<p>tarhunt - I’m so sorry this happened to your wife. And I’m utterly stunned by the concept of dying being better than rape, or in fact, anything. Life is so precious. You endure what you must and you LIVE. Your wife must be a very remarkable woman. </p>
<p>You are exactly right, each situation is, and always will be, different. There is no blanket right answer.</p>
<p>( I didn’t mean to put a ? mark after my statement - that completely changes the meaning! sorry :o )</p>
<p>I think it depends on situation
if a child is approached by a stranger on the street trying to coerce them into their car- then certainly they should resist- yell and run away
But in a room with an armed attacker? I hear about people being injured or killed because they resisted too much- it really depends on situation-
It can’t hurt to be trained to resist- but it should be up to adults assessing situation what to do</p>
<p>
I tend to agree that it makes more sense to “train” kids to fasten their seat belts, and to stay away from homes where guns are kept than to train them on how to react to a crazed gunman in school. They are far more likely to be killed in a car crash or shot accidentally by a friend showing off Dad’s pistol than at school.</p>
<p>Control the Situation. Its better to fight overthere than here. Besides we need to train future draftees now than later. Good Guys vs Bad Guys, Texas Rangers, Cops & Robbers.</p>
<p>id tell my kid to run away. … be invisible</p>
<p>I don’t think it is a good idea, in general. If a teacher with good judgement could make the call as to whether to be passive or aggressive in a given situation, it may be the better option to"fight back", but to tell the kids to immediately cause chaos, may cause an armed looney to let loose and shoot, when he might have let everyone go. Also with young children, when they get scared, they tend to get paralyzed and it takes a lot of practice for them to immediately mobilize or mobilize at about the same time unless they practice the routine regularly. I don’t see doing that in an elementary school. Therefore the likelihood of all, or even most of the kids mobilizing would be small. Those that do move are likely to be shot on the spot paralyzing those still standing there frozen. It’s sort of like the “who’ll bell the cat?” where the first to make the move is likely to get the bullet.</p>
<p>For whatever it’s worth, there are multiple issues being raised here. One is the importance of invisibility. My hubby has frequently said, is motto is “invisibility is better than agility.” It has served him & us well.</p>
<p>Another is to assess any situation you are in & weigh the various courses of action available. I believe teachers will need training in this, as they are the ones who will be present in our schools. We can individually train our children to weigh options and make good (or as good as possible) choices. How to deal with an armed gunman is not something that I have ever discussed with either of my teens and would not have discussed it with them when they were younger. I will try to have this conversation soon, because our society being what it is, this may occur. </p>
<p>I guess personally, I have mixed feelings about this. So much depends on the individual situation that “hard & fast” rules are always simplistic and therefore somewhat dangerous. In any case, especially with young children, escape & invisibility seem like the best (& only) options.</p>
<p>I agree the bullying & alienation plays a role in escalating violence at our schools & society as a whole, as does drugs, mental illness, weakening of family ties, and a host of other factors. I’m not sure how these situations can all be best addressed–ER/panic buttons are a partial option, but of course have limitations.</p>
<p>I agree that we should train our kids to try to run & dodge if someone is trying to get them into a situation where they’ll be held with a gun, but if they somehow find themselves in such a situation, who can know what would be best. The odds are so much higher of them being in an auto accident or similar than ever being held as a hostage anyway, that I think it harmful to increase people’s fear & anxiety by fretting about such situations where even trained hostage negotiators don’t know how things will work out.</p>
<p>Sorry for the ramble, but the situation is very complex.</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered whether it would make any sense to play dead and hope that the gunmen would think they’d already shot you. </p>
<p>BTW is always gunmen (or boys) isn’t it? Have women ever engaged in this sort of behavior?</p>
<p>For concentration camps, when they were executing prisoners, SOMETIMES it would work when folks pretended they were already shot & dead & the same with other crime scenes. It’s always tough to know what to do in such a charged situation. </p>
<p>So far, I have not read about female shooters either.</p>