As the whole world knows (here is the report from China’s English News Agency) 14 people got shot in Binghamton, New York today. It is just the latest in a long string of such shootings. Undoubtedly we will hear a lot about how we need to improve security or improve gun laws or some such. But when are we going to talk about the proper moral reaction to such an attack by those who are living through it?

I mean, after 9/11 it was generally agreed that people should never allow a plane to be hijacked again. Whatever it took and whatever it cost, people swore that they would take back the plane. Yet in the wake of multiple mass shootings no such consensus towards mass-murdering gunmen seems to be emerging.

To be sure, the pro-gun lobby will argue that this shows why everyone should be packing heat. But I think such arguments miss what is really wrong in this country. It is not a matter of arms, but of courage.

I remember hearing about a mass killing in California where the gunman made everybody lie down and then he started shooting people at point blank range. Needless to say he killed few people before the police stormed in to stop him. I remember hearing about a woman who survived the killings talking about how she lay there, listening to the other people getting shot, and hoped that the gunmen would not shoot her. Talk about making it easy for the killer.

Now I don’t know what I would have done in that situation and I don’t know enough about what happened in Binghamton to give an opinion on what happened there. But I do know that people don’t have to act like sheep. A man came to where I work armed with a gun, a propane tank, and the intent to kill. He was jumped by a lady in her fifties and he never got chance to get off a shot (granted she was a lot tougher then your average lady, and a man later came to her aid, but still….).

But the prevailing trend in our culture is not to celebrate the ladies who jump gunmen armed with nothing but their bare hands. Rather, it is to celebrate the people who chose to act as passive victims as this post from the Belmont Club makes clear. Moreover, this attitude that celebrates those who value their own lives above all else has even permeated our law enforcement agencies as this article from Paul Howe makes clear (For those that don’t recognize the name, Paul Howe is a former Delta operator who played a key role in the events of Black Hawk Down. He currently teaches tactics to law enforcement officers.)