Because any number of people throwing flammable liquids on each other and waving matches or lighters is too many, the fact that two different such incidents are in the news simultaneously right now is especially disturbing. In one, captured on video last month but made public today, someone poured some kind of flammable liquid under the glass at a Harlem check-cashing place in an attempt to rob it. In another, an angry panhandler in Brownsville tossed gasoline on a deli clerk’s face and “threatened him with a lit cigarette lighter” before employees pulled him away. In both, we long for simple muggings with a gun-shaped finger in the pocket.