The National Review Online has figured out what went wrong at Sandy Hook school. It was too feminized! There weren’t any men around!! Feminist witch hunts!!!
Charlotte Allen makes the case:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers.
And men aren’t, because they’re made of bronze?
Don’t be schewpid. We’re all sitting ducks for mass murderers if they’re carrying assault rifles. That’s why we have to take away the assault rifles. The answer is not to fire all the women.
Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm.
I think what Charlotte Allen is thinking of there is a civilian setting. In a civilian setting, not running around with assault rifles shooting at everyone is the norm. That’s not “helpless passivity,” it’s normal civilian life. It’s not normal to have men with assault rifles shooting everyone. Can we get that straight? That situation is abnormal, and sick. We don’t have to give up the habits of civilian life to deal with guys carrying assault weapons. We have to ban the fucking assault weapons, instead. We don’t have to insult women by announcing that they bring helpless passivity with them, we have to ban weaponized aggression.
Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
He would have shot them. Testosterone doesn’t make you immune to bullets, and neither does playing high-school football or being “husky.”
But hey, that’s no fun. Let’s just blame women and feminism and “feminization” for all the things, no matter what.
Oh, look! A twist on victim-blaming!
Also, to be pedantic, Sandy Hook is a K-4 school, so I guess they needed some burly 10 year olds.
Hiding your kids and lying to a man pointing a gun at you is hardly helpless or passive! In fact, it’s far more likely to save the kids than “converging on Lanza”.
And wasn’t Lanza’s mother the gun owner? What does that do to their theory?
She’s a weapons grade idiot, and she got her facts wrong. According to reports I’ve read there were at least two men there that day; a janitor who ran through the halls warning people, and a male teacher who helped some other teachers escape from a conference room.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2251458/Sandy-Hook-shooting-Ted-Varga-ran-elementary-school-help-workers-escape-Adam-Lanza.html
Also, that shit about American schools being “feminized” is just weird. Grade school has been mostly taught by women since forever, and the lower the grade level the more likely it is the teacher is a woman. Of course, in olden times more of the principals and administrators were men–and that’s where Allen and her cohorts’ real problem lies. It’s OK for women to teach little children. That’s womenz work. It’s just not OK for them to be the bosses of the teachers of little children.
When the world notices several women who lost their lives demonstrating extraordinary bravery, that’s exactly the time that anti-feminists need to remind us all how helpless and passive women are. Never mind the evidence supplied by those very women; that’s not the norm. Because, that’s why.
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Converging on someone using an assault rifle is a fucking stupid thing to do in general. Most assault rifles are designed with exactly those types of engagements in mind. Even in the hands of a novice you’re looking at the entire clip being unloaded before you get within 5 feet.
And then what?
Hell, let’s suppose he actually falls back when you charge. Are you going to pursue? What chance do you have of taking his position? None.
Jesus, this is just so stupid. We have people walking into Marine and Army Mess Halls over in Afghanistan (where every swinging dick has a rifle, rounds and training) and unloading into the crowd before someone takes them out. A gunman, someone looking to kill someone, anyone, is not going to be deterred by superior firepower. THEY DON’T CARE! THAT’S NOT THE POINT!
They have no expectation of walking away alive. If they kill just one person and cause mayhem, they’ve reached their objectives.
Guns don’t act as a deterrent to spree killers.
I really don’t understand the anti-gun-control crowd.
Speaking in basic logical terms, some people are prone to be more violent than others; there is a disparity in the level of violence shown by different members of society. We can also confidently assert that, generally, an armed person has increased lethal capacity over an unarmed one. Further, someone with a gun is far more lethal than someone with a knife, bow or sword; automatic weapons increase this capacity for lethality even further again.
So – even assuming everyone in the society was armed with equally lethal weapons, there will still be people with no inclination to use them, and still be people with every inclination to use them. The disparity in violent tendencies still exists, and the more violent will continue to prey on the less violent as we see every day. For confirmation of this, check the locations of mass shootings. How many happen in “peaceful” environments? Schools, churches, movie theatres… Not exactly NRA BYO-rifle meetings, are they? People who want to damage other people will tend to choose weaker targets. Even arming everybody, there will still be weaker targets and EVERYONE has the capacity to inflict mass death in any situation.
