Many of the victims at Virginia Tech had spent their lives in a social regime that dictated that fight was unacceptable, flight ridiculous, and passivity was OK. It's not surprising they fought as they trained, often hiding under a desk.

Wow... you're sneering at victims for hiding from a homicidal maniac?

Words fail me.

Fighting each other with words is not a useful part of the mourning process.

What is useful is to study and imitate the heroes - or those of them who lived long enough so that we can see something of what they were trying to do.

The others, who tried to act but were killed instantly or too quickly for others to see what they were about, have their eternal glory, and don't need earthly fame.

We know what Professor Liviu Librescu was about. What do you think of him? Is there someone else you like even better? What about what they did, or what you think they may have been trying to do, makes you admire them?

From the Washington Post:

The first thing Violand saw was a gun, then the gunman. "I quickly dove under a desk," he recalled. "That was the desk I chose to die under."

He listened as the gunman began "methodically and calmly" shooting people. "It sounded rhythmic-like. He took his time between each shot and kept up the pace, moving from person to person." After every shot, Violand thought, "Okay, the next one is me." But shot after shot, and he felt nothing. He played dead.

"The room was silent except for the haunting sound of moans, some quiet crying, and someone muttering: 'It's okay. It's going to be okay. They will be here soon,' " he recalled. The gunman circled again and seemed to be unloading a second round into the wounded. Violand thought he heard the gunman reload three times. He could not hold back odd thoughts: "I wonder what a gun wound feels like. I hope it doesn't hurt. I wonder if I'll die slow or fast." He made eye contact with a girl, also still alive. They stared at each other until the gunman left.

That's your default response, my default response, and everybody's default response if they have grown up in our culture.

The point is to do better than the default response.

That is possible. Voiland himself did better than that bare default, by first taking one action:

Violand, feeling panicky, pointed at her and said, "Put that desk in front of the door, now!"

Well done that man!

Now, how to go on with it?

The imitation of heroes is a great way to improve on the default response.

Anybody who did their very best to imitate Batman would have done much better than the default response. And maybe someone did that, but we don't know it because they were killed instantly trying to be Batman.

Just saying that makes it sound silly, doesn't it? Even though this is not silly at all, it's necessary and admirable.

I think we should get over the idea that imitating an icon of courage and getting killed proves you were wrong. But, a lot of people aren't going to get over that idea.

Evidently we need heroes who we won't feel stupid imitating, and admitting that we imitated, to let others know it worked and that they should do the same thing.

Imitate Liviu Librescu.

If you can't imitate an elderly Jew who by any sane standards had already been through too much in his life, who can you imitate? Whoever it is, learn from them.

Just my 2c.

You will immediately be attacked by a hydra of fears, doubts, speculations, possibilities, calculations - all kinds of stuff, jamming your brain solid. Any elaborate mental procedures will become as impossible as to inscribe hieroglyphics while on drugs and being beaten with fists.

Fight to believe what is happening is happening, because the invitation to believe that it isn't happening, or isn't as bad as it is, will keep pressing itself on you. The emotional cost of believing that you are in the situation you are in may be high, but you have to keep gripping reality anyway.

If you fully and truly engage with what is happening, there will be a primal heroic response.

Reality --> Bang! GO!!

A dog can have this response. (See the story of Maya in the comments to Achilles' Last Stand.) Act decisively, even if it feels like you are anesthetized and trying to struggle through cotton wool to do anything.

Keep doing that, second after second, or if you stop, start again.

Probably most other people will freeze, if they do not have specific and adequate training. You will see them get That Look ™ - you will know it when you see it. There are ways to try to get them to move, if that is necessary.

Whether you get any help at all, keep struggling till the situation is definitely, positively resolved.

I've read a bunch of stuff on it, but I've found it worthless. What I've written in the post and the comments above is about all I know. Anything more than that - that's valuable - will have to be said by people who know these things better than me.

Actually, I think the problem goes a little deeper than improper training, lack of visualization, lack of planning, over reliance on police etc.

To be an effective warrior one must comes to terms with the inevitability of one's own death. In fact, one must truly realize that one is - in a very real sense - already dead. Then one can act appropriately under conditions of severe stress.

Todays US bourgoise youth are just way too sheltered from the realities of death and killing; from the realities of if the truth be told. They're all going to live in material abundance to be 100+ with all the miracle life extending drugs and surgeries that science can offer.

Had the classrooms of Norris hall been filled with a bunch of kids from Compton or from Gaza - kids who have had to wrestle with the notion of their own mortality - Cho would have out of action much sooner and with far fewer kills to his credit.

Otherwise, DB, I agree with #4. Doing something is better than doing nothing in such a situation. Also, the mind set should be 100% focus on fighting and overcoming. There is nothing else to worry about, to think about. You will only stop when you are dead and as long as you are not dead, well..... you are not dead and you are all fight.

"Fight to believe what is happening is happening" Yes. Totally critical. Too often the mind defends itself against shocking input by telling itself, "this isn't real. It isn't happening" and by the time you realize that it really is happening, it's too late.

Again, the inability of the mind to accept the reality of the situation is linked, I believe, to the fear of accepting that one is mortal. I am not talking about an acceptance at a purely intellectual level, but at an instinctual, emotional level.

