Victory Soap v. 2.0

Oh yeah -- I heard about the mass murder by a "lone gunman" (I am really starting to hate the word "gunman") earlier today. And my first thought was "how the hell can one guy walk around an area full of grown adults, killing at will, with no one stopping him until several people are dead?" Then I read Steve H. and found out what the brief news segments I've read haven't bothered to mention. "Gun free zone," eh? Well, it wasn't today.

Update: a hero, in the old-fashioned sense that we have mostly bred out of people these days. (Via Tim Blair.)

People wonder why so many apparently meekly lined up for their "execution style" deaths. I don't -- I've had the same public school education everyone else has. Americans are taught to line up and obey authority from the cradle. Only the fast-fading grip of our native orneriness and individuality keeps us from doing this in every aspect of life, but I notice that nowadays we only remember our freedom to act when it has something to do with our personal pleasure (who we have sex with, what we watch on tv, etc.) When it comes to life-and-death situations, we form orderly groups. This can be a good thing -- when there's a fire in a building, the evacuation line is the last place you want people to do their own thing -- but as we can see in situations like this one, it can also cause people to rotely follow the only authority in the room, even if he's the one about to kill them. I'll write more on this later.