In case you missed ABL’s post yesterday, this appears to be Megan McArdle’s principled libertarian position on preventing mass shootings:
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
For now, people are mostly making fun of this idiocy (Sullivan; Chait; Josh Marshall), but I wonder: how long til someone at Slate takes the contrarian position “sure, it’s easy to mock Megan McArdle for saying this but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords you will see the logic, and, empirically, the Finns have a proud tradition of shooter-rushing, which children learn from an early age, and they have a much lower rate of mass shootings blah blah blah”.
Also too, a new feather in McArdle’s cap: “She is a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at The New America Foundation”. I don’t know who Bernard L. Schwartz is, but if he’s dead, this is much worse than a posthumous conversion to Mormonism.
Part of me hopes the Mayans turn out to be right later this week (that would show Nate Silver!) just to put an end to this kind of thing.
redshirt
Apocalyptic nitpick!
Maya = the people
Mayan = the language of the Maya
Bring on the asteroid!
Edit to add, in the Sanskrit, Maya = Illusion
beltane
I think McDumbass really crossed a line with this one. She even has a Wonkette post devoted solely to her stupidity with lots of commenters suggesting that she try to stop traffic on the beltway by jumping into the center lane and running into oncoming cars.
I’m sure this nitwit will keep her job but she has lost whatever veneer of “reasonable conservative” that still clung to her. She has made it clear that she is not fit for Totebagger consumption. At least we don’t have to worry that she’ll be the next David Brooks.
Mojotron
Let’s be clear here- McArdle is a flabby asthmatic libertarian who does nothing for the common good unless she benefits directly; she wants your kids to act as a human shield while she escapes to stately Koch manor.
Cassidy
I think that McDumbass and 19 of her closest friends should stand in front of someone they hire with an AR15 and a 30 round magazine, pack into a corner first because that’s the drill, and then bumrush the shooter while he starts shooting. Of course, dipshit needs to be up front.
Think of it as an experiment in whether or not her new solution works.
Sad_Dem
I wish I could be the Muckymuck Fellow at the BigBuck Think Tank for saying really really stupid things.
It’s a gig I’d take. Hello? Is this thing on?
red dog
Does a class of kindergarteners qualify as group worthy of rushing and overtaking a gunman with a few casualties being acceptable?
Gravie
Bernard Schwartz was Tony Curtis’s real name. Of course I have no idea if it’s the same one.
redshirt
Also, myuzi weighs a ton.
Brachiator
This has got to be one of the dumbest things written by anyone, ever.
Megan McArdle’s name will live forever among the Infinite Annals of Dumbfuckery.
beltane
Bernard Schwartz is a lifelong Democrat and he is still living http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_L._Schwartz I’m guessing that he wouldn’t approve of McArdle’s appeal to child sacrifice as a way to fix our problems.
MikeJ
@red dog: http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/
MattF
Just a question. Is a society in which little children are indoctrinated to rush towards a crazed murderer in middle of a shooting spree really ‘free’? What do you think?
Bruce Webb
Quite aside from the general dumb-fuckery and moral abyss of Megan’s “let the kids rush the shooter” it also fails the “what then?” test. Because the obvious countermeasure to this ‘tactic’ is one that has been well tested in Mumbai and the Mid-East: wear a suicide vest while engaging in your mass shooting. Then when all fifty intended victims not yet shot rush onto you set it off. You don’t even need to save the last bullet for yourself, instead thanks to McAddled you get to leverage your death count even or especially if your gun(s) jam.
Megan: lick up, kick down and clueless both directions.
DougJ
I just sent this to Andrew Sullivan from a different email than my usual. Wonder if he’ll take it.
Dear Andrew and Co.,
I’m a gun safety consultant, currently working with the Danish
government. While it’s easy to mock Megan McArdle for suggesting
shooter rushing, there is actually a long tradition of shooter rushing
in many of the Nordic countries, and these countries have
traditionally had among the lowest rates of mass shootings (Anders
Behring Breivik being a true outlier) of any western countries. It’s
counterintuitive, but most shooters “freeze” when run at by a group,
even a group of children,
Believe it or not, there is even a passage in Beowulf involving
“shooter rushing”, albeit with spears. Hengest briefly loses his mind
after drinking tainted water and is subdued by a group of unarmed men
who run at him.
