The above is Allyson Felix, the gold medalist from the ? ??? (some world competition) in Osaka this evening. Super hot, super fast, and made the Jamaican girl look slow. Wow. Once again, this pic has nothing to do with the article below, but she’s really hot and I figured you’d like to look at her too… Now onto what I have to say…
I’m certain this is going to piss somebody off…
Nice, big headline… “Virginia Tech Could Have Saved Lives” Easy to say that after the fact, newspaper. I should write a few groundbreaking headlines myself such as “Population Could Have Prepared for Hurricane Katrina Better” or “World Could Have Noticed Michael Jackson No Longer Cool Much Sooner”.
Of course they could have saved more lives. What kills me (and did kill a bunch of students) is the absolute lack of balls the students had. I’m in Special Forces and before that I was in another military unit in another country. I fight all the time, and so I might be expecting a little too much from a bunch of non-athletic academic pups who think they know everything (when I was in college I sure knew everything, at least!)… Pre 9-11 this would have been a little more understandable, but in today’s world, selfless collective defense is the correct answer, almost every time.
People might not understand this commonly, but it is entirely likely that if the students in one classroom had rushed that Korean punk they could have stomped his brains out or shot him with his own gun and suffered very few casualties. Since not everyone might understand that unarmed attack against a gun-holder is actually not always suicide (especially if there is more than one of you) and think that having a gun in your hand makes you a murder-ninja, let me explain the options you have the next time a maladjusted murderous freak breaks into your classroom or place of business with a few pistols, a bomb, blobs of green death or white disease powder:
- You can sit there like a coward and wait your turn to die, and accept that your death with have in no way helped anyone around you.
- You can rush the guy and set the example for everyone else to grab their tiny little beanbags and at least make the most of what limited time you might have to live. If you die, maybe someone else won’t this time. This makes you an insta-hero and if a good way to die. If you had to pick a way to die, why not this one? Much better than sitting in a puddle of your own urine shivering…
- You can rush the guy and succeed in smashing the thought juice out of his pathetic head and dance in his blood later, knowing that you did the right thing. This will give you ridiculous bragging rights for the rest of your life and I will personally issue you a Right to Call Anyone Else a Pussy With Impunity Card.
Seriously, that’s about the only options you’ve got: Succumb to fear and accept death – which is the selfish choice here because if you die, you can’t help anyone around you not die; or try to do something and fail – but this way at least you get a kickass death worthy of a human being; or whip the guy’s ass and be a man.
There is no excuse for nobody attacking this guy over the course of 60 seconds. That is plenty long enough for reality to strike home in your brain. But no, this guy trolls around for hours before he eventually kills himself, maybe for lack of other people to kill at that point.
The only guy worthy of his own death that day was the Jewish Holocaust survivor who didn’t take time to reason his way out of a crazy kill-spree. That guy knew what was up, reacted and graced a few worthless kids who did things like play dead instead of attack when the guy was reloading meters away from him or had already turned his back (!! WOW! Perfect timing there… er… would have been…). That was a man, a real hero. I’m sick of all this whining about sheep who just sit around while their friends are getting shot.
Again, maybe because of the community I belong to and the job and history I have personally, I can’t accept that. Put your sad feelings away for a second and think about the three options above, and tell me which one you would like to think you’d commit to the next time some random craziness comes into your life. Its a possibility that each one of us might be faced with a situation like that someday, since about 35% of the world’s population wants to kill the remainder.