You probably had to first overcome that mental hammer lock before you were able to take some positive action (fight or flight) and escape. I suspect that, once you had mentally unlocked yourself, the time between recognizing your chance (for escape, in this case) and taking it was very short. (If not nearly instantaneous.)
Recovering your ability to act saved your life.
But that’s not what we are taught. Don’t fight back, don’t run, just comply. Comply until it is too late to do anything for yourself, effective or not. Compliance makes things so much easier. For the predators, to be sure, but primarily for the authorities. Unhesitating, unthinking compliance is a response that is so important to the civil authority (because it produces a population that is easy to manage - a phenomena termed around Free Republic as “sheeple”) that it receives constant reinforcement from our authority figures. And for those who trespass their dictum in some dramatic way, there is always the threat of a highly publicized prosecution. One that will be disastrously expensive to defend against even if you win.
No, the prosecutors and police would rather have people murdered in their homes and in public places by the thousands rather than risk having a populace that is sufficiently self-empowered as to be willing and able to recognize danger and take immediate action to end it. Thank God, we, as a people, are finally recognizing how crippling that compliance is and are turning away from it with the concealed carry and the “castle doctrine” laws that are being passed.
There is now going to be a lot of talk about reforming the gun laws to make it harder for persons to obtain and use a gun. This is wrong headed thinking. Just the opposite should be the case.
The criminals are already armed and they don’t care about the law. What criminals are deterred by (if they can be deterred at all) is the prospect of being killed or injured when they attack. If there seems to be too much danger, they will seek an easier target.
Whether armed or not, a law-abiding person is still a law-abiding person. Sufficiently trained, they are no more likely to use the weapon inappropriately than they are to misuse any other really dangerous technology inappropriately. There are 100+ million guns in this country. How many were used inappropriately yesterday?
What would have happened yesterday if the killer had to face the prospect of many guns being available for armed and trained citizens to immediately fire back at him when he started shooting in Norris Hall? He would have either: 1) been brought down quickly in a hail of return fire, or 2) have left campus and probably killed himself.
One final thought: Yesterday’s incident at VT shows, once again, how very vulnerable our society is to even one determined killer. This cannot have been lost on the terrorists. We either prepare to prevent an American version of the Beslan school massacre now or we will endure it over and over again until we do.
No, the prosecutors and police would rather have people murdered in their homes and in public places by the thousands rather than risk having a populace that is sufficiently self-empowered as to be willing and able to recognize danger and take immediate action to end it. Thank God, we, as a people, are finally recognizing how crippling that compliance is and are turning away from it with the concealed carry and the “castle doctrine” laws that are being passed.
***Bears repeating. I would hope that we could soon see some new forms of training videos for people who might find themselves in these kinds of situations. The name of the game is: Quick, forceful action will save someone’s life (if not your own, at least someone else’s). There are lots of examples of shooters brought down by rednecks going back into the parking lot to get their deer rifle or handgun and pin the guy down or even cancel his ticket. Flight 93 was halted from its deadly mission aimed at the white house by men armed with coffee pots.