You know what the people in that public place should have done, when the man with the gun walked in and started shooting everybody? They should have rushed him. I know I would have rushed him. I wouldn’t have hesitated. That’s what I would have done.
You know what the Jews in Europe should have done, when the Nazis entered their neighborhoods and told them to board the trains? They should have turned around and rushed them. I know I would have rushed them. I wouldn’t have hesitated. That’s what I would have done.
You know what the enslaved black people of early America should have done, when the masters raised their whips and ordered them to pick cotton? They should have rushed them. I know I would have rushed them. I wouldn’t have hesitated. That’s what I would have done.
In hijacked planes, in muggings, in all situations involving threatened violence, it is just a goddamned shame that people don’t act the way I know I would, the way I am certain I would, that I have no doubt I would, even though I have never been in any of these tragic situations and have never had my ability to react tested.
I am the very model of the proper way to react, when I am threatened. All of history can learn from my example. I am the action hero. Hear me roar.
This is just hypothetical, mind you. But if it ever happens, watch out. I’ll blow you away with my decisiveness and my willingness to give up my life against superior odds. I am one in a million, the ideal that everybody who ever lived through an injustice should have ever strived for.
Too bad all of those people were not me.
Or that I was not them…
Comment By: Deborah Dormitzer
October 7th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Exactly!
Comment By: Zachary Brenner
October 7th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
One thing I have noticed as I have gotten older is that there is an inverse relation between how tough someone says they are and how tough they actually are.
Comment By: Gregg Chamberlain
October 7th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
hindsight: always 20-20
Comment By: Rory Metcalf
October 7th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
WWBCMDD?
Comment By: Connie Hirsch
October 7th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Carson is one of the few people whom I think would have the ability to back up his words. Surgeons and the like (ER nurses, midwives, pilots) tend to be decisive and brave and the most likely to go for it — but not the rest of us mortals, who have trouble turning onto a strange street let alone rushing a guy with a gun. (Can you tell I’ve been driving in Boston today?)
Comment By: Cynthia Ward
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
From what I’ve heard, even people who’ve been through this once don’t know how they’ll react if/wehn they get a next time.
Comment By: Cynthia Ward
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
I once woke to a shadowy male figure knocking on my bedroom (outside glass slider) door at 2 AM, and knowing what I did then, I cannot tell what I would do on a recurrence of such an event (and would prefer not to have a real-world test) (he was a drunk neighborhood teen, as it turned out. He made the phone gesture, I said I’d call for him, and I did. I went in another room and called the cops).
Comment By: George Peterson
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
We all want to think of ourselves as a bad-ass.
Comment By: Ruth de Jauregui
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
You don’t know what you’ll do. I know what I have done — when dude came at me with a knife, I told him he’d better not F*ing touch me, and then struggled with him and made a LOT of noise until he ran off. Yes, I had stab wounds on both hands, and they grafted my right thumb back together, but I survived.
I’m pretty sure I’d do the same thing today. But until you face a situation, you really don’t know what you’ll do and there’s really no wrong answer — you’ll do what your instincts tell you to do (I’m an ornery short woman).
Carson and all the rest of them are just blowing smoke.
Comment By: Catherine Crockett
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Most people freeze. I don’t. I can’t predict how I’ll react, because it depends on the situation. It could be a matter of being the best witness possible, trying to defuse things verbally, intervening physically, creating a distraction…or it could be one of the times I think of something a little too late to do it.
Comment By: Glenn Hauman
October 7th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38614/ben-carson-oregon-shooting/
Comment By: Steve Perry
October 7th, 2015 at 2:18 pm
Talk is cheap. When push comes to shove, or stab, or shoot, you never know what you will do for sure, even if you have trained for years. Adrenalin-fueled tachypsychia does strange things to people.
Comment By: Tim
October 7th, 2015 at 1:52 pm
There’s also the fact that even well trained professionals fail in those situations more than they succeed.
A 2008 study of the NYPD found that in firefights law enforcement accuracy rate was 18 percent. That’s one of the best trained police forces in the world.
Another study with LAPD found that when more than two officers were involved in a shooting the accuracy rate was 9 percent. Also one of the best trained police forces.
Now put guns in the hands of who knows how many untrained citizens, and you think there will be fewer deaths?
Instead of adding lots of guns, jus t take away the ones that were there already and the problem is solved.
Comment By: Seth Breidbart
October 7th, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Training increases the odds that you will do as you trained.
Comment By: David Vineyard
October 7th, 2015 at 3:24 pm
This.man is an idiot. Even trained individuals can’t always act in these situations. To play Monday morning QB with people who witnessed or suffered a tragedy is the act of a bragadocious child with neither experience nor compassion of real violence.
Those of us who have actually seen action know you cannot predict your behavior even with training. No one goes in planning to be heroic. Circumstance plays a big role as well as knowing what to do.
Frankly types like Carson get people killed when they act without training or experience. No one needs paper tigers in a tragedy.
