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Thread: Gun defense

  1. #61
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    to be fair yui's description of what he was describing did having touching distance on the firearm, as well as the wielder not having an intention to shoot you. with those two prerequisites, its not so unfeasible.
    For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by Lucas View Post
    to be fair yui's description of what he was describing did having touching distance on the firearm, as well as the wielder not having an intention to shoot you. with those two prerequisites, its not so unfeasible.
    If they don't intend to shoot you, why put yourself in more danger by potentially forcing their hand?

    All I know is that if you stand 5 feet away with a pistol in your hand and fully intend harm... dudes gettin shot. Almost every time. The exceptions are negligible.

  3. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by SifuYui View Post
    Laroux, do you teach martial arts classes or LEO's? Do you have a family, a job, go out with friends, other hobbies? Because you can train every minute of your life until you die and never cover EVERY possible scenario of "what if". But you think I can cover every possible scenario of "if they do this, you do this" with LEO's in a training class? When would they ever have time to go out and do their jobs? Sounds like you're one of those guys who go to seminars and are constantly asking, "...but what if I do this...?". SERIOUSLY??? This is your arguement against what I say I can do? WOW!!!

    Don't go reading more into what I wrote and don't misinterpret it either; what I can do is not mystical, but due to lots of training, testing, misteps, more trial and error, and honing this particular set of skills based on the highest percentage of likely encounters - from the front and the rear.
    You are right. You can't cover every single scenario, nor can you train every minute in gun disarms. That even shows my point more.

    If you were doing this in realistic manner, there are times you would get shot with the airsoft. There's no getting around that. That's the nature of realistic training. You cant' succeed 100% of the time.
    Last edited by LaRoux; 09-19-2013 at 03:58 PM.

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by Lucas View Post
    to be fair yui's description of what he was describing did having touching distance on the firearm, as well as the wielder not having an intention to shoot you. with those two prerequisites, its not so unfeasible.
    It's very unfeasible. Eventually, the shooter is going to start to either anticipate your motions and pull back and then shoot or start to figure out some retention strategies that will give him the option to counter and shoot. Again, that's the nature of realistic training.

    When you do this type of realistic training, there are several other things that will generally happen in addition to the times when the gun is quickly disarmed. The fact that he hasn't addressed those situations, pretty much shows that he hasn't really done this kind of training.
    Last edited by LaRoux; 09-19-2013 at 04:49 PM.

  5. #65
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    Another shooting

    There's an interview vid with some survivors if you follow the link.
    13 shot in park: 'My younger brother was on the floor'
    By Peter Nickeas and Jeremy Gorner Tribune reporters
    10:31 a.m. CDT, September 20, 2013

    Semehca Nunn tried hard to talk about her 3-year-old grandson, one of 13 people shot as neighbors played basketball in Cornell Square Park in the Back of the Yards Thursday night.

    "They need to stop, they need to stop," Nunn said, the last word coming out as almost a shriek as she closed her eyes and collapsed crying.

    A pick-up game was being played on the park's basketball court in the 1800 block of West 51st Street around 10:15 p.m. when at least one gunman walked up and started firing, apparently with a high-powered gun.

    Thirteen people who were on the court or were watching the game were hit, many of them in the arms or legs.

    The boy, Deonta Howard, was standing on the court and was shot near the ear, the bullet exiting through his cheek, according to police and relatives. His family said the boy is expected to recover but will need plastic surgery.

    Three of those wounded, including Deonta, were in serious to critical condition this morning. The others ranged from serious to good condition, including a 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl.

    Police believe the shooting stemmed from an ongoing dispute between the Black P. Stones and Gangster Disciples, a law enforcement source said. It was not known if any of the victims were intended targets.

    Police said they were questioning several people, but would not say whether any of them were suspects.

    "I think it was like an AK," said one neighbor, describing the shooting. "Man, it was a lot of shots. Man, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. A little boy got hit in the face."

    Another neighbor said he heard as many as 20 shots. "I was across the park and I heard the shots and I came over and there was a lot of people down. It happened so fast. They were just playing ball, like they do everyday."