In fairness, AFAIK there are studies on police who get shot that show that cops who act aggressively are the most likely to be killed (and to get suspects and bystanders shot) than those who think through the situation and do not instinctively move to escalate the situation. Aggression in and of itself is not automatically a virtue.

For an unarmed civilian, running away is usually the smart call when confronted with a shooter. Your odds of actually getting within grappling/hand-to-hand range before getting shot are pretty low ; not a perfect example, but that's the one that immediately came to mind.

There's a fine line between "heroic" and "foolhardy." If an unarmed person actually manages to take down a shooter, their act is heroic but stupid - frankly, they got lucky. If they get shot in the same attempt without actually stopping the shooter, it becomes heroic but also futile, and remains stupid. The end result doesn't change the wisdom (or lack thereof) or trying to rush an armed assailant.

I hope we're coming to an end of the VT threads for a while, because I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Avedis has now managed to completely confound Virginia Tech with 9/11, and pretty much recapitulated the entire Michael Moore schtick. First he argued that the deaths were statistically insignificant, and a most unwelcome distraction from current leftist talking points. Now he's decided that if there had been a bunch of black people from Compton there, it never would have happened.

Why the obsession everywhere with rushing the shooter? Throw chairs, throw bookbags, shoot a fire extinguisher at him. Anything to surprise him and take the initiative. Then rush him.

tagryn -

"For an unarmed civilian, running away is usually the smart call when confronted with a shooter."

As opposed to lying on the floor waiting to be shot?

Look, it's not complex. In an open plaza or a space where you can reasonably get away, do it. (the 3 F's - flee, fight, freeze)

But in an enclosed room or hall where you can't get away?

What's the plan? Do you see any value in having one?

A.L.

Be like Librescu.

Or indeed, be like Waleed Mohammed Shaalan.

He is said to have been shot while trying to save another student.

"He was the simplest and nicest guy I ever knew. We would be studying for our exams and he would go buy a cake and make tea for us," Waleed's flatmate, Fahad Pasha said.

"Your odds of actually getting within grappling/hand-to-hand range before getting shot are pretty low"

There is no way to make that kind of generalization. There are just way too many variables- which btw is why i refuse to judge these victims. From what it sounds like they were in essentially a worst case scenario- little or no warning, a confined space with no cover, clear fields of fire, a calm and deliberate shooter with a well planned strategy who expected to die that day.

That being said it sounds like the guy reloaded numerous times in each room. I havent heard if there is a shot count yet but it must hundreds. If he was smart he only emptied and reloaded one weapon at a time, but regardless you could rush the guy as soon as he empties- and even if you catch a bullet unless he hits something vital a 9mm round wouldnt put you down before you crash into him. Who knows what happens from there, but its worth a try when you have nothing to lose. But like I said, a lot of these kids didnt have the luxury of waiting until he reloaded.

For an unarmed civilian, running away is usually the smart call when confronted with a shooter.

tagryn (#7) is obviously right. But his/her comment should stand at the beginning of the discussion, not at its conclusion.

When is the smart call not, perhaps, the right call? The story of Rick Rescordia on 9/11 that David Blue references in Achilles' Last Stand speaks to that point. tagryn's quote is at the crux of the entire concept of "heroism."

It struck me last night that part of what brings up such visceral disgust in people like Chris Jones (comment #1) is that we are reflecting on the meaning of a real and terrible event that swept up living, breathing people. It feels good to memorialize the sacrifice of Prof. Librescu. We recoil from the labeling of seemingly passive victims as cowards.

We recoil for a couple of reasons. With a few exceptions, we don't know what "really" happened as seen through a participant's eyes. We don't know what individuals did--what acts of unwitnessed heroism will be deduced, later, from crime scene analysis? And there are thoughts that loom for many of us: what would I have done? What will I do if confusingly, unexpectedly confronted by a few minutes of jumbled terror?

But if we can't evaluate and discuss, then we can't learn. If Librescu was a "hero," then by definition, other choices were less than heroic. To say this out loud is discomforting and impolite, but it's not "sneering at victims."

It's hard to discern the hearts of real people, which is why novelists write novels. Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim" starts by addressing the issue we're discussing here. We follow Jim's momentary lapse (whether of courage, or judgment, or character) when his ship is stricken, and we witness his view of his own acts during the Board of Inquiry that follows. Yet

mere facts are inadequate to explain the human condition, as Marlow remarks of the trial: "[The Board] wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!" Ultimately, Jim remains mysterious, as seen through a mist.

Yes, let's not be hasty; VT survivor Violand isn't a character in a book. But Virginia Tech wasn't the first of its kind, and it won't be the last. What conduct should we hope to celebrate when the door bursts open, or the levee breaks, or... well, you know the rest. And how might our society move from here, towards there?

Questions that can only be addressed through frank and careful discussion of what happened, and what individuals' decisions and actions were. Which factors might be altered, and which are innate to the human condition?

So, Chris Jones (#1), I'll take more in the way of conversations like this. If it means missing some of the pompously voyeuristic on-air psychologizing that blankets the telescreen news shows these days: ok.

But if we can't evaluate and discuss, then we can't learn.

Evaluate and discuss what, the impression that the students didn't do what someone else would have done?

