Posted on 04/23/2007 11:38:03 AM PDT by Minuteman23
Shortly after the tragedy last October at the Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, PA I saw a fellow interviewed (can’t remember where) who travels around to schools and instructs students as to how to react if an armed intruder enters their classroom.
Simplified, his basic premise was to act as quickly as possible. To work as a group, grab whatever might be handy, throw the objects en masse at the intruder, and rush him collectively.
His theory was that, by doing so, the odds are greater for a larger number of survivors to walk out of the classroom alive than they would by simply waiting to discover the intruder's intentions.
The son of a good friend of mine has organized a group of boys at his high school in an effort to pre-plan what they would do should they ever be confronted with a situation similar to what occurred at Virginia Tech this week. In part, this is what my friend wrote to me:
They intend to not cower under their desks, but to arm themselves with whatever is at hand and attack the perpetrator and stop him. My advice to my son was:
1) Come at the individual(s) from several different directions if possible, not having anyone following directly behind another.
2) Begin your attack with everyone throwing whatever they have at the criminal in order to distract him.
3) Do not stop if some of your number go down … press on. Practice doing so.
4) When you get the individual down, keep beating until he does not move.
5) The best thing to arm yourself with is a gun. I can't tell you to break the law ... and will not do so. Still, the best thing to be armed with against someone shooting at you is a gun.
I completely agree with my friend, and with what his son is attempting to organize. But the success of such a strategy rests on the willingness of the majority of the people involved to instantaneously commit themselves to action. Call me a cynic if you like, but I wouldn’t necessarily trust the others in the area to take immediate action along with me. That isn’t to say that instantaneous action isn’t called for. It is, and must be. It’s just that the person who reacts in that way might be doing so alone, no matter what others profess beforehand. In which case, his quick but singular action might simply cause him to be nothing more than the first victim. If that is the case, so be it.
The number of Monday morning quarterbacks who arrogantly know exactly how decisions could have been made better by Virginia Tech’s administration is mind boggling. After a tragedy such as this, there are always countless finger-pointing experts, ready, willing and able to wag their indignant, pseudo-authoritative fingers in any setting that boasts a television camera and a microphone. A pox on them all.
And then there are the gun-control imbeciles. I’ll not grant their rantings any space here.
Nor will I listen to, or watch, any more coverage of Cho Seung-Hui. As always, the media have turned the coverage of this event and its aftermath into a three-ring circus – interviewing anyone who has ever so much as walked down the same street as Seung-Hui did, and consulting countless self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who have the audacity to presume to know what made him tick.
I don’t care what made him tick. And I don’t plan to wear orange and maroon, or tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree.
I want us all to allow the friends and families of the victims to mourn with dignity, without subjecting them to phony long-distance mourning by people who simply seek to be ‘a part of the crowd’ -- after which they’ll sheepishly return to passively practicing uninformed apathy, and no doubt vote for the candidate who wants to disarm us all, seeks ‘tolerance’ for deviant behavior, and allows the majority of criminals to remain free as a result of legal technicalities or agenda-driven judges.
Talk about your ‘lamb to slaughter mentality’.
I want to hear less about Seung-Hui, and much more about Liviu Librescue -- how his strength of character was molded by his wartime experiences in a labor camp in Romania, and how he is rumored to have saved many of his students by acting with instinctive courage in the moment. And I want future American students to learn about him in their history classes.
I want America to stop being concerned about superficial symbolism and phony sentimentality, stop labeling tabloid journalism as ‘news’, and start developing some depth of character and respect for genuine liberty and the vigilance that is required to preserve it. Ribbons and candlelight serve no purpose in that arena.
When discussing the aftermath of this week’s tragedy with our daughter last night, she shed her own light on the situation. She said the following:
After 9/11, many in our area (suburban DC) went out and purchased American flags to show their support of those innocents who died, and their determination to appear unified in the face of the attack on us all. We saw countless flags flying from front porch columns, and even more of the miniature version flying from car antennae. Driving down the highway became a uniquely unifying patriotic experience.
Several weeks later, a friend and I were walking out of a movie theater when, in the parking lot, we came across one of those miniature antenna flags that had blown off its place of honor and was lying, dirty and virtually unrecognizable, in a puddle of water, having obviously been driven over by countless cars exiting the lot.
On our way home, my friend and I discussed the tragic symbolism behind the murky fate of that little flag.
A nation facing the unprecedented, malevolent threats that are now relentlessly beating on our door will not long survive, if its citizenry consistently chooses to substitute feel-good superficiality for genuine character, and the vigilance and sacrifice it must evoke if we are to prevail.
If we did the ribbon and candle thing, and then followed it up with true concern and action, the symbolism would have meaning. When involvement ends with symbolism, we are in grave danger.
Great article.
Never ever forget this: Liberals believe the talk is dear and action is cheap.
It’s like an ambush - the best way to defeat it, is to attack into it.
Still and all, prayers for the students and their families.
This should be mandatory training at every school. Students should also be taught how to safely handle and shoot firearms. Certainly as important as teaching them "safe sex" and Gorebalisms.
Not only would it make student feel less helpless, think of the deterrent effect on potential murderers who know all their classmates have had this training.
Further clarification can be found at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1822163/posts
For what can be done beforehand as an effort to treat the symptoms before it escallates to another tragedy on any level.
I know, there's Flight 93, but they were adults, the intruders did not have guns, and they knew they were fer shure dead if they did nothing - playing possum or jumping out a window would gain them nothing.
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