They DID Fight Back

[Vyan]

Source: Daily Kos, New York Times

Of all the arrogant ignorance displayed in the past couple of days regarding the Blacksburg Massacre, nothing trumps what John Derbyshire and Nathaniel Blake had to say Tuesday about the alleged passivity and cowardice of students at Virginia Tech. As numerous commenters pointed out, it's easy to pin medals on yourself from the comfort of your parents' basement. Today, we've got more of the same from Mark Steyn at NRO.

While many of us think we would react calmly and bravely in a dire emergency - and it is worth the exercise of preparing oneself psychologically and physically for such circumstances - none of us knows for sure how we would behave until we actually come face-to-face with peril. Would we rush to pry some stranger or some stranger's children from a burning car as the flames sped toward the fuel tank? Would we take on the bully pounding the class nerd behind the school? Would we join the passengers of the hijacked plane and crash the cockpit door? Easy to type "of course" on the keyboard. Easy to be a hero when there's time to ponder it over a martini. Easy to mock people who don't measure up to your never-tested standards. Talk is cheap, and brave talk is cheapest of all.

What we now know is that some of those who faced the gunman at Virginia Tech did selflessly risk their lives to save others.

As reported in the The New York Times (and noted in jhritz's Diary), one of those was Engineering Professor Liviu Librescu, an Israeli Holocaust survivor, who blocked Cho Seung-Hui from entering the room, urging students to escape. Many did. He was murdered on the spot.

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/18/171917/480

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In additional to the armchair cowboy's such as Derbyshire, Blake and Steyn the usual suspects from Fux News have also jumped into the fray.

Michelle Malkin: “Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense — mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.“

Living in the same delusional fantasy world where America still has a chance to be greated with flowers and candy in Iraq are Fox's John Gibson and Joe Napolitano who imagine that what this situation really needed was an appearance by Wyatt Earp for an old-style western shoot-out:

GIBSON: So, theoretically, in this lecture hall where all 31 were killed, there could have been someone with a carry permit carrying their gun to shoot the shooter?

NAPOLITANO: No, because the same people that just dropped the ball, as Bo just described, that allowed 32 additional people to die, also said: “Virginia lets you carry a gun at a gas station or a bank or a stadium, but not on a college campus, where you may protect kids.”

Before we turn a school campus into the "O.K. Corral" perhaps we should think about not letting people who've been diagnosed as suicidal and prescribed anti-depressants have accesss to firearms in the first place.

Vyan

[dorktv]

1. If the cops had to worry about students carrying concealed it would have made

it harder to deal with.

Plus vigilanties can and do get in the way.

[RamboLiberal]

2. You can add Neil "Boor" Boortz to the chickenhawk squawkers

on this. He's been railing on this the past two days.

[TomInTib]

3. Focks has their own agenda. But what I don't understand is why no one...

made an attempt on the guy either when he was reloading or while he was lining them up.

As someone with a good bit of close-quarters combat in my past, maybe my view is a little prejudiced.

But I would never have just hung around and waited.

A moving target is much more difficult to kill than a stationary one.

But Professor Liviu Librescu is a true Hero. I proudly salute his Honor.

A Real Man.

We should all be so brave.

Look It right in the eye and growl.

And act.

[CoffeeCat]

6. I'm interested...what would you have done?

I'm very interested in your POV, since you have experience in "close-quarters combat".

What do you do in a situation like this?

I would want to run away, but if you flinch--he's going to see you move and shoot immediately.
Maybe these people felt as if they had no choice, but to remain frozen.

I'd seriously like to know what to do in a situation like this.

Thanks for your expertise and insight.

[BushOut06]

8. You would have done something in the 2 seconds it took to reload?

Seriously, how much time do you think people had while he was reloading? With these guns, you can expel the old clip and load a new one in just a second or two.

[TomInTib]

9. Two seconds is forever when you are within 10 feet of the shooter.

Even twenty feet.

If you were five feet away from me with a weapon pointed at me, I could get to you before you could pull the trigger.

As I said, my views on this are probably prejudiced by my past.

My heart absolutely goes out to those kids and their families.

I am certainly not condemning them for any inaction on their part.

Tom

[FredScuttle]

11. Enough of this goddamn sofa-cushioned Monday morning quarterbacking

To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, you would have HAULED ASS.

[ends_dont_justify]

14. Why?

Is running necessarily the better response? I myself study self defense, and I understand many of them may not. But anyone knows that a psycho with a GUN (IE long range weapon) in a hallway has a better chance of hitting you. Barring jumping the windows (again, another 'crazy' and death defying act), you're a target for him anyway. In a situation like this, you need to know when to negotiate with a psychopath or not...people willingly lined up execution style, in a line, to die. I think that's the point you realize you do something or die...and it isn't that these students should have done something, but at some point in their lives, SOMEONE SHOULD have explained to them what not to do in a situation like this.

[Gormy Cuss]

16. You or I may have hauled ass, but people who are trained to react differently may not.

In fact, if they've been in life-threatening situations, either in combat or in law enforcement, they probably would not.

[Blue_Tires]

18. +1

[muntrv]

4. Easy for these reich wingers to talk tough from the keyboard or radio station.

If they were in the cross fire at Blacksburg, they would be shitting all over themselves and crying for their mommies.

[CoffeeCat]

5. Wow, I didn't realize that an entire class of 31 students...

...was killed.

Who would have fought back? If you moved, you were dead. He was randomly shooting unarmed, vulnerable
students who had no way to fight back.