Douglas Jones
Copenhagen
the Conster
The best comment from that Chait post:
“It’s typical libertarianism though. Behave in a way that’s against human nature because the practical solution is against my ideology.”
She’s ridiculous.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I’m glad McMegan continues her unimpeachable track record of idiocy. I happen to own a couple of these “very powerful weapons”, and I can assure anyone who is in doubt about the utter stupidity of McMegan’s assertion, that “gang rushing” such a shooter will merely result in a large mass of bodies piled neatly in a circle around where the shooter was standing.
scav
new Faux/ NRA reality show: Are you more Macho than a Fifth Grader: Extreme Edition.
Bill in Section 147
@red dog: You know who else thought children with enough will could face down thugs with guns…
GregB
We’re all Masadan’s now.
Tom Levenson
@DougJ: Oh, dear FSM, make Sully bite.
I have to say, mon sembable, mon frère,….we are not worthy.
the Conster
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I’m surprised she didn’t suggest that the big kids should be trained to throw the little kids at the shooter.
Lawrence
Does this cretinous twunt have children, or even spend time with them? My 6 year old is bright, reads well, and does math better than I did at her age. And just yesterday, and sevreral times last week, “Where is your jacket? You left it at school. You’re a big girl now. You have to learn not to leave your jacket at school.” I, and the parents of her classmates should teach them to tackle a shooter? There will have to be practice sessions, of course. I mean…JESUS TITS!!! WHO THE HELL COULD BE SO STUPID AS TO SAY THIS?
Jerzy Russian
@MikeJ: I could take on 12 five-year-olds in a fight. Is that good?
NonyNony
@Mojotron:
This. She doesn’t actually think she’ll ever be in a situation where there is a mass murder going on, so she’s free to pontificate about what “other people” should do.
History says that you can rest assured that if McArdle ever came within a mile of a mass murder her tune would change. And if she were ever involved in a mass murder as a potential victim, she’d probably decide that banning guns outright was the single most important policy on the table.
Omnes Omnibus
When I was in the army, the accepted way to deal with a closed ambush, one where the exits are blocked, was to charge the ambushers. Of course, that the situation presents you with two options; stay in the kill zone to die or attack. The differences between this scenario are an elementary school shooting are fucking enormous. McMegan is a fucking idiot.
Bill in Section 147
Maybe some of our vets could opine on this but I was under the impression that current military tactical thinking was most soldiers in a fire fight will not clearly and coolly engage in aimed fire.
Not sure what trained but unarmed soldiers could do but historically it has been proved to be a numbers issue. The Japanese in WWII failed while the Chinese had some success in Korea. So if we could increase class size I am sure we will get to the tipping point.
If Eisenhower had just dropped the training and prep charade, Omaha Beach could have been taken months earlier by school children.
? Martin
So we’re on to Pink Himalayan Meat Shields now.
McMegan should pop one of those out to fully understand that they aren’t nearly the renewable resource she seem to think them as.
dmsilev
@DougJ: I think it’s illegal to use bait like that when Sullivan-fishing.
Culture of Truth
This is totally impractical. They should shield themselves with copies of The Runaway Bunny
dmsilev
Children, by and large, love ponies. We have here an opportunity to recreate the Charge of the Light Brigade. Fuck, we don’t even have to change the wording of the poem:
“Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die:”
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: You left out an important component as well: when responding to a close ambush, you’re supposed to charge and empty your magazine, throw grenades, throw all the rocks in your pocket, etc.
@Bill in Section 147: In a firefight? No. It’s kind of like watching a group of pre-teens play one of those video games with the machine guns. Another name for it is called the “death blossom”. But, after the initial fear and shock of being engaged, things do settle down into a very scary and efficient brutality. That being said, you really can’t compare pre- and post-Vietnam numbers without addressing the drastic mental conditioning the military built into it’s training.
redshirt
@dmsilev: Yeah, that’s not even sporting. Like dynamite fishing.
