Shopping can kill

There's been a strange rash of shopping-related violence in the area lately. Stabbings at a nice mall, shootings in the lesser mall, and even shootings "across the river." Cops were often related, sometimes it's a woman who just got out of jail who starts stabbing people near Loehmanns.

Why at malls? I know I get hugely frustrated trying on clothes that are inevitably too short, too big, too tight, etc. Very Goldilocks. But I've never been driven to violence inside a store. I can see how entering a mall and being surrounded by people might set someone off, though. It's like a filmstrip of "This is What You Cannot Have" running in perpetuity.

But I think the violence might come from something a little deeper - the mall is a place where folks charge what they cannot afford and desire what they should not crave. It's a place of frustration and deception in many ways (am I going too far here? I really dislike shopping so this might just be me), and I wonder whether the Muzak sets these guys off.