School officials, campus security, mental health officials and even Cho have had an opportunity to explain themselves in the past 48 hous. We can evaluate and discuss their actions. The dead don't have that opportunity.

This is not an "analysis", AMac, it's an excercise in fantasization that comforts those of a certain mindset when confronted by the shocking and violent uncertainty that a situation like this provokes.

It seems clear that it is nearly pointless to train the entire population to be prepared for situations that are both uncommon and unpredictable in their trajectory. This seems to be the suggestion that the great warriors and trained fighters David Blue and AL (http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/mawwage-print.php) are making. Furthermore, some people can never be trained for this for various natural reasons related to their specific physiologies (mental, physical, etc.).

My problem is that there seems to be an implicit assumption here that to freeze or hide behind a desk or barricade (called, revealing, "cowering" or "lying on the floor" by some here) was not an effective survival strategy. But does an examination of the evidence support this? I do not have a good idea of how many people were present in the areas that the shooter was in, but lets for the sake of argument say conservatively that it was 10-15 classrooms with 25 people in each. That makes 250-375 potential targets/victims. Of this number, we know that about 30 were ultimately shot and killed. Now, how can anyone here say that the number killed might not be much much higher had not most of the potential victims not hid from the shooter? I'll certainly acknowledge that the number would be lower if someone was able to subdue him earlier on in his rampage; that is self-evident. However, since the specific circumstances of this event may never be fully understood (and are certainly not even partly understood now by most of us) my conjecture must also be considered valid...that "cowering" actually saved lives as well. This, too, is self-evident.

That many here don't recognize this uncertainty and are rushing to judgement in order to make a point is what is upsetting to many of us. People can be forgiven for shortsightedness if ultimately they recognize this and readjust their thinking, but if the ignorance is intentional that is a different story altogether.

Couple this to the implication that a reflexive survival strategy is "cowardly" or reveals some deep seated problem with America or, as has been written and tacitly supported, Liberalism, and you can maybe appreciate why some of us have reacted the way we have to such commentary.

Can you see where we're coming from on this?

Fighting each other with words is not a useful part of the mourning process.

I'm not "fighting you with words", I'm fairly disgusted that you're mocking the dead for "hiding under a desk".

I certainly don't think that anyone who didn't personally know and love the victims is going through "the mourning process" - the event may well have affected you, but you're not going through anywhere near what the friends and family of the dead are. They are mourning. In comparison, the rest of us are just bummed out.

And while I certainly respect what I've read of Liviu Librescu, I think it's foolish to suggest that we can be like him if we just somehow think about it hard enough.

Look, the training needed to deal with a situation like the VTI shootings is virtually a full time job for guys like cops, soldiers, and emergency workers. Doing that kind of work to prepare for a millions-to-one scenario is not feasible for the vast majority of people who have their plates full simply living their lives, and anything short of that full training is likely to be ineffective.

Looking over the recent posts on this blog, I see a lot of people trying very hard to try and do something constructive, trying to psyche themselves up and convince themselves that somehow we can learn from a tragedy like this, and defend ourselves against it. But not only are shootings like this far too much of a freakish anomaly to be realistically prepared for, there are dozens of ways the killer could have acted that would have made all talk of "fighting back" moot: he could have simply gotten in a car and driven through a crowd of people, set a bomb, sniped people like Charles Whitman... the list goes on.

Terrible, random things happen in life. Many are beyond the ability of mere mortals to deal with. Recognizing that is a hard and painful lesson, but it's one you've got to learn, David, if you're ever going to stop looking down at those people hiding under their desks.

David Blue, #2:
Fighting each other with words is not a useful part of the mourning process.

You've got to be kidding me. First, blame the victims for existing in a state of passivity (which I think most people would describe as, "Acting ilke ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances,") then try to shut down anyone who calls you on it by saying it's "not useful"?

Give me a break.

Celebrate heroism, by all means. Encourage it, certainly. But not by castigating people who are not themselves heroes. Heroism is, by definition, extraordinary.

Mark B. - I believe the shot count is being reported as around 200..

I think some of this why-didn't-they-DO-something/have a plan/fight back second-guessing is no more valid than blaming the victims in the South Tower of the WTC for not finding the one open stairwell that Brian Clark and Stanley Praimnath used to escape from above the impact zone. Just because there is an option hypothetically available doesn't mean it is going to be realized as such, much like avenues of escape from a burning building that can't be seen because of smoke and panic.

As far as having a plan - it sounds good in principle, but how far does one go? Expecting students studying in a lecture hall to have a plan for if a shooter suddenly starts spraying bullets is no more realistic than, say, expecting someone in Iowa to have a plan if an asteroid-created tidal wave suddenly appears on the horizon. Its not quite the same as earthquake preparedness in California or tornado cellars in Oklahoma. IMHO they did the best they could, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

Chris says training for emergencies is a full time job for soldiers, police and the like. It strikes me that we aren't making full use of those around us with proper training.

