera in every window! Police could even put tiny cameras on top of other cameras to deter camera vandals.

A pervasive total surveillance society might not be fun, but it sure would be safe. We have the technology to build it – we just need to get scared enough to do so.

– Connor Mendenhall is a sophomore majoring in economics and international studies and is the opinions editor of the Arizona Daily Wildcat.