Self-Defense, Part 1: Blasted are the Meek

In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, you’d expect some debate about gun control and whether or not lives could have been saved if some f the students were armed.

What you might not have expected is the debate currently going on in some of the more right-wing corners of the blogosphere over whether or not the students at Virginia Tech were cowards, or whether our culture breeds cowardice.

Don’t Mess With Derb!

The first salvo in this debate was fired by John Derbyshire from the National Review, who wrote in a piece called The Spirit of Self-Defense:

As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren’t bad.

Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It’s true—none of us knows what he’d do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.

Derb’s belief that he’d “at least take a run at the guy” is a strange conceit for a man who on the same day wrote this in a memorial to Pat Buckley, wife of William F. Buckley, the publisher of the National Review:

My own recollection of first meeting Pat Buckley was pure Boswell-Johnson. It was at a drinks-and-chat session in the Buckleys’ drawing-room prior to my first editorial dinner. I passed a remark about the Mississippi River, to the effect that on first seeing it, down in the lower reaches by Natchez, I’d been disappointed to find it nothing like as wide as I’d thought.

Mrs. B. slapped me down briskly. “Nothing wrong with the Mississippi. It’s a beautiful river.” I sank into the sofa cushions & spent the rest of the session trying not to be seen. By the time dinner was served, though, I could see that Pat was repenting her sharpness. When at last I summoned the courage to speak up on something else, she expressed friendly agreement.

Derb simply sank into the sofa without a peep, neither deflecting the rebuke with a “Could you please elaborate, Mrs. Buckley?” or even an “I’m sorry, ma’am”. If a stern response to a verbal faux pas — c’mon, it’s a pretty common situation; we’ve all seen this sort of thing happen — is enough to make him fold like cheap patio furniture, I have very strong doubts that’d he’d fare much better in the highly unusual situation of having to face an armed gunman.

Don’t Mess with Steyn and Shaidle, Either

A day later, Mark Steyn put in his two cents in a National Review column titled A Culture of Passivity, where wrote “I’m not sure I’m ready to go the full Derb but I think he’s closer to the reality of the situation than most,”

and quotes my sometime blog sparring partner Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle:

When we say “we don’t know what we’d do under the same circumstances”, we make cowardice the default position.

That’s pretty bold talk for someone who told me at the last blogging conference we were both at that she doesn’t like being put on the spot when it’s time to break out into discussion groups. Discussion groups with Warren Kinsella, the second-least-physically-intimidating Warren I know (the first being a rabbit warren), at that.

The Right-Wingers Who Disagree: Treacher, Levy and Penny

The interesting thing about these articles is not that many people on the left side of the blogosphere disagree with them, but that many notable people on the right feel pretty much the same way. Consider Jim Treacher over at The Daily Gut:

I like Steyn and Shaidle, and I agree with the point about not infantilizing these students. But I really think it’s wrong to blame the students for any part of this, and it’s possibly even a disgraceful thing to say.

Compare it to 9/11 all you want, but it’s nothing like that. Tactically, I mean. If somebody hijacks a plane, there’s no way to escape and nowhere to hide. And, post-9/11, a lot less chance that you’re going to land safely. You’re trapped in a metal tube with kind of a steep drop underneath, so your choices are very limited. If you know there’s no chance of getting out of it alive if you don’t fight back, the decision’s been made for you.

This is so different, and putting down the students for not being fearless action heroes is crap. (“Women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men.” Ugh. Okay, Sgt. Rock.) The guy had two guns and who knows how much ammo, and he was shooting everyone in sight. They were unarmed. What were they supposed to do, fashion crude weapons out of available materials, form a battle plan, and charge him? That’s a lot to ask on a Monday morning. I’d try getting the hell out first. There’s no way they could have known he’d blocked off the exits. But hey, I guess I’m just yella.

Or The Daily Gut’s Levy, who followed up with this:

Here’s the bottom line: these kids (sorry, but as long as the drinking age in this country is 21, I’m calling them kids) were on a college campus, in classrooms and dorms, when a nutjob armed with two handguns walked in and started firing. And unlike, say, soldiers in a war zone, the students had no reasonable expectation that anything like this would happen, and I’m sure this fact alone made it completely unbelievable when it did.

And my guess is that Steyn, having never heard a shot fired in anger, would react the same way most of those kids did – by going into shock and shutting down.

And closer to home, Corner Brook, Newfoundland’s Damian Penny wrote:

We’d all like to believe we could be heroes if confronted with a maniac shooting up the place, but I’m 99.999999% sure I would have hidden or run away as fast as I could. And so would nearly all of you.

My Own Take

Although I’ve never had a gun pointed at me and have never been in a firefight that wasn’t paintball, I am familiar with firearms, as both Dad’s family and Mom’s family have something to do with them. I’ve felt the kickback of a .357 Magnum and the Flintstones-ish clunkiness of a Chinese AK-47 knockoff, but the weapon that I’m most familiar with is the Walther P22, a gun that many ranges typical let newbies and very occasional shooter like myself use because of its mild recoil, simple operation and features that make it harder to accidentally shoot yourself. It’s also one of the two weapons that Cho Seung-Hui used in his rampage.

While the P22 is a relative peashooter, it is still a firearm and should be handled with the care and safety procedures that a firearm demands. The first thing they teach you at a range is how to carry a gun when you’re not firing it and not to casually point that thing around. The underlying point to all these lessons is that the business end of a gun is nothing to be trifled with.

I’ve also taken my share of martial arts classes, and every instructor will tell you that when facing an armed opponent when you yourself are unarmed is to get the hell out of dodge. There’s a reason why the line “bringing a knife to a gunfight” is a metaphor for doing something stupid. That’s why Black Belt Magazine — whom I’m sure are not about rolling over and playing dead in a fight — states this quite clearly:

To recap, the recipe for action against an armed opponent is as follows: If you’re a civilian, your goal is to escape. If you’re in law enforcement, your goal is probably to arrest. If you’re in the military, your goal is usually to eliminate.

I’ve faced down (and won) against muggers in Prague and on Queen Street while busking — I even clocked a guy with my accordion and have the grille dents to prove it. But none of these guys had anything more deadly than a beer bottle. (In fact, the guy with the bottle tried to break it first, but after three tries, he gave up and just charged me. I threw him into Queen Street traffic, which didn’t harm him, but it certainly calmed his fighting mood.)

I think I’d try to take on an armed assailant, but only as a last resort, and only if he was reloading and being butter-fingered about it and if I could close the distance reasonably quickly. That’s a helluva lot of “ifs”, especially when you take into account the braggadocio that one can spout from the comfort and safety of a keyboard.

Your Opinion?

Well, it’s time for me to go earn a paycheque, so I’ll have to do more of this “thinking out loud” later. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.