I cannot imagine what I would have done. I surely wouldn't judge anyone in that room, and I wouldn't be
making this political. What those people experienced was sheer hell, and I have compassion for every one
of them.

I don't understand how these political mouthpieces can use personal tragedy as a springboard for their
rabid blathering.

These people haven't even been buried, and Malkin and the rest of the thugs, are--in effect--trouncing
on their graves.

So sad. These victims deserve our reverence and compassion.

[Xipe Totec]

7. Does Michelle Malkin even own a pea shooter?

[Honeycombe8]

10. They were sitting ducks...BUT....

One thing I was curious about was the un-curiosity of the whole student body, it seems. I listened as one young female student described hearing the first shots. She was in a class on the floor above where the massacre took place. There had been construction in the bldg. on and off for some time. Anyway, she and her class and the professor were in class, when they hear these loud noises that sound like loud hammering or something. No one says anything about it. It is so loud, the student says, that she could barely hear the professor. Still, no one interrupts the class. The noise goes on for over 10 minutes.

I find it odd that no one in the class so much as got up and looked out the window or stuck his head out in the hallway or anything. I find it odd that the professor didn't check up on the noise.

I understand it in a way, since there had been construction. But when I was in school, we were a fairly curious lot of folks. We would've gotten up and looked around, I'm sure. We would've noticed that this sound was different, or too loud. In my smaller town, we might well have recognized the sound of a gun, too, since there would've been hunters and others familiar with firearms in the class (including me).

But I'm from a smaller community, so maybe larger colleges are more used to out of the ordinary sounds.

I just thought it was odd that the entire floor above could hear it all, and just sat there through most of it w/o even checking it out. Very odd.

I also did wonder if there wasn't an opportunity for several of the young men to rush the shooter when he was reloading, but I just assumed that by the time he was reloading, a lot of the young men in that class had been shot by then. And then there wouldn've have been enough of them left unharmed to rush him and restrain him. But they DID close and barracade the door (they apparently did that in three classes...one was the professor who closed the door while students jumped, then there was another where a couple of male students barracaded the door after most of the class was shot, and then there was a third where a couple of YOUNG WOMEN barracaded the door - how's THAT for bravery?). Well done.

[mcscajun]

12. Because of the interest level, and the multiple citations, I moved this to GD.

:hi:

[ends_dont_justify]

13. Talk isn't cheap if you've done brave things before

Of course anyone who dissents your opinion must be a liar, correct? I did make a point like this; not of EVERYONE, but a large degree of people, more aimed at the police department. I don't expect a bunch of tech students to suddenly learn kung-fu, but I do expect (and, as expected, some DID do) some acts of heroism.

No -- it's wrong to condemn the victims, which I never tried to do, and I think is shameful of anyone who said anything of the sort. I AM saddened that people's ability to jump out windows, a death defying feat, to save their own lives was a better response to them than someone trying to stop him directly. America needs to be braver than this, not for big talk...but so people DON'T get away with murder. Don't you see that? Why pat ourselves on the back because 'people probably wouldn't do anything', when we could be teaching valuable self defense classes which could deter this kind of situation?

Just another expected response from DU....and it's no wonder our dems in congress are now caving in to bush over iraq.

[raccoon]

15. I strongly agree with these statements,

"Easy to be a hero when there's time to ponder it over a martini. Easy to mock people who don't measure up to your never-tested standards. Talk is cheap, and brave talk is cheapest of all."

Nobody ever knows how they would behave in a given situation until it actually happens. No matter how big they talk.

K&R.

[Igel]

17. They did *not* fight back.

They took defensive measures. There's a huge difference between fighting back when you're punched and covering your face and cowering. They blocked doors and hid, letting the guy kill anybody in the hall or stairwell, or in any room he could get into. That does not make them a hero--except possibly in the case of an elderly man that managed to do a hopeless task before getting killed.

Many of the kids were courageous in their defenselessness. The NYT had an article about a kid that took three bullets (he was mostly under a desk) and managed to not let the killer know he was still alive--or at least the killer didn't try to finish him off. This takes courage, or paralysis that comes from fear. The story left me with the impression he was to be considered a hero simply for self-preservation, while kids around him were killed. It's good he lived; but there's little heroism involved.

Note that in at least one case somebody managed to hold the door closed. One kid described how the killer tried to force his way in, even getting the door part-way open before they got it closed, and the second time Cho couldn't even get it open a little. Gee.

Now, over 30 kids were killed. Nobody wanted to die; had three kids rushed him when the first one went down, maybe four kids would have died. If they rushed him when he had the ammo clip out, he'd have a semi-automatic .22, *but* it usually takes two hands to reload, so he'd have to drop the clip to use the .22. Now, you can kill with a .22, but it takes better aim.

But my third paragraph also says there was a way for nobody to die. When you're pushing with all your weight against a door and the door suddenly opens, you fall forward. If somebody has a weapon--a chair, even a French textbook--you hit him as he lurches past you. He will probably pull the trigger and fire wildly, maybe hitting someone. This takes no great courage, just the confidence that you can whack somebody that's off balance hard enough to make them fall and clobber them some more and wrest the gun away from them. Yes, you might get injured: but the alternative is that other students will certainly die. You make the decision; these kids made their decisions--self-defense is more important than altruism, true bravery is judged to consist in pretending you're dead while classmates next to you die or holding the door shut so he'll go kill somebody else. This is not laudable; I don't think they deserve condemnation, and the young men (and women) deserve scant praise--although I do think the culture that lets this pass unremarked is fit for condemnation.