V Tech thankfully hasn't followed the Eastern elites towards disbanding its ROTC program. Rather than rely on civilians with concealed carry permits to keep the "mini-cities" our university campuses have become, why not openly arm our ROTC cadets? Once a cadet has had weapons training, gone on their summer cruise or basic training and reached a sufficent rank (say, juniors and above) they should be not only allowed but ecouraged to carry openly as a protection to our campuses and their fellow students; I'm sure given that they have already volunteered to serve their countries they would be happy to serve their universities. I'm also sure that the next crazy would think twice about attacking a university if they knew that well trained, armed military cadets were sprinkled through most classrooms.

In a post 9/11 world we have to re-examine how we are using our resources and be sure we have the ability to protect against the unexpected.

[I]t's an excercise in fantasization that comforts those of a certain mindset when confronted by the shocking and violent uncertainty that a situation like this provokes.

I can barely imagine what sort of ego is so confident of courage under fire without having been in the situation.

To: Chris Jones

You said:

>Doing that kind of work to prepare for a millions-to-one scenario is not >feasible for the vast majority of people who have their plates full >simply living their lives, and anything short of that full training is >likely to be ineffective.

Actually, not true in recent historical times. Baruch Goldstein entered a mosque in Hebron armed with an assault rifle (30 round cap mags, usually) and was eventually beaten to death by a mob while reloading. Also, Eden Natan Zada performed a similar act on a bus but only shot four before being overpowered and lynched. Google for specific details. I am NOT condoning these acts in any way, shape or form.

The point of these examples is that in two instances randomly selected groups of people overcame active shooters, military trained, who had semiautomatic weapons with large capacity magazines. The .223 used by Goldstein probably had more "knock-down" power compared to the 9 mm/ .22 cal used at VT, but the mob eventually won.

Granted, the group will take casualties. If you're cornered, might as well die on your feet. Professor Librescu clearly made a choice for life- not his own but his students lives.

Inland Empire

Hey tagryn, I don't know how to explain this to you, but the clip on YouTube was a movie. In real live, the typical target of a handgun shooting does not fall over dead with the first round.

I think I'll stick with the professional literature.

Marcus Vitruvius --

Agreed, heroism is by definition extraordinary. We shouldn't castigate those who are not.

Wei, tagryn, and Chris Jones --

Our society trains children for "stranger danger," for dealing with pedophiles, kidnappers, over-friendly uncles. We train teenagers about drinking and driving. We train new mothers not to microwave breast milk. We train parents about the use of child car seats. And so on.

And choosing not to train for some other scenario is itself a decision, as well.

There's a debate about what the best advice is for dealing with violent people. SOP has been training that advises fleeing, hiding, and compliance when those are not possible. There's now a contrarian school of thought that emphasizes active resistance when flight and concealment aren't options.

Throw things, hard--cell phones, fire extinguishers, chairs. Act, and crystallize the frozen people around you to act.

What are the relative merits and flaws of these two stances?

Craig Henry writes

Police trainers have a saying--in a crisis you do not rise to the occasion, you default to your training. [But] right now, we train for passivity.

Mark Steyn relates the role of passivity in Marc Lepine's 1989 murder of 14 women in Montreal.

That's why I think this is a useful discussion. If I were a mourner today, I'd be more offended by NBC News' choices than by anything written here.

Wei (#15), on re-reading, I don't see David Blue implying that the victims were "cowardly," in fact the opposite. Per the police trainer's quote, above. On an earlier thread, you said that you're teaching your own kids to punch back, when merited. So I'm unsure how much of where you are coming from is an objection as to kind, compared to degree, or even to perceived tone.

John Ridley offers some acid commentary on NBC News' choices.
HuffPo.

InlandEmpire-

Three substantial differences between the circumstances you describe and VTI:

1. In Israel, the chances of sudden violence occuring are much higher than in the US - people there are more aware of violence because there's more violence to be aware of.

2. Many Israelis have gone through the "full time" military training I mentioned earlier.

3. In the bus case, at least, "jumping" the attacker in a relatively confined area would have been far easier than in a classroom environment.

AMac-

Our society trains children for "stranger danger," for dealing with pedophiles, kidnappers, over-friendly uncles. We train teenagers about drinking and driving. We train new mothers not to microwave breast milk. We train parents about the use of child car seats. And so on.

All those situations are tens or hundreds of thousands of times more likely to occur than the "random guy walks in and starts shooting" scenario.

My points stand. Y'all are trying to argue the details and convince others - and perhaps yourselves - that this is something we can feasibly prepare for. I disagree, in that an incident like VTI is basically just extraordinarily bad luck.

That said, I don't paricularly care if you want to argue that "prevent unprovoked mass shooting deaths by mental preparation" is in the same category as "prevent highway fatalities by wearing a seatbelt." My only concern is when you argue for your POV by sneering at the fracking victims for hiding, as David Blue did. They weren't somehow turned into pacifist sheep by our feminizing culture, they were just people, doing whatever they could in the face of a terrible, and unpredictable, attack. If we can take that point as a given, you'll get no more argument from me.

Kirk P. - of course its a movie, and exaggerated, but the larger point stands: an unarmed person confronting a determined shooter faces pretty long odds against success.

AMac - this assumes that a civilian in a suddenly violent situation can realize instantly that they are in a situation where fleeing or taking cover isn't an option. I don't think general safety education should be instructing civilians that confrontation against an armed assailant is even an option.

