The Problem with Pundits Thinking They Could Have Stopped Adam Lanza

[Redfairen]

It's impossible not to imagine what you would have had if you had been at Sandy Hook Elementary when Adam Lanza broke in and massacred 20 first-graders and six adults. It is possible to refrain from insinuating that you would have been braver and smarter than the people who were slaughtered, and that you would have made it out alive. Unfortunately, a couple writers for national news websites have been unable to refrain from doing that. On Wednesday, we were treated to the musings of Charlotte Allen, who at The National Review argues that there would have been more survivors if the staff had been more manly — maybe even played football — and if some husky boys had bum-rushed Lanza. This is not an exaggeration, and Allen wasn't joking (I think). She writes:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. ...

But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. 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.

This fantasy has not been fact-checked. Sandy Hook is actually a K-4 school, so the huskiest boys would have been about 9 years old. And, as Slate's David Weigel points out, there were actually two adult males on the school premises. But let's all imagine some husky 9-year-olds running towards a man with two semi-automatic handguns and an AR-15. It's tough to imagine, isn't it? Because they would all die.


http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/12/problem-pundits-thinking-they-could-have-stopped-adam-lanza/60190/

[LiberalEsto]

1. A bullet is a bullet - it doesn't care about gender

When someone is firing lots of bullets very quickly, those bullets will hit people whether they are male or female. And men and women can end up equally dead.

[xfundy]

2. Seems to be an argument for more cops.

Maybe a number close to back in the days when President Clinton was in office, before all the cancervatives called for public services to be cut?

A cop in every school, as part of training. Why not.

[caraher]

3. The NRA types my wife works with have a "solution"

They want NRA members (retirees?) to patrol the schools.

Guns are like tax cuts. If they're causing a problem, the only solution is more of them...

[Voice for Peace]

4. good read, kick n rec

[struggle4progress]

5. Charlotte rents out her heart and mind to the highest bidder; her writing is much like prostitution,

neither intellectually honest nor emotionally sincere, so it's entirely pointless to attempt to debunk what she writes

The best we could do is to try to figure out exactly who she is trying to manipulate and along which path she hopes to drive her audience

She is clearly aiming at men with a macho fantasy, who imagine they could stride into the gunfire, bullets bouncing off their massive manly chests until they reach the villain and tear out his throat with their teeth, to the wonder and delight of all the little women and children who will suddenly realize that such a strong virile figure is the only real hero in a confusing and unpredictable world

The manipulation seeks to produce resentment at being misunderstood and "feminized" by those castrating feminazis seen everywhere in the Land of Limbaugh, in the hopes that this resentment, once again rubbed raw by another reminder of the ways in which the wayward world alternately ignores and ridicules Rambo, will translate into a new hated of liberals and a heightened determination to swear, gun in hand, that the Land of Limbaugh will be defended: in particular, of course, the aim is to corral the gun-nuts securely into the conservative camp

[fasttense]

6. She clearly has never worked with females in the military or police.

"A feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm."

Ever been in a military bunk house with all women? There is no helpless passivity there. I was in the military for over 20 years and I can tell she is unaware of how good a fighting force women make. For starters, women tend to be more accurate with smaller weapons than men. Some women can easily overpower any person that confronts them with just some minimal training.

Passivity and helplessness are learned and are not necessarily an outcome of being feminine or of being a woman.

[struggle4progress]

7. I think she does know that women need not be helpless and passive, but has

a target audience to manipulate to serve her agenda