Armchair heroes, my son :down:

U-533, why the hell do you keep saying the "ASIAN MASS MURDERER"? We know the guy's name. What does race matter here?

And don't dare chuck an anti-PC screed at this post

ANTI-PC SCREED


There ya go Tchocky:D

So nobody sees the value in pointing out the advantages of numbers in these situations? Does anyone at least tell our young people these days that allowing themselves to be herded like cattle to the slaughter is not a good thing to do?

Every species on this planet teaches it's young how to defend themselves in some way. We humans in our superior intellect and with the advantages of modern society backing us up have decided to make that lesson optional for our young, discouraged even and this is the price we pay for it.

Welcome to the human race. Anywhere you have groups of unprepared people, armed or not, you will see maniacs attempting to massacre them for any number of reasons including the little voices in their heads telling them to. Guns are ancillary to the problem. If we don't teach our young to defend themselves against the human wolves amongst us we're not only letting them down we're letting the whole human race down.

What is good advice in this situation? People are stuffed to the gills with fear, I don't support making that worse by advising kids what to do when they are being shot in a classroom. No matter how many of them there are, this kind of thing doesnt happen often enough for that kind of abuse.

This is not the price we pay for leading peaceful lives, lives without mandatory self-defence training. I like living in a world where I don't need to know how to incapacitate someone with a couple of guns. I could do a decent amount of damage, provided I wasnt paralysed with fear, and going by the last time I had a gun pointed at me, I'm not too hopeful. But that's OK, I've never needed to physically subdue someone to save myself harm.

Sorry man, I won't be turning my kids into shaking terrified black belts. Of course there will always be maniacs and mental illness, that's humanity. But I couldnt run the risk of having anyone end up like this

I'll just have to hope that I'm in the 99.999etc% of people that don't have to deal with a hostage situation

Tchocky I guess it's your choice if you want be a potential victim all your entire life but don't demand that we institutionalize it. This utopia of peaceful ignorant existance you're talking about does not and has never existed in the entire time man has been on this planet, so you might as well demand to live in a world where the sky is always chartreuse and it rains jelly donuts, it just ain't gonna happen.

What i'm talking about is teaching our young to face their fears and maybe even overcome them. Not to be moulded by society into some shaking, terrified mound of meat that has no responsibility at all for it's own survival and the welfare of it's felllows. I'm not talking about martial arts or weapons training either although they do help to instill confidence and discipline, but rather the concept that they can be more than sheep scared of their own shadow.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

You're absolutely right. I am going to be a potential victim all my life. As will you. As will everyone on this planet, until we can start messing around with the future. I demanded nothing, I don't know where you're getting that from. Potential victim......thats utterly meaningless.
I know it doesn't exist. I also didn't mention any sort of utopia. I said that I like not having to know how to deal with someone shooting up my place of work with two guns. This is indicative of the rather peaceful life I'm living these days. I don't see where you got utopia out of that. Don't say that I'm talking about something when I'm not. It doesnt help communication, and it's kind of insulting.
Peaceful ignorant utopia....did you see the part when I mentioned having a gun pointed at me?

Facing this particular fear isn't something I need to do. And certainly nothing an 18-year old needs to do. The likelihood of being a victim is low, and not worth the fear that this teaching would leave.
Given where this conversation is coming from, and the thread subject...what form would this training take? I asked, but you skipped it. I'll give it a go...

How would you feel if in high school you were taught how to tackle a fellow student who was shooting up the classroom? How would you feel teaching this?
This is nothing but scaring the hell out of young people, and being young is hard enough. I hear stories of soldiers breaking down on first exposure to combat situations. And thats after months of training. High-school kids? no thanks
Even if they were collected enough to try to bring down the shooter, there's a chance it would make things worse.
I wouldnt want kids treating schools like warzones.

I don't know what it's like to be 18, and forced at gunpoint to hit the floor. I'll take a massive leap and assume you don't either. I had a gun pointed at me very briefly at age 17, and it scared the hell out of me. i would have done anything that that soldier had told me to

You're talking to a guy who as a kid lived through air raid drills in school and constant reminders of impending global thermonuclear war which is far more scary imo. My generation managed to handle the fear these realities caused well enough, so why do you think this generation cannot?

