It was bad enough when a raft of individuals opined in public how the British sailors should have behaved while they were captured by the Iranians, now we have people opining about how people should behave when Hell comes to visits them in their classrooms .
I present to you, John Derbyshire from The Corner on National Review Online
: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am.
My first and most fundamental reaction is that it is really easy to sit at one’s desk and opine to the ether how one would react in such a horrible situation. None of us knows for sure what we would do in such as situation and God willing none of you reading these words will ever have to find out.
Second, Cho must’ve been able to hit something, since he killed over 30 people.
Third, “count the shots”?!? Does Derbyshire really think that in that situation a bunch of terrified victims will have the presence of mind to know how many rounds ought to be in the weapon in question and simultaneously know which shot was the first one from which to count? That statement alone underscores that he is making these statements from some fantasy world movie perspective, not one grounded in reality.
Further, as John Cole rightly notes, there were acts of heroism at Va Tech on Monday. The response to the shooting by the students was a mixed one, as one would expect from human being–we don’t all react the same to these situations (heck, to any situation for that matter).
Still, that doesn’t stop Nathanael Blake, blogging at Human Events, to ask:
Where Were the Men? and to state:
Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.
Again with the comic-book/movie logic: “Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys”–to dub someone like Cho a “bad guy” is to seriously cartoonize what he did.
And Blake has no knowledge of how the situation went down, where Cho was when he was shooting, where the students were when they were shot. To make statements like these make we wonder not about the state of “manliness” in America, but rather about the reasoning capacity of Blake and Derbyshire.
As the title says: this kind of stuff is truly asininity on parade.
Update: It occurred to me later (and this is my first chance to get to a computer), how do Derbyshire and Blake even know if some of those who died didn’t die doing exactly what is being suggested? Maybe some of the student did try to rush the gunman. We really don’t know. The more I think about the above-quote posts the more worthy of contempt they become.
Sphere: Related Content
April 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Excellent post!
April 18th, 2007 at 9:00 am
[...] Dr. Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a commentary on the comic book logic being used by some who believe the students at Virginia Tech didn’t act enough like “men”. [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 9:20 am
The rest of the world reacts
Our culture is awfully violent and some of the blogospheric reaction to Monday’s events shows that our view of reality has become skewed by exposure to movie violence (Poliblog has some good commentary on the subject with links to examples)
April 18th, 2007 at 9:41 am
[...] Dr. Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a commentary on the comic book logic being used by some who believe the students at Virginia Tech didn’t act enough like “men”. Share: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
VT Massacre “Analysis”: Which is Worst?
Which is worst?
1. Doctor Phil blaming it on violent video games? (Via
April 18th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
When I first heard the death toll, I wondered if anybody had tried to fight back. However, based on the information we now have, I believe many people tried to fight back in various ways.
Some people pushed a wooden door shut, locket it, and tried to barricade it with a table. That’s a risky move. Unfortunately, Cho shot through the door, and when the door had been destroyed, he was able to muscle his way back in the classroom.
A professor is known to have used his body as a shield so that his class could leave.
Assuming Virginia Tech’s classrooms are made of cinderblock like just about every “modern” campus, they would have contributed to the carnage. Especially without a separate escape route.
Sure, the students could have dialed 911 on their cell phones, but without serious weapons of their own, their only real choice was to play dead and cross their fingers.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
[...] What in the world is going on? First we have Derbyshire and Blake and now this. First, why do we have to find blame in places other than the fact that a truly disturbed individual simply did an unthinkable act and cracked. There is only so much that can be done in a free society to prevent such situations. This attempt to blame a general “liberal” attitude at universities and that this somehow has led to a culture of “conflict avoidance” that somehow, by inference, led to people not defending themselves on Monday–that is utterly ridiculous. [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] [Cross-posted from PoliBlog] [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] [Cross-posted from PoliBlog] [...]