It is far more logical to assert some modicum of control over the amount of lethal force that is available to ordinary citizens than to arm everyone to the teeth. The capacity of persons to inflict lethal force should be, under normal circumstances, minimised to prevent as much harm as possible. (I say normal circumstances to exclude such situations as security and national defence issues and the like.)
The saying “if we ban guns, only criminals will have guns” cuts deeper – if we DON’T ban* guns then ALL criminals can easily and legally have guns. Without guns and other such weapons capable of inflicting mass death with minimal effort, violent people have to expend an almost exponentially increasing level of effort in order to inflict the same kind of damage. The effort required to kill twenty people in a room with an assault rifle is almost negligible. To kill the same amount of people with a pistol would be much more difficult, with a knife or bludgeon, very difficult indeed.
The logic is self-evident. I’m pretty much stating the bleeding obvious, but we still see the same ranting from gun-havers and right-wing arseballs that we need MORE GUNS! ARM EVERYONE!
I believe the consequences of that kind of citizen’s cold war are plain to see. More guns, more lethality, up the stakes. More guns, more lethality, up the stakes again, rinse, repeat.
*banning guns is counterproductive. Strict background checks, licencing of people and individual weapons and confiscation of unlicensed weaponry is much more reasonable and workable.
… OH WAIT! The Menz. Sorry, ignore this post entirely, my ladybrain is thinking again when it should be making sammiches for a big, strong Gun’n’Penis-haver in exchange for protection. Fuck me, the confirmation bias is strong in this one, mmm.
This has changed my views on concealed carry.
If just one of those women, obviously talented and courageous, had a gun…those kids would be alive.
I’m sorry, but you have to face it.
No, I don’t have to face it. You might as well say if Lanza had arrived in a tank, that would be an argument for giving teachers even bigger tanks.
If Lanza hadn’t had an assault rifle, those children and adults would still be alive.
There WAS an adult male on the premises. He was shooting the children.
@The Steinmaster #9:
Even if it were the case that one of the teachers could have been carrying a concealed weapon and, having done so, would have been able to kill or otherwise stop Lanza (which I don’t necessarily grant, pace Our Host’s rejoinder at #10), you can’t cherry-pick the alleged benefits of concealed carry in one single elementary school and ignore the possible downsides of having many armed elementary school teachers. You’re having to postulate that none of the hypothetical carrying teachers ever get their firearms lifted by children, none of the hypothetical carrying teachers ever decide to go postal due to stress, and above all you’re having to ignore the corrosive nature of life in a war zone.
Look: Sandy Hook was terrible, make no mistake, but do you honestly think the answer is to militarize every school in the country? I put it to you that children are ill-served by being treated that way, and I put it to you that teachers are better off being able to focus on teaching instead of trying to split their attention between being teachers and being armed guards.
Steinmaster #9
You’re right! How could we have missed the obvious superiority of a pocket pistol over an assault rifle. That must be why our soldiers all carry pistols and nothing else when they go into battle! And of course, everyone is a quickdraw artist who puts Lucky Luke to shame, and can totally draw and fire before they stop a bullet or two from the already prepared rifle. There’s just no getting around the FACTS, right?
Sophia #8
B-b-but …. FREEDOM!!!! LIBERTY!!!! Unless we can all carry military weapons with us into the shitter, it’s Staliism!! Can’t you SEE?
Presumably, a movie theater screening the latest male superhero fantasy is also a feminized environment.
Every time this crap about “if only … had a gun …” comes up, I call bullshit.
I don’t care if someone has fired thousands of rounds at paper targets or even pop-up targets or can put a bullet through a hole in a Life Savers candy at a hundred metres (which would be sheer dumb luck with a pistol), unless that person has repeatedly been in a position when they were being fired upon at close range by someone with an automatic or semiautomatic weapon, chances are they are only going to make matters worse. Imagine the teacher who pulls a pistol, fires in the general direction of the shooter, and kills 2 or 3 kids in the process. Imagine trying to lead a “normal” life after that.