Keep it simple - you hear shots, you get down, then run the opposite way. Going beyond that, I think, runs the danger of muddling things to the point of dangerous hesitation: "OK, should I try to resist, or should I run?" With the odds stacked so heavily against confrontation success, I don't see it as a valid option in most situations in which a person is likely to face. And that's all you can hope to prepare your run-of-the-mill citizen for.

Chris, I don't know who you think is sneering a the victims. I'm not, and I don't see it in the discussions here. We can all learn from them, and I would hope, in doing so make their deaths an opportunity for some kind of improvement - to lessen the odds that others will suffer as they did.

I think studying what they did and what worked and what didn't is not remotely like belittling them.

A.L.

tagryn -

"you hear shots, you get down, then run the opposite way."

In a schoolyard or on the street, absolutely yes. In a classroom? Not so much.

A.L.

I object to the characterization of all the victims as helpless. Given the situation, as I've heard described, there were reasonable opportunities to counter-attack that were not utilized because of a collective helpless response.

Certainly, for people killed by a surprise event with no reasonable opportunity for reaction, victims can be helpless. For example, the victims in the 1st room Cho entered can't be reasonably expected to counter-attack Cho. Even trained, tough people can only do so much when surprised, human limitations being what they are. However, it appears that after the 1st room, once students and staff were aware that someone was entering classrooms and shooting, later victims had reasonable time and opportunity to organize a counter-attack. Certainly, if they had time to drop and hide, block the door, kick out windows, etc, they had time to counter-attack.

Opportunities. After the 1st room, the victims held relative advantages over Cho. Cho was alone and vastly outnumbered by healthy, strong men and women. Unless Cho used flashbangs, teargas, etc, prior to entry, the victims were not incapacitated. Anyone with room clearing experience can tell you that the moment of entry is a very vulnerable moment for the 1st man in - Cho in this case. Furthermore, the classroom doors have been described as wood which means they were not see-through, heightening Cho's vulnerability at the moment of entry. Victims could have positioned themselves to ambush Cho as soon as he entered a room. Or, as he entered, objects (eg, books, shoes, laptops, phones) could have been thrown at him for the second or two to distract him long enough for a victim, preferably a group, to subdue him. Furthermore, since apparently the classrooms could not be locked from within, victims after the 1st room should have reasonably anticipated that Cho could and would enter their room.

The key was to close the distance to Cho and subdue him in order to negate his firearm advantage, and the victims' relative advantages over Cho (forewarning, numbers, ambush) after the 1st room had a reasonable opportunity to do so. However, because the initial collective reaction was to hide or increase distance from (flee) the shooter, the moment and opportunity were lost. The victims' advantages were wasted. After Cho entered a room and established control of the space, he could exploit his advantages (aggression, firepower). At that point, the classrooms switched from counter-attack ambush sites to shooting galleries. Then, hiding or fleeing, rather than counter-attack, became the best option.

I object to the idea that the helpless response is necessarily the norm. Fighting back doesn't require detailed training or planning. It's a mindset, one that can and should be taught on a cultural level. What is being described here as "heroism", an extraordinary state inaccessible to the average person, was once assumed by a more-robust society to be a common cultural trait of quite-ordinary manliness (although, I contend that women can be just as "manly" in this sense).

Admittedly, I am a Gen-X Army veteran, which does make me an exception in my generation, but as a former soldier I can attest that soldiers are very ordinary people, not genetically disposed heroes. The difference is that soldiers, at a relatively late developmental stage in life (minimum age 18, 17 in some cases, 20 in mine), are taught a collective mindset of personal responsibility for the group and in-the-moment creative (field-expedient) problem-solving. Some are better at implementing those values than others, but at least a baseline is established so that soldiers as a group are not disposed to helplessness. As such, what is often viewed as extraordinary heroism among civilians is closer to the norm in the military.

I contend that it can be the norm among civilians, too. The social values taught in the military can and should be taught to our entire society, men and women. A better collective mindset could have counteracted the instinctual helpless response displayed in Va Tech. Furthermore, I believe the momentary opportunities for the victims to counter-attack Cho were wasted because the initial reaction was helplessness. The result was a higher number of casualties than necessary.

I don't blame the victims. While I believe there were reasonable opportunities for the victims to counter-attack Cho, even accounting for the lack of 'concealed' firearms or specialized training, it is apparent that at least the majority of the victims were not culturally equipped to utilize those opportunities and their advantages over him, and that points to a cultural failing which places all of us at fault. I also believe that, while possible, it's unreasonable to expect one victim to extraordinarily take it upon himself to stop Cho. One-on-one, Cho has the gun. There needed to be a collective response to utilize the victims' numbers advantage. For that kind of collective response to materialize in the future, we need an overhaul of how we acculturate ourselves as Americans so that aggressive problem-solving, threat-eliminating response becomes the cultural norm.

Circumstances can, indeed, impose real helplessness upon victims, but it's a waste when victims - especially when they hold relative advantages over the attacker - impose helplessness upon themselves.

If all you're really interested in is "studying" the response of victims and survivors, then this can only be done after a much more full accounting is made of the specific circumstances of the shooting, as I've repeatedly said.

