You guys floor me...seriously. I should be "ashamed" that I used the term "sheeple"? "Repugnant"?
Yes, I chose the word repugnant, and I stand behind it. It is a clear denigration of victims of crime who are undeserving of it. Admittedly you said you used it based on erroneous reports...does that mean you'd rethink its use in this case?
Let me be clear here, because I want to keep some civility around here. I am in no way shape or form making a personal judgement on you as a man. I'd be the first to buy you the pint of choice over a comversation like this. I called out a word shoice, not a man.
The deaths of 30 people is tragic, but open your eyes. Things like this -- and worse -- happen every day all over the world. I don't hear anyone crying over killings in Darfur or any one of the other hot-spots in the world where there is human tragedy on a massive scale being committed RIGHT NOW AS YOU READ THIS MESSAGE. Just because it happens to some college kids closer to home doesn't mean it must be held more sacred than anything else.
That may be a reasonable assumption, but at least in my case it's not accurate. I am involved with an organization that has been working for
years to highlight the criminal events in Darfur. I didn't talk about h=it here because that's not what the tread's about.
My comment has nothing to do if people were in the military or not or "trained". I've been in the US military 12 years and I've never been given ANY training on how to handle being at gunpoint, but I'll tell you this much...if I'm going to be killed anyway, I'm not going without a fight. It's a survival instinct. Unfortunately, so many youth in the US are taught to just comply with the bad man and wait to be "rescued"...this in itself is a recipe for disaster. Everyone has to be responsible for their own security and absolutely can't rely on "the man" to rescue them. It has NOTHING to do with RKBA, or military training, or being a helpless college student who had no expectation of being killed at school.
Well, to redefine my statement a bit, I wasn't intending to insinuate that the military trains people to respond in an exact situation. I do, however, believe that combat training certainly leads one to see things differently in such a situation.
It is analagous, in my mind, of something I remember from Charles MacDonald's book 'Company Commander'. (At least I Tthink it was that book...been a loooong time.) He talked about how, where he moght have seen a field as a big open space
before his training, afterwards he saw depressions, slight valleys, and various other forms of cover that he would use to keep his men as protected as possible.
How many times have we heard combat veterans say that, when push came to shove, that their training took over? That there wasn't time to think? I believe the same applies here, or more specifically the lack thereof.
Just as today three guys with box-cutters would never be able to hold an airliner hostage against a group of "un-trained" passengers, any group of people anywhere should not allow a single gunman to kill them while they still have the means to resist. That means is a mentality, not something learned in a classroom somewhere.
We are saying a similar thing here. But I would also suggest that, in the past, hijackings rarely resulted in major loss of life, and the first three aircraft did not realize what their fate was. By the time the passengers of United 93 were in that situation, they were better informed, and reacted accordingly.[/quote]