Learning to fight violence--as savagely as possible

Today's topic is only tangentially related to guns. It will still, most likely, be upsetting to the folks who decry our nation's "gun culture," if they happen to read it, because it's about fighting back--stubbornly refusing to cower and wait for rescue. It is, to amplify, about developing a fighting mindset, and stealing the initiative from anyone who threatens innocent people with destruction. As it turns out, some students (and teachers and staff) in the Fort Worth area are being taught just that. When a gunman shows himself and starts barking orders, these people are being taught not to obey, but to fight, with whatever is at hand--books, pencils, fists, and feet (and teeth, fingernails, etc.).

Some, predictably, are calling this a recipe for disaster, saying that sending unarmed children (the plan in this Fort Worth school district is to teach this to every student, including the elementary school kids) to fight a gunman is grossly (perhaps criminally) irresponsible. I would reply that what is criminally irresponsible is allowing them to go on thinking that the best they can do is to try to hide under their desks and wait for the rescue that will almost certainly not get there in time.

Despite the fact that this won't "put more guns in schools," as they like to rail hysterically against, the anti-gun people aren't likely to get on board with this idea. They can't, because to do so would be to acknowledge that defense is not only the right, but the responsibility of the individual, and once one acknowledges that, it becomes very difficult to justify legislating a ban (or tight restrictions) on the most efficient means of defending oneself. To their way of thinking, teaching people to defend themselves from criminal thugs helps to perpetuate what they call the "culture of violence" in our society, and that, in turn, is what they think is responsible for society's "sick fascination with guns." They know that destroying any interest in guns would win their war on gun rights for them.

To their (rather odd) way of thinking, the perfect world is one in which anyone who wishes to be capable of self-defense is ostracized as a dangerously violent obstacle to their "brave" new world.