? Martin
@Bill in Section 147:
Not a vet, but my understanding is that following our conscription wars, the military determined that minimally trained soldiers are unreliable, that many will simply refuse to engage, others will panic or worse.
Modern military training is designed to wear down that instinctive response to not kill a fellow human and to flee. That’s why they shoot at silhouettes and not round targets. Eventually your brain gets conditioned to shoot at things that look like people, and then you just do it – but it takes a while.
So, I think your observation is correct from Vietnam back, but since then with a fully professional army, it’s much less true.
James K. Polk, Esq.
How exactly is bum-rushing the shooter a libertarian argument?
Ayn Rand would throw a shit-fit if you suggested it was moral to sacrifice yourself for no reason for the kindergardener sitting next to you. Alturism is based on selfishness in the Galtian paradise in McMegan’s head.
Jane Galt, my ass…
Mnemosyne
I’m surprised McArdle didn’t propose the solution one Utah family came up with: have their 11-year-old bring a gun to school to protect himself. After all, if a shooter knows that all of the 7-year-olds in the classroom have guns, then he’ll hesitate to attack. Problem solved!
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure, but then again, you were presumed to be armed, trained, and members of a cohesive team led by qualified professionals. McMegan is explicitly recommending this strategy for people who are unarmed, untrained, and disorganized.
quannlace
Sweet Jesus, it’s not enough that we’re allowing our kids to be walking targets for the unhinged. Now we’re supposed to turn them into cannon fodder?
PeakVT
I don’t know who Bernard L. Schwartz [is]…
Former head of Loral Space & Communications and assorted failed subsidiaries (full disclosure – I worked for one, and NYC headquarters of the parent was full of assholes). Involved in the Clinton-era scandal of transferring technology secrets to the Chinese during the launch of a Loral-built satellite.
He’s a DLC-er, and the New America Foundation looks to be a typical “non-partisan” (meaning center-right) DC-based neoliberal/neocon bullshit generator judging by the people associated with it. McAddled probably is there to show that the organization is “willing to listen to both sides” without having to drag in a fundie type.
Comrade Jake
I think the best comment I’ve seen on this is that McMegan’s colleagues at Newsweek should be trained to bum-rush her every time she sits down to write a new column.
flounder
I am actually surprised she didn’t use the massacre as a jumping off place to suggest that if American kids were allowed the freedom to be locked down doing menial sewing in purse factories at the age of ten, they would be harder to shoot at.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Yeah, the fact that you yourself are armed does come into play. Also, it is a last resort, to be used when getting the fuck out of there some other way is not an option. Like I said, the differences between that situation and Newtown are fucking huge.
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
I think Atlas Shrugged would be a better choice. It’s thick enough to have some chance of stopping a bullet, and it would be less of a loss if it were damaged. Of course that would mean providing our students with copies of an Ayn Rand book that the might actually read when not using it as a shield, so maybe it’s not such a great idea.
dmsilev
@? Martin:
If you thought her kitchen-gadget posts were terrifying in their banal stupidity, just wait until she starts doing blog posts on her favorite baby gadgets and what-not. I suspect we would truly reach Peak Inanity.
Bulworth
Well, some people say it’s a great idea to gang rush the shooter. Some people say it isn’t. We’ll present both sides of the debate.
Butch
But she gets mocked again and again even in her own comments section and nothing ever penetrates the total shield of stupidity. I want a job where I can get paid big bucks for saying stupid stuff.
RSA
@the Conster:
I think it’s worse than that–rushing an armed killer has a whiff of altruism, doesn’t it? And when McCardle says, “drilling young people,” she means indoctrinating kindergarteners, people far too young to make informed decisions, with the idea that they should put themselves in significant danger. That’s not even libertarian ideology. It’s just cracked.
redshirt
@flounder: Heh. Good idea. I bet those workers in the fenced off FoxCon factories are safe from mass shootings. At least.