Comment By: Jan Murphy
October 7th, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Borowitz strikes again: âMost of the plaster casts we have of Pompeii victims show them basically just lying down and whatnot,â he said. âIf I had been in Pompeii and I heard Mt. Vesuvius erupting, you can bet I would have made a run for it.â
https://www.facebook.com/andyborowitz/posts/10153791492430681
Comment By: Glenn Hauman
October 7th, 2015 at 4:22 pm
In the same vein, hearing people complain that people should have been outrunning Hurricane Katrina. “I would’ve left.” How do you outrun something 500 miles wide?
Comment By: Andre Lieven
October 7th, 2015 at 5:17 pm
Ben Carson is a moron. Let’s take a case in point where there was a surprise attack against a well trained and well armed group. Pearl Harbor, 7 Dec 1941. How well did that group of defenders do ? While they did bring down 29 out of 350 attacking planes (And, the number was only that high due to a couple of heroic fliers whose small outlying field wasn’t attacked), they also shot down well over a dozen US aircraft, some half a day after the last Japanese plane had departed.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
October 11th, 2015 at 10:11 pm
A certain piece of crap has published the “slave” paragraph from this blog, by itself, as a “racist attack on Ben Carson.” This is an act of extraordinary dishonesty and malignance, and I can only point that the post’s full text as an indicator of my intent.
Comment By: Howard Epstein
October 8th, 2015 at 7:21 am
Nobody knows how they will react in situations like the ones described unless thev’e been there before. Must people don’t know why they reacted the way they did after the fact. If you think you know you’re lying to yourself. I once intervened in a subway mugging of a woman by four youths. I have no idea why I stepped in and intellectually thought I was very stupid after the fact.
Comment By: Charles Mohapel
October 11th, 2015 at 10:17 pm
Adam, Make him cry like a baby in court!
Comment By: Mark Carroll
October 11th, 2015 at 10:18 pm
Cease and desist letter, man. The guy’s a real piece of work.
Comment By: Brenda Balin
October 11th, 2015 at 10:18 pm
At the very least, you deserve a retraction, and the entirety of your blog post published on his blog, without his comments.
At the very least.
Comment By: Garrick Stolz
October 11th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
Damn. C&D at least.
Comment By: Bill Greene
October 11th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
What an asshole. But it is unsurprising. I’ve read a few of his “pearls of wisdom” on File770, and he is totally, ummmm, “awesome”?
Comment By: David Mack
October 11th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
If your blog carries any kind of copyright notice, you can send him a DMCA takedown letter.
Comment By: Matthew B. Tepper
October 11th, 2015 at 11:21 pm
From time dot com:
âNot only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,â Carson told Fox & Friends on Tuesday in response to a question about how heâd have handled the gunman in a hypothetical situation. âI would say: âHey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me but he canât get us all.’â
[end of excerpt]
I rather think it would have gone down more like:
“Hey, guys, everyb–“
Comment By: David Vineyard
October 12th, 2015 at 1:19 am
Typical right winger,lies and distortions serve in place of discussion.
Comment By: Walt Dardyman
October 12th, 2015 at 2:20 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/ben-carson-guns-holocaust_561ab17ce4b0e66ad4c84fc5?section=australia&adsSiteOverride=au
Comment By: Walt Dardyman
October 12th, 2015 at 2:20 am
And in other news… http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/ben-carson-pompeii-victims-should-have-outrun-lava
Comment By: Janet Post
October 12th, 2015 at 6:20 am
Isn’t he their front runner? What a dolt….
Comment By: Hector Johnson
October 12th, 2015 at 7:19 am
The older I get, the better I was.
Comment By: Ellie Miller
October 12th, 2015 at 10:18 am
“…A lie like this can go around the world ten times while the truth is still putting on its boots.” What an utterly fabulous phrase this is! Couldn’t agree more with what you say here.
Comment By: Linda Robinson
October 12th, 2015 at 10:18 am
And anyone gives a damn about Tinel’s opinion…why? If he can’t separate sarcasm from reality, he doesn’t need to be let out into polite company while unescorted.
Comment By: Steven Barber
October 12th, 2015 at 11:18 am
“minor sf writer Adam-Troy Castro” (Hmm. Shouldn’t that read “Young Adult SF Writer”?) (Kidding, of course.)
Selective reading and comprehension is a problem these days. People read what they want to think you wrote, regardless of what you actually put down on the page. A narrow reading produces a narrow perspective, producing a narrow mind.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
October 12th, 2015 at 11:18 am
Judi asked me if I wasn’t more upset to be called “minor Sf writer.”
Well, it stung.
But it’s not inaccurate, and it is clear to me that Tinel, who I have stung at least once in the past, put it there to make me more upset, and for no other reason.
Comment By: Andi Malala Shechter
October 12th, 2015 at 2:22 pm
I think he lost me – not that he ever had me – at pundit. It is one of those words that I don’t think actual people ever apply to themselves. “Hi, I’m a pundit”? No.
Comment By: Brian Salyards
October 12th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
He thinks you’re under 18?
Comment By: John Hayes
October 12th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
Unable to post without approval over there. (I checked.) Poor little coward wants to lie his lies and not be called into question about it.