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By the time you read this, this year's bullet and body count may be even higher than the 55 bullets fired and three men killed when I wrote this column.

These statistics confirm and prove the unpleasant reality that Bermuda has an underclass.

Despite wilful blindness and calls to be polite and sensitive, there is nothing invisible, polite or sensitive about the fact that one or more steel-jacketed bullets snuffs out a man's life.

Death is absolute. Burial is final.

Also absolute is that many Bermudians do not really care that these men have been killed.

There has been no general outpouring of national sympathy. No one called for national flags to be flown at half-mast as happened when David Allen died.

No sad spectators lined the streets when their cortege passed by as happened with Dame Lois.

No national tributes were paid as happened when Sir 'Jack' Sharpe passed away.

Many Bermudians hold the view these men were not part of the world lived in by most residents.

Most people believe the shootings, deaths, and burials are events and rituals that belong, particularly and peculiarly, to a small but growing segment of Bermuda's greater society.

Most Bermudians feel the killings are confined to a sub-group existing among and within Bermuda's general population.

This group, currently hell-bent on shooting at, wounding and killing its own members, fits the classic and universal definition of an underclass.

As such, Bermuda's general population may well feel that as long as "they" go on killing one another, it matters little to the rest of "us".

But what affects the rest of us is that this underclass has grown, has now reached self-sustaining critical mass and its members are now clearly living out - and sometimes snuffing out - their own lives while still rubbing shoulders with the rest of us.

They live among us and we live among them. We have a unique Bermuda problem.

Elsewhere, ordinary people could insulate with distance or create gated communities.

But on Bermuda's 13,000 narrow acres, these geographic and physical solutions are impossible.

The Good Friday killing happened on a school field full of kite-flying children, all of whom were in danger of being killed - accidentally - by a misdirected bullet.

The St John's Road shooting seemed completely indiscriminate.

In the short run, in our Bermuda setting, a police crackdown - even a lethal crackdown - would cause this underclass to modify some of its actions.

If strong police action continues, it can buy time to reverse the underclass reality.

Reversing requires the reduction and then elimination of the conditions that create and then sustain an underclass.

Police action is necessary now. Government action - undertaken by a wise and thoughtful Government - must start now. Individual action - individuals offering up evidence - must start now.

Strategically, nationally, a wise and thoughtful government must help eliminate the community and social conditions that act as seed and fertiliser for the growth of an underclass.

The principal eliminating agent is education. The next most important eliminator is a job market able to absorb the whole output of the maternity wards-cum-school classrooms.

Bermuda has a two-part national education system. On average, privately educated students pay tuition fees of $16,000 per year.

An average $23,000 per year is spent on publicly educated students. Bermuda's national workforce imports one out of every three workers. For 40 years, and to this day, there has been no shortage of job opportunity.

The two education systems are neither under-funded nor operating in bad physical plant.

What is missing is a wise and thoughtful government being pushed and prodded by a demanding electorate and community.

Until a wise and thoughtful government appears, Bermuda's underclass will go on procreating, growing, shooting, wounding, killing and then graffiti-ing their sad epitaphs on walls and roads.

We are in a race between the continuing rise of the underclass and the coming of a wise and thoughtful government.

For now, the bullet and stab wounds and the rising body counts show that the underclass is winning and Bermuda - all the rest of us - are losing.

Incidentally, in Iraq from March 1, 2010, three American soldiers have been killed as a result of enemy action. From March 1, 2010, in Bermuda weekend shootings, two Bermudians were killed and seven wounded by gunfire. Iraq? Safer?

Gun violence special report:

'Pray for them' - victim speaks from hospital bed

Kids afraid after gunfire

The long and bloody Good Friday

Fearful scenes as football party turned ugly

'You're tearing families apart'

Criminals face jail time abroad in Gov't crime crackdown

Four more arrests after east end brawl

Latest on suspects

Viewpoint: Has the gun violence altered your daily routine?

Flying bullets prove the underclass is winning

Increase in Bermuda's population is partly to blame for soaring gun violence

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