    The first paramedics found more than a dozen people lying across the rust-colored court. One person lay near a bicycle that was on its side. A pair of white gym shoes were left near an out-of-bounds line.

    Ambulances continued to arrive a half hour after the shootings as wounded people were brought out of the park on stretchers. About 60 police officers converged on the park and crime lab investigators combed the scene.

    Deonta was taken in critical condition to Mount Sinai Hospital, police said. Nunn said her grandson, nicknamed Tay Man, is heavily sedated and will need plastic surgery.

    “He tried to get up and go, he’s not trying to be pinned down by nobody,’’ she said.

    “He’s not your average 3-year-old," Nunn said. "He’s very smart, he’s beyond his years. I don’t know if you’ve heard the saying, 'He’s an old soul.' That’s the best words to describe him. He’s an old soul.

    “He's friendly for the most part, very outgoing, outspoken,’’ Nunn said. “He likes the limelight, he’ll let you know who he is."

    The boy's older brother, Jamarrie Toney, 9, returned to the park with his aunt this morning and said he still hasn’t seen his brother. “I just miss him,’’ he said.

    Jamarrie, whose favorite subject at Beethoven Elementary is math, said he was at his aunt’s home across the street when he heard the shots.

    ”I just got up and ran to this gate,’’ Jamarrie said, pointing to the edge of the park. “My younger brother was on the floor,’’ he said, crying.

    One of the other victims, a 37-year-old man shot in the leg, said he hanging out around the basketball court, as he and his friends normally do, when the shooting started.

    “I turned around, I heard screaming,’’ he said. “I saw Tay Man." He paused. “I just saw his face.’’ He struggled again for words. "Just tore off. . .They almost shot his whole face off.’’

    The man, who asked that his name not be used, smoked a cigarette as he leaned on a cane after being released from the hospital. Medical tape held down a piece of cotton gauze on his left arm, and he was missing the shoe from the leg where he had also been shot.

    Asked if he was angry, the man replied, “I’m just grateful, grateful to be alive.’’

    Mayra Rodriguez, 23, who lives in the area with her 2-year-old daughter, heard rapid gunfire and then saw people on the ground. “Good thing most of them got hit in the legs,’’ she said.

    “That kid was playing, he didn’t even know nothing, it was out of nowhere,’’ she said of the 3-year-old.

    Rodriguez said there was a fatal shooting in the park about two years ago, and she tries to avoid it.

    Rodriguez and her mother, Elvia Gonzalez, 45, said they had heard gunfire earlier in the evening, around 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m. Rodriguez said her daughter was playing outside at that time and Gonzalez grabbed the girl and ran inside the house.

    As the two talked Thursday night, the 2-year-old girl walked toward the street from the parkway and peered around the corner toward 51st Street to watch the last ambulance leave. She rested one hand on her mother’s leg as she chewed a finger.

    Earlier, as her mother spoke, the girl twirled around a light pole. She wore tiny gold hoop earrings, purple pants and a red T-shirt that read, "My heart belongs to Grandpa."

    “She don’t even know. . .She’s just pointing at the light,’’ Rodriguez said.

    Alejandro Cabada, 20, leaned out of his second-floor window near 50th and Wood streets about an hour after the shooting. He said he’s lived in the area for about seven years.

    “Once I opened a beer can, I heard shots,’’ Cabada said. “I opened the fence in the back. They reversed up the alley and then toward Ashland, the car peeled out.’’

    “A brown Malibu with tints dipped toward Ashland Avenue. . . A brown Malibu with its lights off was peeling off,’’ Cabada said. “Some young kid said they shot his little brother.

    “That was pretty much it, I just seen bodies on the floor, I seen three officers carrying the little boy. I didn’t hear no sounds.’’

    Relatives said the boy's uncle, Jerome Wood, was fatally shot in the Woodlawn neighborhood over the Labor Day weekend. The Rev. Corey Brooks, who presided over Wood's funeral, urged the shooter or shooters to surrender or face justice on the streets.

    There are people who know exactly who the shooter is," he said, standing next to Nunn. "And I'm sure he will not be safe shooting 13 people."

