It is a fact of life that there appears to be no limit to the appetite for or at least the supply of breezy contrarianism. But when it’s about kids getting shredded by in mass killings it’s even less appealing than it normally is. Which brings us to this now much-mocked article by Megan McArdle. After breezily rejecting all possible steps society can take to reduce the growing tide of mass-casualty shootings, Megan McArdle (no longer with The Atlantic, now with the DailyBeast) does have one practical idea: teach the kids to rush the gunman, mid-massacre …
I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.
It’s true that in some cases, if a dozen or more people can rush a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle all at once and coordinated there’s some chance they’ll overpower him. It’s also pretty certain a bunch of those people will get killed. Probably most. Possibly all. But please don’t conclude by putting this forward as some sensible approach to school massacres after dismissing others as unrealistic or impractical.
The whole lump of nonsense makes me wish purveyors of over-cleverness and hack think tank denizen garbage could be sent to a time out.
