Fighting Back Against Mass Shooters
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I've periodically tried to encourage people to at least reflect on the possibility that people in mass shooting situations must at least consider fighting back. If, for example, people in a Virginia Tech-type situation were to fight back, the expected death toll will be lower than if they didn't. This is not an indictment of any of the actual victims/survivors of any actual violent incident . It's to cite a specific type of example of relevant facts in order to help us think about future cases in a more realistic way.
Conservatives have been generally more receptive to the arguments. Responses by liberals have, frankly, been embarrassingly irrational. I don't think this is caused by anything inherent in liberalism...but it sure is a noticeable thing. From liberals I've gotten the following responses:
* It is impossible to fight back against someone armed with a gun if you are unarmed
* Even if you have a gun yourself, you are more likely to simply kill more innocent people than you are to incapacitate the shooter
* The idea of fighting back in such a situation is a "macho fantasy"
And, of course:
* VICTIM-BLAMING!!!!!11111
Liberals often accuse conservatives of having fantasies of heroism when the suggest fighting back. I think that's an interesting issue, but won't pursue it much here. In brief: what sane, good person does not have hero fantasies? Well...more modestly: the conservative attitude is truer, more reasonable, more useful, more psychologically healthy, and more morally admirable than the leftward counsel/conviction of helplessness, which is reprehensible in almost all the relevant ways.
Of course not all liberals believe the gospel of helplessness...but a lot of vocal ones do. This is not to indict all liberals, but to encourage the reasonable ones to correct an unreasonable doctrine that is currently fairly common among liberals. One way to start would be to explain why the fallacious responses above are fallacious... I'm going to go ahead and conclude that the responses are so obvious that I don't need to type them out.
Incidentally, the 20/20 anti-firearms piece "If I Only Had A Gun" that I've complained about before is relevant here. The unstated conclusion of that piece is: it's impossible to defend yourself in a mass-shooting situation even if you yourself are armed. Just throw your gun away! It can only make things worse! You are likely to kill more people than if you just left the shooter alone and ran away! The only person you absolutely cannot kill is the shooter! Run away! Run away! Believe me--that is actually not an exaggeration... But, of course, if fighting back makes sense for those who are unarmed, then a fortiori it makes sense for those who are armed.
Anyway. Glad that reason seems to be triumphing over ideology in this discussion.
I've periodically tried to encourage people to at least reflect on the possibility that people in mass shooting situations must at least consider fighting back. If, for example, people in a Virginia Tech-type situation were to fight back, the expected death toll will be lower than if they didn't. This is not an indictment of any of the actual victims/survivors of any actual violent incident . It's to cite a specific type of example of relevant facts in order to help us think about future cases in a more realistic way.
Conservatives have been generally more receptive to the arguments. Responses by liberals have, frankly, been embarrassingly irrational. I don't think this is caused by anything inherent in liberalism...but it sure is a noticeable thing. From liberals I've gotten the following responses:
* It is impossible to fight back against someone armed with a gun if you are unarmed
* Even if you have a gun yourself, you are more likely to simply kill more innocent people than you are to incapacitate the shooter
* The idea of fighting back in such a situation is a "macho fantasy"
And, of course:
* VICTIM-BLAMING!!!!!11111
Liberals often accuse conservatives of having fantasies of heroism when the suggest fighting back. I think that's an interesting issue, but won't pursue it much here. In brief: what sane, good person does not have hero fantasies? Well...more modestly: the conservative attitude is truer, more reasonable, more useful, more psychologically healthy, and more morally admirable than the leftward counsel/conviction of helplessness, which is reprehensible in almost all the relevant ways.
Of course not all liberals believe the gospel of helplessness...but a lot of vocal ones do. This is not to indict all liberals, but to encourage the reasonable ones to correct an unreasonable doctrine that is currently fairly common among liberals. One way to start would be to explain why the fallacious responses above are fallacious... I'm going to go ahead and conclude that the responses are so obvious that I don't need to type them out.
Incidentally, the 20/20 anti-firearms piece "If I Only Had A Gun" that I've complained about before is relevant here. The unstated conclusion of that piece is: it's impossible to defend yourself in a mass-shooting situation even if you yourself are armed. Just throw your gun away! It can only make things worse! You are likely to kill more people than if you just left the shooter alone and ran away! The only person you absolutely cannot kill is the shooter! Run away! Run away! Believe me--that is actually not an exaggeration... But, of course, if fighting back makes sense for those who are unarmed, then a fortiori it makes sense for those who are armed.
Anyway. Glad that reason seems to be triumphing over ideology in this discussion.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:28 AM
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