    As dawn broke today, broken glass could be seen strewn across the basketball court, along with discarded medical supplies, syringes without needles, plastic packaging, orange gloves and a bloody T-shirt.

    But as of 8:15 a.m., the court had been cleaned up by personnel from Fire Engine 123.

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel was headed back to Chicago from Washington, D.C., where he was scheduled to meet today with Obama administration Cabinet secretaries on city issues, mayoral spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said. Emanuel flew to D.C. last night ahead of swing that also was supposed to include a political fundraiser for Democratic New Jersey U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker.

    Emanuel also released a statement this morning about the Back of the Yards shooting. "Senseless and brazen acts of violence have no place in Chicago and betray all that we stand for. The perpetrators of this crime will be brought to justice and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I encourage everyone in the community to step forward with any information and everyone in Chicago to continue their individual efforts to build stronger communities where violence has no place," the statement reads.
    Police listed the victims as:

    • A 3-year-old boy, shot in the ear, in critical condition at Mount Sinai

    • A 17-year-old girl, shot in the foot, condition stabilized at Holy Cross Hospital

    • A 15-year-old boy shot in the arm, stabilized at Holy Cross

    • A man, 27, shot in the leg and wrist, serious condition at Mount Sinai

    • A man, 24, shot twice in the stomach, serious condition at Mount Sinai

    • A man, 21, shot in the leg, serious condition at Mount Sinai

    • A man, 41, shot in the buttocks, serious condition at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital

    • A woman, 33, shot in the shoulder, condition stabilized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital

    • A man, 31, shot in the buttocks, condition stabilized at Northwestern

    • A woman, 23, shot in the foot, condition stabilized at St. Anthony Hospital

    • A man, 37, shot in the leg, in good condition at Stroger

    • A man, 25, shot in the knee, in good condition at Northwestern

    • And a man, 33, who drove himself to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park with a gunshot wound to the leg and who was treated and released.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  6. #66
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    i'm not saying he wouldnt get shot. you must have forgot about the earlier part of this thread where i argued with you that you would get shot in most situations, and in particular to the extravegant disarm video at the beginning of this thread. i could copy paste your arguments for that video and place them as a defensive argument for yui and it would be the same.

    its completely feasable that he will have successful disarm techniques.
    For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.

  7. #67
    Alright, after sitting in a cave and meditating on LaRoux's and Syn7's comments, I've come to the conclusion they're mixing two different arguments.

    LaRoux's saying that in "TRAINING", the person holding the gun will soon enough anticipate when I would go for the gun and shoot me if we kept practicing. The fallacy in his arguement is this: the TRAINING I conduct is predicated on the person with the gun not shooting me immediately because they are robbing me (but I don't know what their intentions are after I give them my stuff), so I'm not going to wait to find out. One of the rules of this exercise is the person holding the gun cannot shoot first (because no one can beat that), but has to wait for me to make a move for the gun and react to it. This is where my ACTION beats their REACTION. Can I be beaten? Yeah, but I haven't been yet. Does the simmunition gun go off? Yeah, but I'm off-line.

    Syn7 and LaRoux, in a REAL-LIFE situation, out on the streets, when a mugger with a gun is robbing me, but has not shot me yet, but may after I give him my stuff (you hear this all the time in the news), then why would I wait and hope for the best when I can surprise and disarm them at the first opportunity? The reason this works is because, again, ACTION BEATS REACTION. And this is not a training class where the mugger can try again and again. If they shoot first, then their action beats my reaction; that's why I want to make the first move to disarm.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by SifuYui View Post
    Alright, after sitting in a cave and meditating on LaRoux's and Syn7's comments, I've come to the conclusion they're mixing two different arguments.

    LaRoux's saying that in "TRAINING", the person holding the gun will soon enough anticipate when I would go for the gun and shoot me if we kept practicing. The fallacy in his arguement is this: the TRAINING I conduct is predicated on the person with the gun not shooting me immediately because they are robbing me (but I don't know what their intentions are after I give them my stuff), so I'm not going to wait to find out. One of the rules of this exercise is the person holding the gun cannot shoot first (because no one can beat that), but has to wait for me to make a move for the gun and react to it. This is where my ACTION beats their REACTION. Can I be beaten? Yeah, but I haven't been yet. Does the simmunition gun go off? Yeah, but I'm off-line.