Thus, there are two excellent reasons not to raise this issue now. 1) To await better information so that the "study" can be performed on a more complete data set and therefore be more informative or useful, and 2) out of respect for the dead and their families, given that there is an implicit (even as it is not intended) suggestion of blame for the victims inherent in analyses framed as yours have been.

Discretion is the better part of valor, and all that.

Chris, I don't know who you think is sneering a the victims. I'm not, and I don't see it in the discussions here.

AL, I've fairly consistently pointed at David Blue's first two paragraphs as evidence of sneering. Two phrases that specifically stand out are:

It's not surprising they fought as they trained, often hiding under a desk.

Many of them would probably have found it ridiculous, self-dramatizing and even blameworthy to have a fight plan (involving real fighting).

The first line declares the victims were attempting to fight by hiding under a desk, but were just too pussified by their weak, decadent "social regime" to properly fight. I'd suggest the victims knew the difference between fighting and hiding, and were explcitly choosing the latter, instead of being incapable of the former.

The second line makes entirely unwarranted assumptions about their views on "real fighting". David Blue has absolutely no basis to declare that the victims rejected a "fight plan" because it would have been "blameworthy" for them to have one.

If you choose not to see that, there's not a lot I can do. And as for the rest of your response, I'll note that you're just bluntly repeating what it is you're doing, while completely ignoring the counterarguments that other people have made about what you're doing. That being the case, there seems little point in saying any more here.

"Kevin Granata had heard the commotion in his third-floor office and ran downstairs. He was a military veteran, very protective of his students. He was gunned down trying to confront the shooter."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041802824_pf.html

Wei,

I appreciate what you're saying regarding respect for Cho's victims and their families, but the social-historical discussion studying the lessons of the event is already underway.

Today, the 1st draft of history is being formed in the public space - especially in old and new media - and the baseline we set now will dictate the course of the lessons we take away from this event as a society.

The university response to signs of Cho's psychological problems and the security reaction after the 1st shooting are being scrutinized. The always difficult freedom (individual rights) versus security balance of universities is being debated. Gun control advocates and 2nd amendment advocates are debating. Racism, culture clash, school bullying, violence in the popular culture - all manners of socially oriented angles are being explored. Out of these discussions, lessons will be gleaned.

In that learning vein, the initial reactions and decisions by victims and survivors caught in the scene, in the critical moments when a different collective reaction may have changed the outcome, is a very important area of scutiny. Like all the other debates and discussions regarding this incident, it should evolve as more facts come out, and I agree we should be as respectful as possible to the victims and their families as we hold this discussion.

What happened isn't the fault of the Va Tech victims. There's only one guilty party: Cho Seung-Hui. However, in all the different discussions about what to learn from the event, there is the assumption that the shockingly high number of 32 dead and 15 wounded on Monday was avoidable. In a future emergency that demands an emergency response by "ordinary" people caught in the scene, if those victims fail to react better because we failed as a society to learn critical cultural lessons from the Va Tach massacre, we all will share responsibility for the outcome.

Eric; I'm also saying that critical pieces of the situation, as well as other intangible factors, may never be known well enough to come to a good enough picture of this event that will allow meaningful lessons to be drawn from it.

Other discussions that are underway are not in the same category as victim/survivor contemporaneous responses, and therefore do not suffer from the same level of ambiguity. Because of this, and the sensitive nature of the issue which skirts too close to appearing to blame the victims or overtly (in a number of extremely prejudiced examples) blames social or political views, this particular conversation is not only meaningless but potentially harmful, at this time.

And furthermore, doesn't PD Shaw's post in #32 call into question the entire premise of the thread?

Wei,

Does the news about Professor Granata call into question the premise of my comment?

Not you, but David Blue and AL (in a previous thread)...the founding premise of the thread, I should have said.

Informed commentary by Jack Dunphy (pseudonymous LA cop) on the police response to the VT shootings, here.

There persists on the news channels and on the Internet the belief, a false one in my opinion, that “locking down” the Virginia Tech campus after the first two murders were discovered at 7:15 A.M. would have prevented the deadly rampage that followed at 9:45. In their failure to do so, critics argue, the school’s president and police chief share some measure of responsibility for the carnage and deserve to lose their jobs. This is preposterous...

The detailed composite WaPo narrative of events PD Shaw linked in comment #32 is tragic and gripping. It provides a partial answer to the "facts won't be known for some time" critique.

Anybody seen anything about the cops response time to Norris Hall? I recall seeing something about 10 minutes between the first 911 calls- but maybe it was 10 minutes to actually break the doors down which is probably understandable (it probably required a battering ram). Just curious.

Chris #31 - I'll actually agree with you and - on reading it rather than scanning - strongly wish that David had phrased this differently. My only excuse is that I'm reading this while on a series of conference calls, and that I should probably be devoting my full attention to both.

David, if you're reading this, can I encourage you to think about a less blameful way of making your points? I agree conceptually with you that the students chose the wrong response to the situation, but my view is that they are blameless because they have never been trained - like most people - to react differently.

A.L.

It's not clear that Livrescu delayed the shooter or saved any lives. Many in his classroom had already jumped out the second story window. Others were waiting on the ledge undecided. The last one jumped when he saw Livrescu shot. Three students remained in the room and all were shot. One dived under a desk and survived despite being shot. It's unclear what happened to the other two.