? Martin
@James K. Polk, Esq.: I hear you. That’s why I told my daughter over the weekend to pick a classmate she doesn’t care for very much and ask the teacher to sit next to/behind them and to be prepared to use them as a meat shield if anything should go down. Preferably someone a little chunky, so they might have bit more stopping power.
Those that fail to plan, plan to fail.
Tonal Crow
Does this mean that Republicans who want to prevent Obama from taking their guns should gang-rush him at press conferences?
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Dude, I was not defending McMegan.
BGinCHI
Finally answers the question: how many libertarians does it take to stop a shooter enabled by libertarians?
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: Not yet answered. No data. We need to get Megan and the staff of Reason (and the Paul family) together to run an empirical test.
NonyNony
@? Martin:
As I’ve said elsewhere – if McArdle and Suderman ever decide to have children I hope they hire a nanny to raise them. One with at least an ounce of compassion and a gram of common sense. I shudder to think of how she might go about raising a child (and what kind of little sociopath she’d raise on her own).
@Butch:
Ah. You made the mistake of not having a father who was a big New York City lobbyist who could pay to get you into the right schools and meet the right people to grease the skids to get you into some nice wingnut welfare writing positions, despite a lack of any noticeable talent on your part.
Sucks to be you, moocher! You should have made better choices before you were born.
? Martin
@BGinCHI:
None. The free market will stop the shooter.
Duh.
Cassidy
@NonyNony:
There’s a movie with Christian Bale you should probably see.
Paul in KY
@DougJ: You should have made your name Danish. Otherwise, good job.
Paul in KY
@the Conster: Just wait. That is eminently reasonable proposal #2.
the Conster
@RSA:
Well that’s what happens when you’re paid to twist logic and common sense into a Koch approved shape on a daily basis.
Jay in Oregon
@Jerzy Russian:
I got a result of 20 5-year-old kids, but I may have padded my answers slightly as any good wingnut would. (“Sure, I’ve had extensive martial arts training!”)
Paul in KY
@James K. Polk, Esq.: Yeah, but those people in Ms. Rand’s book were Galtian overlords. You can’t expect them to do any of that sacrifice. Now messy little kids (not your own), that’s a different story…
TG Chicago
Any reason McArdle hasn’t made it into the “Blogs we Monitor and Mock as Needed” section? She gets mocked more than most on the list (deservedly so).
the Conster
@Paul in KY:
Mnemosyne
@quannlace:
I’m guessing the next ploy from the gun fans will be to propose that body armor be added to kids’ school uniforms — that way, the next time a shooter shows up, fewer of them will die. Because, of course, that’s a much more logical solution than trying to restrict civilian access to high-capacity magazines and the semi-automatic weapons that use them.
Paul in KY
@? Martin: Good ideas. I’d also have them sit in the back row. Hopefully there will be lots of fodder between them & the shooter.
Might want to armor plate the desk too.
Tonal Crow
David Brooks says that McMegan’s solution “is nearly ideal. It exhibits Oakshottian modesty toward our limited ability to confront evil, combined with Hayekian respect for freedom and a vigorous Reaganite muscularity.”
MattF
@Tonal Crow: And Burkean attention to tradition, too.
NonyNony
@Cassidy:
I’m fairly certain we’re living in it these days. It was satire in the 90s but I’m pretty sure that all of the satire from the 1990s has become reality.
Gary
Should the six-year-olds yell “Leeroy Jenkins!” as they rush the shooter?
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: I’d buy a ticket.
Svensker
@DougJ:
Ha ha ha.
He doesn’t take your e-mails anymore either? And I send him such good ones, too.
Amir Khalid
@Comrade Jake:
Well, there’s like one print issue left before Newsweek goes bye-bye. (The current issue I saw on newsstands laments, in all seriousness, the prospect of a world without pasta.) But I’m sure Megan McArdle still has plenty of drivel left in her, and Tina Brown will give her plenty of room to air it in the Daily Beast.
Speaking of drivel, has any front-pager seen Chunky Bobo’s latest column? Another commenter here has already mentioned it, as I recall; so I’ll just note that his commenters give him the usual hammering for his vacuous pieties.
