Fighting Back Against Mass Shooters
Seems like there's never a great time to discuss this... Discussing it immediately after such an incident might make it seem condemnatory of the victims, and I don't want that. But discussing it when it's not at the forefront of people's minds also has disadvantages.
At any rate: it's something that needs to be discussed. Fighting back almost certainly means fewer innocent deaths and injuries. A shooter could murder one person per round of ammunition if the victims were sufficiently docile. But one shooter with only semi-automatic weapons has virtually no chance of surviving if, say, ten people attack him from reasonably close range.
We're encouraged to be docile, and to cede the responsibility for our safety to the state. That propaganda is useful from the perspective of the state, but it's bullshit.
At any rate: it's something that needs to be discussed. Fighting back almost certainly means fewer innocent deaths and injuries. A shooter could murder one person per round of ammunition if the victims were sufficiently docile. But one shooter with only semi-automatic weapons has virtually no chance of surviving if, say, ten people attack him from reasonably close range.
We're encouraged to be docile, and to cede the responsibility for our safety to the state. That propaganda is useful from the perspective of the state, but it's bullshit.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:13 PM
9 Comments:
FWIW, my employer--a very, very big employer on the East Coast that has experienced some shooting incidents at its work locations--recently required everyone to take a course on what to do during an active shooter situation. Here is my summary.
Best option: Run if you are near an exit and think you can get away. Tell everyone near you to run. As you're getting away, keep anyone else from going anywhere near the scene. Call 911 as soon as you're safe.
Second best option: Hide and keep quiet. Lock and block the entry as best you can. Get behind office equipment that might protect you from whatever projectiles might come through the walls. Do what you have to do to make sure everyone stays quiet because someone won't stay quiet. And make sure your damn cellphones won't ring.
Last option: Everyone improvise a weapon. A nice heavy fire extinguisher will do just fine in a pinch. Everyone ambush the gunman when he enters your hiding place.
Yup.
Pretty damn hard to deny the soundness of this advice I'd say.
Alrighty then, Clint Eastwood, get back to us after you've run toward someone shooting a semi-automatic weapon in your direction. It's probably great advice in theory -- in practice 99.9% of people are going to try and save their own asses, not collectively rush the shooter. I can't believe how many hypothetical Dirty Harrys are out there thinking they're gonna man up and attack somebody shooting at them.
You are an idiot.
Of course there's probably no reason to point that out, yet behold, I do.
Also, Clint Eastwood is usually known for playing characters who use guns to fight against people with guns.
Which is not really the imagined scenario.
If you have a gun and don't try to fight back against a mass killer, you are a craven mess indeed...
You'd have done better to reference, say, Bruce Lee or Jason Bourne or somebody like that.
Well thank you for enlightening me, Winston. I'm not much of a fan of action movies, which may be why I don't entertain ludicrous notions of springing to action when an armed madman is spraying bullets in my direction. By all means, look at yourself in the mirror tonight and picture yourself as Jason Bourne or Bruce Lee or whoever your action hero of choice is in your fevered imagination.
Interesting why you chose to focus on my choice of an action hero rather than what actual humans are likely to do in an actual situation. I wonder why that is?
You really are bad at this, aren't you?
Do you really need for me to go back and explain in detail why your responses here are idiotic?
Surely...if you tried *really* hard...you could figure it out for yourself...
Or no?
Go ahead and enlighten me. It's easy to say my responses are idiotic but much harder to say why, apparently. Take a stab at it so I can be awestruck by your superior logic.
Well, A, it doesn't actually take much logic to shred your comments here, to be honest. All it really takes is paying attention...
First, your argument is an *ad hominem.* If someone points out that x is the best course of action, it is no objection to respond that they themselves may not have the willpower to do x. If someone tells you that you can lose weight by cutting calories and upping exercise, you do not refute their point by saying "yeah, well, you wouldn't be able to do it."
Second, and along similar lines, it's foolish, in response to advice, to point out that most people don't naturally to it. *We know that most people don't naturally do it.* That's why the advice is needed. If everybody did it naturally, there'd be little reason to point out that they should do it.
Furthermore, even if I were extremely cowardly, that wouldn't change the fact that there are many circumstances in which I *ought* to fight back. My own alleged cowardice is irrelevant to what ought to be done.
So you've really not in any way touched what I said: that people should fight back more against mass shooters. Your response comes to no more than this: I, Anonymous, assert that Winston Smith, whom I do not know from Adam, is unlikely to take his own advice.
Silliness.
A waste of my time.
Now, as for what I might really do under such circumstances...well, who knows? Probably depends on a lot of things. Some people *do* charge the shooters, of course. I'm pretty cantankerous and would probably take great offense at someone trying to kill people...me included...
As for the truth of your hypothesis, we'll probably never know. As for its relevance: we know.
Ah, nothing like the Internet to offer up a sanctimonious moron into the sights of the howitzer of reason. A good pre-breakfast read; took absolutely minimal effort to comprehend, and though I expect Anonymous here to come back with an even more aggressive series of rational failures, it was satisfying in the authoritative, clear, and incontrovertible smackdown issued.
9/10.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home