It seems flight was the proper response in this classroom. Livrescu was brave, but he died. Did he make the wrong decision? Probably not, since he was too old to jump. Should his heroism be celebrated even if he had made the wrong decision. Yes. Should I model my response after his? Probably not. I'm still young enough to jump.

Some of you think that these students as a whole had some duty to limit the total number of deaths, rather than to just try to survive or to protect themselves and those near them. Does this reflect your own powerlessness and anger at the shooter, your own sense of weakness? So you blame those who actually could have done something.

Blue says this:
"Many of the victims at Virginia Tech had spent their lives in a social regime that dictated that fight was unacceptable, flight ridiculous, and passivity was OK. It's not surprising they fought as they trained, often hiding under a desk.

Many of them would probably have found it ridiculous, self-dramatizing and even blameworthy to have a fight plan (involving real fighting). It's unacceptable to be a wannabe Rambo. So that was their preparation: not self-dramatizing. It was worthless."

This sounds like total bull shit to me. If you want to be a heroic warrior then join the army. Frankly I believe in the draft, so we don't have to listen to fat white men tell us or imply how brave they are or would be. (I'm stereotyping here)

Eric Chen says this:
"Victims had reasonable time and opportunity to organize a counter-attack.....After the 1st room, the victims held relative advantages over Cho. Cho was alone and vastly outnumbered by healthy, strong men and women."

How the did the students know there was only one shooter? Hindsight is wonderful isn't it. At least in Livrescu's room the best response was to jump out the window.

Counterattack? Why not just barricade the door?

But my main complaint is that the counter-attack response you advocate would have required intensive military training and socialization. Not going to happen, nor should it. It would be a waste of time and money, for something so rare.

Now that i cant agree with. Its one thing to argue that running away is an acceptable response- i generally agree with that. Its quite another to argue that deciding to risk or sacrifice your own life is the 'wrong' response. Thats absurd. It might be beyond the pale to demand it of others, but hey, its my life, if i decide its best spent trying to save others i believe that is my right. If there were a building full of burning orphans is the 'proper' response to get away from the heat?

If there were a building full of burning orphans...

Well, maybe the best response in that case is to ask the burning orphans to go outside so they don't accidentially set the building on fire, too.

Mark,

If its OK to question the efficacy of some of the participant's passivity, hiding, or flight, its OK to question Livrescu's heroism. I'm suggesting that Livrescu's death didn't save any lives, and may have been wasted. Was it courageous? Yes it was. In hindsight would all have been better off if he had led them to jump out the second story window, maybe yes.

But you're right. I don't morally judge Livrescu or any of the victims, because it was their choice to make.

an unarmed person confronting a determined shooter faces pretty long odds against success.

The problem is passivity in the face of nihilistic violence.

The problem Chris Jones and other Liberals is that you assume:

1. The State will be everywhere.
2. ONLY the State can act.
3. The proper role for all non-State employees is passive acceptance.
4. Three above is required for the State to expand to all areas, since ordinary people are stupid and useless and incapable of independent action and thought, only those morally superior (who are agents of the State) can act and think.

So yes it IS your fault. It is the natural result of making the State responsible for everything in modern life. It is a huge problem. And Michael Moore and Avedis are at least partly right in that those who distrust or view the State's ability to do everything as limited ACT and in the process of ACTING retain their independence and initiative. A building filled with ex-Marines (who are EXPECTED to Act) would have killed Psych-Cho even if a few of them died. So too Italian Peasants because no sane Italian Peasant expects the STATE to do anything. So too with inner city kids who don't expect the State to function at all (since it mostly doesn't).

"They'll be here soon." Who? The State of course. Except they weren't. By the time the agents of the State arrived Psych-Cho was dead.

When people were saved in New Orleans, many of them were not saved by the State. But by the working class people who survived in New Orleans and got their boats out with axes and chopped through roofs. By people who spontaneously self-organized. By people like the Mannings who brought in trucks with water when FEMA/Red Cross would not act.

Lesson: the STATE cannot be everywhere. It functions very poorly in an emergency. It is not that big, and suffers from over-centralizaton which makes action VERY SLOW.

The State can and should do many good things. Expecting it to respond to emergencies however is unrealistic and a fundamental misreading of human nature. It has been the major failing of Liberalism and the Left.

If a disabled person in a wheelchair on the sidewalk obviously needs assistance to get somewhere, you SHOULD help them and not wait around for the State to do it. If your neighbor needs help you SHOULD help him immediately. If a person is in distress you SHOULD be a good samaritan and help them. And if a nihilistic loser confronts you and people you know in a confined kill-space environment you SHOULD act to save them if not yourself. It should not be up to elderly 77 year old Holocaust Survivors. It should not be up to the State, because:

THE STATE IS NOT THERE. You are.

Liberals of course want a totally passive people who depend on the State for everything. Their model being non-Western tyrannies run from palaces by Philosopher God-Kings. Goes back to Plato's Republic. Appeals to their sense of moral superiority and elitism, distrust of ordinary people doing things. Passivity is a positive virtue for Liberals with disastrous consequences in emergencies: Katrina, 9/11, Columbine, VT, etc.

