re: “At the risk of playing Monday morning quarterback, she also decided to follow the rules and not prepare herself for the defense of herself and her students.
I say this NOT as an indictment of this valorous woman, but only to point out that she was more afraid of the consequences of breaking the rules than she was of a deranged gunman.”
How in the world do YOU KNOW what her thoughts and fears are/were? You say that you are not indicting her, but then you make a judgement against her by saying that she was more afraid of breaking the “rules” and not carry a gun, than she was of Lanza. You don’t know that.
Most people, when they go to work, never ever think about something as horrible as what happened in Newtown would happen to them on any given day.
I highly doubt that Victoria ever thought about or made any such choice you claim she made. The same ridiculous choice you say she abdicated on could also be said of anyone who walks out their door to go anywhere, but are unarmed with a concealed weapon. Is that what you are saying? - That everyone who goes out the door unarmed has chosen to fear “breaking the rules” more than face a possible armed murderer?
Nowhere did I say she ever wrestled with the decision of whether or not to carry. You're most likely correct that she never thought about arming herself because for many among us, breaking the rules is simply unthinkable. When normal folks go about abiding by the rules, we subconsciously choose to not break them. If the rules of having no guns in school were not there, would Victoria have chosen to carry? We have no way of knowing at this time. If on the other hand a program was in place telling the teachers that if you want to be in a position to protect yourself, here are the requirements, and here is the training, I strongly suspect (based on her actions during the attack, she'd have been at the front of the line.
I never said she abdicated on a choice. The choice was essentially made for her. When you get up to get dressed for work in the morning, do you consciously choose to not wear a leather codpiece, or do you consciously opt for something more conservative? When you drive to work, do you consciously choose to drive on the right side of the road, or do you simply do so to comply with conventionally accepted rules? If you actively did think about it, I'm sure the consequences of not doing so would figure into the process. When you get to work, do you enter through the door, or do you scale the outside of the building and climb through a second story window?
My point was and remains this. Law abiding, normal people generally follow the path of least resistance and comply with the social and legal norms in which we are immersed. We do so generally not necessarily by some agonizing conscious choice, but we also recognize at some level that there most likely would be adverse consequences for not complying. We rule out some options immediately (i.e. the leather codpiece) and never give them much thought because they seem like such clearly outlandish choices so far outside the mainstream of conventionally accepted behavior. For Victoria Soto, carrying a firearm was probably something so far outside the accepted behavior of her milieu that it rarely if ever entered her thought process; but I don't blame her.
Since gun free schools were enacted, there has been an effective conspiracy of pasty faced, pencilnecked bureacrats with narrow chests and long noses to effectively render teachers like Ms. Soto defenseless. They have done so by creating an atmosphere where teachers no more think about arming themselves than they would think about driving on the left side of the road to get to work. They have completely eliminated that option. I'm guessing that in her mind, she nevr really thought about it as a viable option, and simply complied with the rules in place...as most of us do. It was not Ms. Soto who needed to change, it is the rules that need to.
If you think I was in any way attacking Ms. Soto, well, you simply have never been more wrong about anything in your life.