As for soldiers responses to war. No training ever concieved completely prepares everyone for the rigours of combat. That certainly is not an excuse to abandon training altogether. All it would do is turn a few who break into many.

I apologize if i came off as insulting, that was not my intention, but I do see a big downside to telling kids, either directly or by discouraging open discussion of such incidents, that they are powerless if such a thing happens to them.

After all there isn't a student or teacher in the country right now who isn't aware of this incident or the ones previous, so any fear that exists is already there. Teaching some basic skills or at least discussing the options available is not going to increase it.

I don't know. Isn't "communist" still a dirty word in the US? cant think of anything offhand, and I don't know enough about that generation to judge, so *skip*

You brought up United 93, those passengers had never discussed what they would do in such a situation. (I think thats a fair assumption)

I don't believe that students in VTech did not act because they didnt realise that they could, or hadn't been told that they couldn't. I don't think a training session or a discussion would make that difference. The lack of action I think was due to the dead bodies/blood/violence/murder of friends/girlfriends/boyfriends. And sheer bloody shock. This has been done to death on this thread.
I don't see a downside, really. Things like VTech, in a wide view, don't happen too often. Let kids be kids, not child bodyguards/cops/soldiers.

The present fear will subside, just like it did after Columbine. Just like it did here
Won't go away, but it will subside.

If you want to keep kids paranoid and terrified of any child who's slightly different...which I honestly believe would be the end result, then go ahead
I can't see that as anything but damaging. I wouldnt teach a child how to use a gun. Would you?

Paranoid and terrified of difference - here's a very mild example from this very forum. Here
I don't know fatty at all, but look - "pale skin", "kept to themselves" "black clothes"
He just described me. Maybe it's the bone-crushing visual homogeneity of American campuses, I stick out here like a sore thumb, whereas I blend right in in Ireland :). If you read this, fatty, no offence intended. I really hope that where you say "these characters" you mean video game addicts, and not school shooting suspects.

Of course if the students at VTech had weapons training and CCP's this tragedy could have been averted. Of course if every high school student knew how to disarm a shooter things may be different, either better or worse. But I'd rather have the students not worrying if they'll live through lunch. Adolescence has enough pressure without planning for a school shooting.

Nice to see the country going satisfyingly nuts - http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

Just an aside, real martial arts training is supposed to do the opposite, instill self confidence and also (and this is in conjunction with other education) judgement ... so you would know to stay calm and maybe even know when not fighting back is the best option.

He sent a "manifesto" to the media between the two attacks in Virgina:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1pj9i3hgRg

Look at the pitches of him wearing the tan vest and brandishing the dual pistols - that is supposdly (I think) what he wore when he killed people. You can see the madness in his eyes. I try and picture myself sitting in my Business Calc class half asleep at 9am from a long sunday night - when he busts in suddenly, BAM shoots my professor, the girl next to me, the guy infront of me, then points the gun at me. I dont know what I would be thinking. I think that I would have been so shocked at the sight of my dead friends and the gore that is suddenly presented in this lazy morning classroom. It's not that I havent dealt with gore before, it is just the abrutness of it. I dont know if I would have been capable to react in time. It's easy for me to say as an armchair hero I would sack the guy and pummel him, but the shock of it, and the delay that would have caused in my reaction time of getting out of my seat, hopping over rows of chairs and then attacking him or even the flight response of B lining it for the door would simply be to much.

AS I have stated before

I have been there in that type of life and death situation.

Don't tell me what I would have done...

I was able to overcome... and I had no military training before hand.

I don't know where your getting your info but ...

2 male eye witnesses said they watched him take the mag from the 9mm put the 9mm under his arm and start reaching into his pocket digging single bullets out and stuffing them into the mag....

But thats ok I understand your under stress ... you go ahead and believe what you need to believe...:roll:


P.S. they also said he was shaking so bad he kept dropping the rounds and reaching down to pick them up

Do you want to go into details?