@13
Being a filthy Ozzie Socialist Stalinist Feminazi Commie Librul single-mother(GASP), I obviously have no concept of FREEDUM. I’m just so oppressed by my not having my own arsenal of guns that I can’t see how not being able to spray lead at people is massively destroying my ability to live life free of the oppression of not being able to spray lead at people.
… or something. No concept of freedom at all.
Completely ignoring my arsenal of completely legal medieval weaponry, of course. Because we all need to be prepared for Viking raids.
@ 16 evilDoug
Not to mention that Lanza was apparently wearing a bulletproof vest.
@Silentbob
As is a UU church? I know I always carry weapons to movie screenings. Makes my ovaries feel big.
feminised=peaceful=unarmed apparently?
” ‘ Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. ‘ ”
Technicaly, this is true.
And yet, it’s also so wrong, I don’t even know where to begin.
Given the number of armed citizens in the US, you’d think we’d hear more often about killers being shot down by armed civilians. Unless having an armed population wasn’t that great a way to ensure public safety. But we all know how absurd that is.
:
That’s actually an interesting point for debate elsewhere, though- as everyone points out- it would’t have saved a single life in Sandy Hook. In the UK it’s been suggested that the lack of male teachers and other staff in infant and primary schools means that some childrenseldom or even never encounter men in pisitions of authority or responsibility until they are eleven..
Because they never encounter their own or anyone else’s father or any male school administrators; are exposed to the mass media or any real-life situations in which they see men in positions of authority or responsibility in government, businesses, the military, religion,…; or play or view any sports in which men are in positions of authority or responsibility. Completely plausible.
SC–posted mine before I saw yours. Jinx!
Thomas Hobbes, call your office.
Men threatened by female authority have been sounding alarums about that in the U.S. for at least 60 years.
Too bad the women in positions of authority and responsibility in infant and primary schools don’t get the salaries and the social cachet associated with–positions of authority and responsibility.
Allen showed up in the comments to Charlie Pierce’s post about her (start here). She’s quite a piece of work. In her initial comment she describes having fought off a rapist in her youth, with the implication that it would have been better for him to have murdered her than to have raped her. Challenged on this, she asserts that, yes, “rape is worse than death.”
Another comment:
(One of her friends, Austin Ruse, drops into the thread to give her moral support. He’s a right-wing Catholic who has criticized Obama for supporting laws abroad that prevent anti-GLBT violence.)
Such a shame there were no men, or guns, or best of all, men with guns, when a shooter at Ft. Hood killed 13 and wounded 29.
Read the rest of the article… It it gets worse. There may be worse pieces in there…
Err. The zerg-rush isn’t used to protect zerglings. This is really bad strategy.
Sorry, SC and Stacy, I was using ‘see’ in the colloquial British sense of ‘have face-to-face or close personal contact with’. Children can distinguish between what they see on T.V. or at a distance or personal experience.
For example
.http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/23/male-teachers-primary-schools?INTCMP=SRCH
Agreed. However, I wonder whether it may be connected with the male infantilism and misogyny that seem to be becoming more common.
‘It’ in the last sentence above being the absence of men in positions of authority and responibility in nursery and primary schools.
This is exactly what would happen.
There’d be people screaming, running everywhere, your heart would be beating 3x faster than it normally would, the shooter would be moving and you wouldn’t know have eyes on them or even their location.
How stupid are these fucking people? Do they think this is a videogame? Do they think they’ll enter bullet time and be able to line up the perfect shot? D they think they’ll even get a clear shot with chaos and confusion?
Fuck these people.
Charlotte Allen
Okay, but who’d be tackling the hail of bullets about to rip those two men to shreds? You’d need at least the fourth strongest guy on the football team to do that, presumably.
No need to be that precise. Their regenerating health will prevent them from serious injury for more than three seconds as long as they have some minor cover available. Fortunately enemy AI isn’t typically all that great.
サンドイッチ型”のダイヤル構造：パネライ店舗の壁の一部として、大きな壁の時計はパネライの時計のユニークな特性を示してハング。