I bow to no one in my view that Big Government has it's place and is essential in many things: Golden Gate Bridge, Social Security, TVA etc. But it has it's limits and we just saw it.

Of course Psych-Cho in 2005 did: stalk two women, set fire to his dorm, scare his classmates and Prof, threatened suicide and was voluntarily committed. He was not expelled. Why? Liberal PC-Multi-Culti discrimination law made VT more scared of a discrimination lawsuit. Unfortunately Pschy-Cho was Korean and therefore "untouchable" by Liberal PC caselaw until it was too late. That too is the legacy of Liberalism.

Passivity kills.

Armed Liberal #39 - I think there is no less blameful way of making my points, since they already contain no blame.

My first point was that the victims had inhabited a starting point, a social regime, that inhibited preparedness and was worthless to them.

My second point was that this is not blameworthy (or creditable), merely a circumstance, and the point is to do better than what is then your default, a default that I illustrated in comment #3.

My subsequent points were positive, and about imitating those who did better and about doing better.

I made no point about the students choosing to make the wrong response to the situation.

That point does not fit into my framework, which is:
I. Negative / useless preparatory regime.
II. Low default.
III. Improving on the default: the imitation of heroes.
IV. Other ideas on improving on the default: the primal heroic response.

I did not treat the default as a choice at all. Rather, I treated improving on the default as a struggle. That is still my position.

So you can make a point about students choosing wrongly if you want, but you cannot agree with my point on that, since I do not have one.

I do not think it can be as clear as possible that having such a default is not blameworthy, unless I say how bad I think the preparatory regime that produces the default is.

I can move the blanket around, but it is always going to uncover some occasion for offense.

Nevertheless, giving potential offense in one way or another is not a matter of indifference.

I want to say what is positive, true, relevant and important, but that will least press on the particular sore points people have.

Taking your reactions as a guide to how reasonable Americans may react, I'm assuming that the comments you did not like do press on specific sore points, so I'm eliminating them. Since I need some kind of opening words, I'm going with with what I hope will be a less offensive abstractness.

At the same time I'm taking the opportunity to fix what I do regard as a basic mistake in my original post: I said "your" where I should have said "our". So the amended post is better.

Of course that will uncover other angles of potential offense, but I hope on average they will be less important.

If you want further excisions, by all means post again and say what should go, so as not to rub raw the grief of people nearer to the tragedy than I am.

I want to go positive on this. I want to turn attention to hopeful doctrine for the future, and good examples to admire and imitate. I want to hearten people and encourage heroic behavior. I think that is a proper part of the mourning process in wider society.

I am not looking for a fight. I think that is not a useful part of the morning process in wider society.

David Blue--

On reflection, I become more uneasy about what we think we know about those terrible few minutes in Norris Hall, and how tempting it is to extrapolate from "bad outcome" to "moral failure."

The feeling was catalyzed by the WaPo's mention of Kevin Granata.

Kevin Granata had heard the commotion in his third-floor office and ran downstairs. He was a military veteran, very protective of his students. He was gunned down trying to confront the shooter.

So Kevin Granata ran, unarmed, towards the sound of the shots. Yet that WaPo account is the sole mention I have seen of his name.

Your notion (shared by Eric Chen, and by Mark Steyn) is that passivity makes these bad situations worse. You wish to see a greater chance that evildoers will be thwarted by a citizenry trained, and thus inclined, to action. Earlier in this thread, I agreed with these points, and I still do.

That said, some of the pointed criticsms of this thread hit home. We know the fictional Lord Jim's deeds, and his heart. But how well do we know the narratives of each of the thirty men and women who died? Some of their "failed" heroism may never come to light.

#47 from AMac: I strongly agree that much "failed" heroism is never likely to come to light.

I think what was lacking was not, "someone to challenge the bum, all out", because that clearly happened, but "enough extra people to act, to pile on so that the challenge was made successful, likely at the cost of the lives of the first one, two or maybe three heroes". Critical mass in a situation like this is likely to be low. Maybe one more decisive challenger, and we'd be talking about how heroes had saved that situation. One more person ducking under a desk instead, and not only would the hero's effort be made worthless suicide, but nobody will ever know.

This could happen repeatedly. Maybe it did. Likely it did.

I also agree that it would be wrong to extrapolate from "bad outcome" to "moral failure". That's why I don't do so.

On the other hand, I do extrapolate from "worthless preparation" to "default level performance".

Therefore, though I don't damn any individual (except the creep), I do damn our general regime of non-preparation for a crisis, of "not self-dramatizing" or "not trying to act like (fill in hero of choice" in effect of not mentally rehearsing, that leaves people so poorly prepared.

Achillea perfectly illustrates (link) what I want more of: immediate, decisive action, founded on a heroic grasp of the real immediate situation, and carried through with all the power that that person could put into it. She could not have made herself a harder target, a less convenient victim. for those burglars. That's the maximum.

It's a tremendous credit to an individual to act like this without any useful preparation. But that is not an argument for bad preparation.

If people were prepared better, we might just get one person more in a dozen or a score who acted in a straightforwardly heroic way when the situation called for it.

And that might make all the difference, creating a critical mass of active fighters that saved themselves and everybody else.

Instead of the unavailing sacrifice of heroes we'll never know we should properly honor. Which I think is what we've got.