I hadn't heard any of that speculation (but then, I ignore most media frenzies). You're right. It's more than mistaken, it's offensive.

The shootings happened quickly-no time for Flight 93-style planning. It sounds like most of the shootings happened indoors, so there is little or no opportunity to "surround" the shooter. We don't know the distances involved. We haven't heard about the guy who got out last because he helped others out the windows first. Or the guy who threw himself in front of the shooter, but failed to save his classmates and so there is no one to tell of his heroic effort.

What is it in the human (or western, or liberal, or whatever) psyche that demands we point fingers, assign blame at someone other than the shooter, to denigrate the victims? To imaginatively place ourselves in the scene and make ourselves the hero, and then insult those who actually were there for not living up to our high, imagined, standards?

There are several factors which intuition says probably contributed:

• From the time kids are babies until the end of high school, they are told that fighting is what bad kids do, and not to do it.
• Those with the urge to protect others before themselves are in Iraq and Afghanistan, not Southwest Virginia.
• The cops are always saying not to fight back.
• It's a gun free zone. He can't possibly have a gun.
• No one told them to fight back, that they had offensive capability and could fight back.
That last point bears expansion. Ever had an object, such as a ball, thrown at you when you weren't expecting it, even in a context where you should be? It takes a lot of concentration to deal with it.

Now imagine a college textbook flying at you. You can't catch it with a gun in your hand. A hail of textbooks, pens, cell phones, backpacks, and furniture would be impossible to deal with for an attacker.

That's how kids should be trained, from kindergarten, to react to someone who threatens them or their teacher.

Instead, they're trained to be helpless targets.

One of the news accounts describes the shooter initially targeting the front row of the classroom. Effectively neutralizing his most immediate threats.

I don't know what the classrooms of that building look like but if they are anything like some of the upper level classrooms I attended then they are cramped and crowded.

Meaning that anyone not hit by the initial barrage likely faced an obstacle course of tables, chairs and bodies before they could effectively close with the shooter. Crossing an obstacle course under direct fire is tough for the martially trained and conditioned, asking -much less expecting - such action from anyone else is absurd.

Feminism.

America is a matriarchy.

Feminism has triumphed. Long live feminism!

I'm a moderator at Rantburg. We had a similar debate recently about this issue. So about those firearms, etc, here's my opinion --

Go read Bill Whittle (I'll wait). Bill notes corectly that most of us are sheep. Very few of us are sheepdogs. We sheep generally believe in the law and believe that if there is a problem (that is, a wolf), a police officer will come along and take care of it. Events like Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc are notable because 1) they are horrible tragedies and 2) they are very rare, compared to what we encounter in our daily lives.

Sure, the young students could have shot the attacker -- if they had weapons, and had their weapons on them, and had the training and ability to hit their target the first time and not bystanders, and if they had the composure to pull it together in the no more than two to three seconds warning they would have had.

They could have rushed the attacker, thrown books and pens at him, and tackled him to the ground -- if they had the presence of mind to do so, and if they had had some previous training to help steady their nerves and will, and if they had recognized what was happening prior to the gunman bursting into their classroom.

In other words, if they had been sheepdogs and not sheep.

Glenn Reynolds remarked on his blog recently that he'd never had any training whatsoever on what to do in such a situation on campus. I'm also on the faculty at a major university (I teach medicine), and I also have never had one lick of training on something like this.

Despite my growl and seeming fierce demeanor on the web, deep down I suspect I'm just a well-educated sheep. I suppose I'd 'know' the right thing to do if a gunman burst into my clinic or classroom.

But Lordy, you wouldn't want to depend on me.

I don't have the training to jump a shooter. I don't have the training to shoot an attacker. I don't have the skills and verve and decision-making to do it. At least not today. I suspect that in the second or two I'd have to make that decision I'd lock up. If I was still alive I'd hope my brain would start working again and I'd do something that could help, but those two seconds might well mean I'd be lying there on the classroom floor in a puddle of my own blood.

That's not a happy thought to contemplate. None of this is.

What is left out is temprament.

Some people are lousy at day to day life, but are excellent in emergencies. Generally such folks are not taking engineering degrees.

As some one pointed out such folks are in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

Professor L. was unusual in that regard.

The key to getting ordinary humans to charge an ambush is training.

I don't think its 'blaming the victim' to say 'well, maybe, and I do mean maybe, because we don't know enough about what really happened to say for sure, the victims could have done something better.'

Its my opinion that most of the time people could do better.

And those who emphasized training are correct. I was trained by a rather morbid mother who feared kidnapping, and quoted statistics saying you were safer if you fled than if you submitted.

So when two thugs approached my car at night, I was already running before I made the conscious decision to do so.

In the situation where it was just me, two thugs, night in a bad n'hood, and my .45 locked inside the truck...I am virtually certain I made the correct choice.

What we need is an equivalent or better training for our young men to help them very rapidly decide--fight or flee, and then carry it out with boldness, and some skill.

So, if my mother, who was by no means a law enforcement professional, can potentially save her son's life with some lectures...well, we should be able to do better than her.

And CS Lewis was right--create men without chests, and then ask why there is no courage is the act of a man without foresight.