I think I’ll also quote one of those commenters, Al from Los Angeles:
craig
Megan McArdle is stupid.
Bobby Thomson
Why aren’t people mentioning the arguably most disturbing part of her idea, which is the implied but unstated proposition that we are also training children to kill the shooter? Otherwise, it’s unclear how children knocking a mass murderer with a gun to the ground would not ultimately be a pyrrhic victory.
BGinCHI
@DougJ: You were probably thinking of “The Battle of Maldon,” but good try.
It never works out for the rushers in medieval texts, btw.
Except for the songs sung about them. Those are bitchin.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
People like Douthat and McArdle need to just admit that it’s not that nothing can be done, it’s that they’re unwilling to do anything to prevent the murders of innocent people.
Dork
If the kids successfully overtook the shooter in a bum rush, wouldn’t they almost certainly face suspensions for bullying?
J. Michael Neal
@Cassidy:
Only one?
Face
Fixed.
Andy R
I wonder if Megan McArdle has enough self awareness to realize she is an idiot?
When I discovered that she supposedly wrote articles for The Economist magazine I cancelled my subscription and now every time they call me to renew my subscription I tell them that ‘any magazine that published anything by Megan McArdle, is not worth reading’. Seems to work, as they have stopped calling me.
Cassidy
@J. Michael Neal: Good point.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
That story is absolutely horrifying. My God. And they’re going to charge the kid? How about throwing his f**king parents in jail first? I’m sure they scared the shit out of him about the CT shootings and then gave him the gun to “protect himself”. How the hell can an 11-year-old have the judgment to say “no” to his folks in those circumstances?
Paul in KY
@the Conster: You are up on your Swift! That’s what I was trying for, but I couldn’t remember the exact phrase.
Heliopause
Fine, go ahead and make fun of McArdle, but when I was in school in the 1960s we used to do drills called “Rise and Rush”. If we spotted an ICBM headed towards our location we were to rise up out of our desks and rush toward the scene, the idea being that if enough bodies got in front of the thing it might muffle the explosion and spare those to the rear.
Tony Curtis?
Paul in KY
@Bobby Thomson: Well, when Gothmog commanded his orc hordes to take Hurin alive at the Nirneath Arnodiad, scores of them got their limbs chopped off as they attempted to grab him & he was finally captured due mainly to all their severed limbs holding at his body made it impossible for him to swing his ax anymore.
So, they could do that to capture the shooter.
BGinCHI
I await the McArdle biopic:
Dumb & Dumber: The Dumbening.
Who would play her?
I’m going with Terence Stamp.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Is Stamp tall enough? Perhaps Tom Cruise instead.
J. Michael Neal
@Svensker: Well, the kid apparently pulled out the gun and pointed it at the head of a classmate and threatened to kill her. I think there are charges enough to go around here.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Stamp is way taller than Cruise, and looks much better in a dress.
Cruise does have that insane look in his eyes though.
Now I’m thinking maybe Jim Carrey. He’s got the teeth for it. He’ll have to get fake ears though.
Svensker
@J. Michael Neal:
I know, but the kid is 11 frigging years old. And, as I said, his parents probably terrified him about the CT then told him to take the gun to school to protect himself. And what does an 11-year-old boy with a gun (fake or real) do? Plays with it.
Eleven year olds are not capable of making good judgment calls about appropriate ways of handling guns. That’s why they’re supposed to have parents and adults in authority.
Hopefully, the kid will just have the crap scared out of him and be sent home (to his grandparents, maybe). But his parents — who are idiots with no concept of developmental maturity, apparently lacking any of said themselves — should be charged with something big. Felony child endangerment, maybe?
craig
@Paul in KY: FTW
Paul in KY
@BGinCHI: John Goodman played an epic Linda Tripp. Could try to get him to reprise his role.
nemesis
McMegan defenders cite the Holocaust, where some 200 Jewish prisoners rushed their guards and freed themselves.