    Syn7 and LaRoux, in a REAL-LIFE situation, out on the streets, when a mugger with a gun is robbing me, but has not shot me yet, but may after I give him my stuff (you hear this all the time in the news), then why would I wait and hope for the best when I can surprise and disarm them at the first opportunity? The reason this works is because, again, ACTION BEATS REACTION. And this is not a training class where the mugger can try again and again. If they shoot first, then their action beats my reaction; that's why I want to make the first move to disarm.
    Nope. I guarantee that if you were actually doing this, eventually you would get shot in the training.

  9. #69
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    Have you guys watched the video on the kungfumagazine.com home page?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL...&v=y3qUlb6oiz8


    the more i think about it for that argument the more i think its a matter of semantics.

    i bet during 'training' of himself, yui got shot all the time. but when you get to the point of simply teaching officers these dis arm techniques, the teaching/learning atmosphere, circumstance creation, and years of experience can make a world of difference. im inclined to think he probably doesnt get shot teaching the technique under the circumstances he creates whilst working with LEOs
    For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.

  10. #70
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    I used to teach law enforcement krav maga defensive tactic options. One of the training drills we used was air soft pistols. It was fun, and it at leasts instilled some fear in you because that **** stings.

    The only way it ever worked was if you were extremely close. Pull back a foot and your ass is shot.
    It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand. - Apache Proverb

  11. #71
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    Active-Shooter Drills

    Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided
    There’s scant evidence that they’re effective. They can, however, be psychologically damaging—and they reflect a dismaying view of childhood.
    ERIKA CHRISTAKIS
    MARCH 2019 ISSUE


    EDMON DE HARO

    At 10:21 a.m. on december 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a “code red” lockdown. “This is not a drill,” a voice announced over the PA system. At the same moment, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls.

    Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers, and students, that in fact this was a drill, the most realistic in a series of drills that the students of Lake Brantley, like students across the country, have lately endured. In the year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, efforts to prepare the nation’s students for gunfire have intensified. Educators and safety experts have urged students to deploy such unlikely self-defense tools as hockey pucks, rocks, flip-flops, and canned food. More commonly, preparations include lockdown drills in which students sit in darkened classrooms with the shades pulled. Sometimes a teacher or a police officer plays the role of a shooter, moving through the hallway and attempting to open doors as children practice staying silent and still.

    These drills aren’t limited to the older grades. Around the country, young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets. I’ve heard of kindergartens where words like barricade are added to the vocabulary list, as 5- and 6-year-olds are instructed to stack chairs and desks “like a fort” should they need to keep a gunman at bay. In one Massachusetts kindergarten classroom hangs a poster with lockdown instructions that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”: Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the door / Shut the lights off, Say no more. Beside the text are picture cues—a key locking a door; a person holding up a finger to hush the class; a switch being flipped to turn off the lights. The alarm and confusion of younger students is hardly assuaged by the implausible excuses some teachers offer—for instance, that they are practicing what to do if a wild bear enters the classroom, or that they are having an extra-quiet “quiet time.”

    In the 2015–16 school year, 95 percent of public schools ran lockdown drills, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. And that’s to say nothing of actual (rather than practice) lockdowns, which a school will implement in the event of a security concern—a threat that very well may turn out to be a hoax, perhaps, or the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood. A recent analysis by The Washington Post found that during the 2017–18 school year, more than 4.1 million students experienced at least one lockdown or lockdown drill, including some 220,000 students in kindergarten or preschool.

    In one sense, the impulse driving these preparations is understandable. The prospect of mass murder in a classroom is intolerable, and good-faith proposals for preventing school shootings should be treated with respect. But the current mode of instead preparing kids for such events is likely to be psychologically damaging. See, for instance, the parting letter a 12-year-old boy wrote his parents during a lockdown at a school in Charlotte, North Carolina, following what turned out to be a bogus threat: “I am so sorry for anything I have done, the trouble I have caused,” he scribbled. “Right now I’m scared to death. I need a warm soft hug … I hope that you are going to be okay with me gone.”

