“I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?.’ To tell the truth, in all the excitement, I kind of lost track myself… you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’

Well do you, Derbyshire? Or are you just… well, NRO’s designated chickenhawk.

People who are ready to commit suicide and take a whole lot of others with them in their anger are going to do a great deal of damage no matter what. Most of them plan for whatever circumstances laws create to stop them. Carry laws wouldn’t have stopped Charles Whitman in 1966. He killed some heroes that day. As I understand it Whitman actually was sawing off his shotgun when his mailman walked up. Gee, did someone miss his chance to be a hero on that one?

I understand people’s needs to see both the killer and the victims as a different species, calling the former “creep”, “weirdo”, “psycho”, “lunatic”, “asshole” and looking at the victims saying, “I would have been smarter”. It’s all human nature, the urge to combine murder and suicide, the outrage of others against that, the proposals to control all this. If you’re not inclined to look at all of that, I can’t imagine any gun law being an answer to anything except for those who want a false sense of security.

Did I mentioned he got killed?

The passengers on Flight 93 had only two choices: giving themselves a chance (however slim) by fighting back (and maybe keeping the plane from being crashed into wherever it was headed), or sitting still.

The students at Tech had a third choice: running. Not only that, there was no guarantee that those who sat were going to die (as was the case for the passengers aboard Flight 93). They might have been wounded, they might have escaped being shot altogether.

Having said this, I think there is something in his post: the hope that people facing death would choose to fight back, no matter how remote their chances were, rather than sitting quietly waiting for their turn in the showers, hoping someone else comes to their rescue.