Reach Out and Touch someone

It's hard to know if we're a country of psychopaths or pussies. Today's horror in Virginia where a single man guns down thirty people is insane. No rational mind can see value in the taking of so many innocent lives. (As opposed to taking guilty lives? Our society is bi polar on this issue too, since we don't want to kill the guilty...)

How can one man hold thirty people at bay while he systematically shoots them? According to one eyewitness he wasn't even a good shot. (The living witness said the man shot at him five times from a distance of 30 to 35 feet and missed. Much to relief of the witness).

The only thing that holds people in that condition is fear.

Fear of what? we ask.

Of getting shot.

So they get killed. Anyway.

All right when something unexpected and awful happens people normally do the wrong thing. Without training or forethought they freeze. The brain shuts down and if they can't run away they quiver in terror as the madman rampages and kills them all systematically.

So I guess we need to think these things through. The psychos will rule the world if we let them. Being passive and waiting for rescue is usually not an option. We need to plan on how to fight back. How to keep the wacko's from treating us as playthings.

I like to think I might have charged into his fire with a desk for a shield, crushed the killer against the wall and wrestled the gun from his hand. Especially if he was reloading.

On the other hand, and in reality, I would likely have been cowering under a desk in a puddle of my own piss when he put a bullet in my head.

But I'd rather go out fighting than laying in my own fear. Hopefully this doesn't happen to me or you, but if it does? What would you do?