So, apparently, all those other folks who were burned in ovens were lacking in initiative.
Its getting harder all the time to be outraged at the escalating stupidity demonstrated by the right.
Im at the point where I doubt they believe much of what they say. Its just part of a game to them. The game…thumb in the eye of liebruls. Thats all.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Daniel Day-Lewis. He’ll need a change after playing a person with a soul.
Michele C.
Okay, it’s easy to hate McMegan, I won’t deny that, but I usually think that I hate her even though she’s not actually the stupidest pundit on the planet, but because in addition to being stupid she’s really annoying. However, this wins.
Augh!
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: We have a winner.
Keith G
@DougJ:
I imagine that your post and others here (mine too) has already sent a Google Alert message to one of his interns.
If you truly wanted to succeed, you would have stayed mum.
OGLiberal
A tweet from Conor Friedersdorf yesterday, responding to a Chait tweet mocking McArdle:
@RyanLizza @jonathanchait A version of this is what Flight 93 passengers undertook, isn’t it? If you’re certain to die anyway…
the Conster
@OGLiberal:
How many guns were on Flight 93 again? Has everyone gone full metal retarded? This is what the end of the world looks like, but instead of the zombie apocalypse we have humanoids with fluff for brains.
ranchandsyrup
Oh, McMegs is back to tell us what she really meant and that Chait is a big poopyhead. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/18/can-collective-action-stop-mass-shooters.html
Brachiator
@ranchandsyrup:
Let’s see, now, she says: “But I was talking about teenagers, not first graders. The idea that 8 kindergarteners could have taken down Adam Lanza is obviously ludicrous, which is why I made fun of it earlier in the post.”
So, she “refines” her original crazy ass idea with a new crazy ass idea of commando teen agers who can be conveniently air dropped into a shooting zone to rush an assailant.
Who are the fools who hire her and edit her work? Do they seriously look at this shit and go, “Way to go!”
Betsy
@NonyNony: That’s right. You must have seen her rant about Sudafed not being available. It’s her drug of choice but because OTC sales are restricted (due to meth-heads), now we get to hear her adenoidal whine, “IT’S NOT FAAAAAIRRRR!!!”
mclaren
Part of me hopes the Mayans turn out to be right later this week (that would show Nate Silver!) just to put an end to this kind of thing.
Yes, NASA announced that two large asteroids missed the earth last month. After hearing about Obama’s latest concessions and whimpering crawling complicity in the ongoing efforts to slash medicare and social security, it’s starting to look like time to mourn. But be of good cheer…large asteroids are plentiful, and we can yet hope that one or two will impact the earth with sufficient kinetic energy to end all life on earth and put us out of our misery.
The Crafty Trilobite
Aside from the fatuity of teaching children, or even adults, to rush spree killers, McArdle is also stupid to say there are no laws that could improve matters. Magazine restrictions (which she says she supports) would help much more than she admits – relatively few gun users practice quick clip changes in high-emotional situations like mass murder. Stringent licensing requirements for gun users would be useful – the 2d Amendment does not (unless Scalia has another happyfun day at the office) prevent broad mental health restrictions on ownership. Then too, the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” would support laws requiring all people who own guns to keep them, AT ALL TIMES, either (a) locked up, or (b) carried on their person. To enforce that law, I suggest that whistleblowers get a cut of a massive civil fine for violation. This will also have the salutary effect of making gun ownership less social, which will over the course of a generation tend to turn it back into a weird, abnormal eccentricity instead of something to brag about. To reinforce that trend, we could, instead of teaching kids to rush shooters, teach them to shun and revile gun owners. Much safer, and much more useful in the long run.
thingsbreak
Not long:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/megan-mcardles-outrageous-gun-recommendation/266450/
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/should-you-ever-rush-a-gunman.html
JPL
Doug, You can use my email anytime you want. I set up a dummy one on gmail awhile back and seldom check it. I’d be honored to share mine.
JPL
Someone needs to ask how much one should weigh before the rush the shooter. Of course, we know in CT several adults rushed the shooter and we can’t ask them whether or not it’s a good idea.