    As James Hamblin wrote for The Atlantic last February, there is precious little evidence that the current approach is effective:

    Studies of whether active-shooter drills actually prevent harm are all but impossible. Case studies are difficult to parse. In Parkland, for example, the site of the recent shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, had an active-shooter drill just [a] month [before the massacre]. The shooter had been through such drills. Purposely countering them may have been a reason that, as he was beginning his rampage, the shooter pulled a fire alarm.

    Moreover, the scale of preparedness efforts is out of proportion to the risk. Deaths from shootings on school grounds remain extremely rare compared with those resulting from accidental injury, which is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. In 2016, there were 787 accidental deaths (a category that includes fatalities due to drowning, fires, falls, and car crashes) among American children ages 5 to 9—a small number, considering that there are more than 20 million children in this group. Cancer was the next-most-common cause of death, followed by congenital anomalies. Homicide of all types came in fourth. To give these numbers yet more context: The Washington Post has identified fewer than 150 people (children and adults) who have been shot to death in America’s schools since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, in Colorado. Not 150 people a year, but 150 in nearly two decades.

    Preparing our children for profoundly unlikely events would be one thing if that preparation had no downside. But in this case, our efforts may exact a high price. Time and resources spent on drills and structural upgrades to school facilities could otherwise be devoted to, say, a better science program or hiring more experienced teachers. Much more worrying: School-preparedness culture itself may be instilling in millions of children a distorted and foreboding view of their future. It’s also encouraging adults to view children as associates in a shared mission to reduce gun violence, a problem whose real solutions, in fact, lie at some remove from the schoolyard.

    We’ve been down this road before. In an escalating set of preparations for nuclear holocaust during the 1950s, the “duck and cover” campaign trained children nationwide to huddle under their desk in the case of a nuclear blast. Some students in New York City were even issued dog tags, to be worn every day, to help parents identify their bodies. Assessments of this period suggest that such measures contributed to pervasive fear among children, 60 percent of whom reported having nightmares about nuclear war.

    Decades later, a new generation of disaster-preparedness policies—this time geared toward guns rather than nuclear weapons—appear to be stoking fear once again. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Foundation determined that, despite the rarity of such events, 57 percent of American teenagers worry about a shooting at their school. This comes at a time when children are already suffering from sharply rising rates of anxiety, self-mutilation, and suicide. According to a landmark study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, 32 percent of 13-to-18-year-olds have anxiety disorders, and 22 percent suffer from mental disorders that cause severe impairment or distress. Among those suffering from anxiety, the median age of onset is 6.

    Active-shooter drills reflect a broad societal misunderstanding of childhood, one that features two competing images of the child: the defenseless innocent and the powerful mini-adult. On the one hand, we view children as incredibly vulnerable—to hurt feelings, to non-rubberized playground surfaces, to disappointing report cards. This view is pervasive, and its consequences are now well understood: It robs children of their agency and impedes their development, and too often prevents them from testing themselves either physically or socially, from taking moderate risks and learning from them, from developing resilience.

    But on the other hand, we demand preternatural maturity from our children. We tell them that with hockey pucks and soup cans and deep reservoirs of courage, they are capable of defeating an evil that has resisted the more prosaic energies of law-enforcement officers, legislators, school superintendents, and mental-health professionals. We ask them to manage not the everyday risks that they are capable of managing—or should, for their own good, manage—but rather the problems they almost by definition cannot.

