Charlotte Allen over at National Review Online has interesting ideas for how we might be able to stop mass shootings in the future. They mostly have to do with having more men at elementary schools. I am so not kidding. And not just that, “Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.” Just imagine! Too bad it couldn’t be televized: the Male Teachers Who Had Played High-School Football against the nut with an assault rifle! That sounds like a hell of a match—equal power on both sides.
She has other great ideas. When a shooter comes after you, you should run. “[B]ecause most shooters can’t hit a moving target.” What’s with all that hiding in the closet business? Sure, doing that probably saved hundreds of lives. But it’s so girly!
Two things come to mind here. First, you know one reason why it is that not many men work as grammar school teachers? The pay sucks. But the National Review Online isn’t for paying teachers more. Teachers are just one of the many moocher groups trying to steal all the good, honest money made by hedge fund managers and bank CEOs. This isn’t about some secret feminizing project of liberals trying to stop 12-year-old-boys from being husky.
Second, there are standard procedures that people should follow when they are in a situation with an armed gunman. You should run away if you can. This is just to get away, however; it is not because shooters have a hard time hitting moving targets. If you can’t run, you should hide. If you can’t hide, you should fight. Here is a video from the Department of Homeland Security that explains this:
Charlotte Allen is really vile. Not only is she giving out really bad advice, she is insulting all the people who have actually faced this situation. The National Review Online should be ashamed, but I fear they are far beyond that by now.
H/T Jonathan Chait
Afterword
That video was originally sent to me by a friend back on 5 November. It was passed around at her work because there was an incident where someone saw a gunman, but the police couldn’t find anyone and no one was harmed. She sent it to me because it is kind of dorky. But even at the time I defended it. I think it is good advice. You can’t be too careful. And I’m definitely a “fight as a last resort” kind of guy. These people saying that we should run toward shooters are idiots.
Apparently Allen learned her "duck and weave" survival technique from watching [i]The Inlaws[/i] and her idea of female frailty from romance novels. I think it might be good training for the women in the armed forces to practice their "shooting at a moving target" skills on the likes of Allen and religious conservatives whose simplistic, hypocritically Puritanical, self-righteous, and misogynistic opinions have done more harm to society than they could ever comprehend.
One more thing: FUCK her.
@Andrea — These people are just up against a wall (and not in the way you kiddingly suggest!) They can’t, EVER, have been wrong about anything. They can’t say, "our rabid supply-side policies created waves of mentally deranged citizens whom our rabid pro-gun policies armed to the teeth, and we don’t know what to do about it."
Thomas Frank and many others have compared right-wing apologetics to those of Stalinism; since our theories cannot be wrong, it must just be that they haven’t been implemented fully/perfectly enough. Both basically are anti-democratic; there is only one way to run society, and anything else is illegitimate. Note how many people consider Obama anti-American because his election even suggests a slight veering from the True Path (and with Obama, the veering will be slight at best.) Scary stuff.
Why didn’t I think of [i]The In-Laws[/i] since it is one of my favorite movies. Serpentine!
I just found Charlotte Allen’s Twitter feed. She is very insecure based on her description, "Respected conservative journalist–that’s a quote from Virginia Postrel–plus, I have a Ph.D. in medieval studies, so I’m really smart!" Also, she is close to a number of people I have ridiculed here.
http://franklycurious.com/index.php?itemid=3226
Her Twitter account is @MeanCharlotte and she actually looks a fair amount like my Artist’s Rendering.