    This second notion of the child stems from what I call adultification, or the tendency to imagine that children experience things the way adults do. Adultification comes in many forms, from the relatively benign (dressing kids like little adults, in high heels or ironic punk-rock T-shirts) to the damaging (the high-stakes testing culture creeping into kindergartens). We also find adultification in the expectation that kids conform to adult schedules—young children today are subjected to more daily transitions than were previous generations of children, thanks to the dictates of work and child-care hours and the shift from free play to more programmed activities at school and at home.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  12. #72
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    Continued from previous post


    EDMON DE HARO

    Similarly, we expect children to match adults’ capacity to hurry or to be still for long periods of time; when they fail, we are likely to punish or medicate them. Examples abound: an epidemic of preschool expulsions, the reduction in school recess, the extraordinary pathologizing of childhood’s natural rhythms. ADHD diagnoses, which have spiked in recent years, are much more common among children who narrowly make the age cutoff for their grade than among children born just a week or so later, who must start kindergarten the following year and thus end up being the oldest in their class; this raises the question of whether we are labeling as disordered children who are merely acting their age. The same question might be asked of newer diagnoses such as sluggish cognitive tempo and sensory processing disorder. These trends are all of a piece; we’re expecting schoolchildren to act like small adults.

    Adultification is a result of a mind-set that ignores just how taxing childhood is. Being small and powerless is inherently stressful. This is true even when nothing especially bad is going on. Yet for many children, especially bad things are going on. Nearly half of American children have experienced at least one “adverse childhood experience,” a category that includes abuse or neglect; losing a parent to divorce or death; having a parent who is an alcoholic or a victim of domestic violence; or having an immediate family member who is mentally ill or incarcerated. About 10 percent of children have experienced three or more of these destabilizing situations. And persistent stress, as we are coming to understand, alters the architecture of the growing brain, putting children at increased risk for a host of medical and psychological conditions over their lifetime.

    How misguided to take young brains already bathed in stress hormones and train them to fear low-probability events such as mass shootings—and how little most of us think about what we’re doing. Whereas much adultification involves subjecting kids to things we adults do to ourselves (sleep too little, rush too much), we are at some distance from the harms being inflicted in schools. Even though only a quarter of shootings that involve three or more victims take place at schools, we seldom hear about realistic live-shooter drills in nursing homes, places of worship, or most workplaces. They would likely inconvenience if not incense adults, and scare away business. But we readily force them on children.

    If today’s students feel anxious, perhaps it’s partly because, after being told by adults that they’re not capable of handling life’s little challenges, those same adults are bequeathing them so many big challenges, ranging from the college-admissions rat race to an economically precarious future; from climate change to gun violence. Of course, this impulse fits into a longer history of dispatching children to fix adults’ messes, a history that connects the young civil-rights icons Ruby Bridges and Claudette Colvin with the Parkland survivors-turned-activists David Hogg and Emma González.

    Audrey Larson, a Connecticut high-school student, would seem to fit squarely into this tradition, having recently won an engineering prize for designing a collapsible, bulletproof wall intended for use in classrooms. Because she grew up near Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 massacre, she wanted to do something tangible to alleviate her classmates’ fear of school shootings. Larson told a reporter that “we can’t wait around anymore” while politicians dither on gun violence. One judge lauded the project’s “robustness and detailed design work.” But I was struck more by the contrast between her prizewinning effort and her earlier, more whimsical entries: a dog-scratching gadget and a pair of glowing pajamas.

    Our feverish pursuit of disaster preparedness lays bare a particularly sad irony of contemporary life. Among modernity’s gifts was supposed to be childhood—a new life stage in which young people had both time and space to grow up, without fear of dying or being sent down a coal mine. To a large extent, this has been achieved. American children are manifestly safer and healthier than in previous eras. The mortality rate of children under 5 in the United States today is less than 1 percent (or 6.6 deaths per 1,000 children), compared with more than 40 percent in 1800. The reduction is miraculous. But as in so many other realms, we seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

    At just the moment when we should be able to count on childhood, we are in danger of abandoning it. When you see a toddler dragged along with her parents to a restaurant long past bedtime; or when you consider the online kindergarten-readiness programs that are sprouting up like weeds (preventing kids from rolling around in actual weeds); or when you think about that 12-year-old North Carolina boy writing an anguished farewell note to his parents, it’s hard to avoid the sense that we are preparing a generation for a kind of failure that may not be captured in actuarial statistics. Our children may be relatively safe, but childhood itself is imperiled.

    This article appears in the March 2019 print edition with the headline “Not Just A Drill.”
    Just curious - who here has actually looked down the barrel of a loaded gun?
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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