There is widespread belief that in a wartime operation like the invasion on D-Day or Inchon landing in Korea, over half of soldiers never fired their weapons. They simply froze. This was attributed to the lack of aggression when they were growing up. They were taught, contrary to reality, that America was a peaceful nation. Books by Howard Zinn or James Loewen were never mentioned until a young person left high school and encountered some reality in college history courses.
Lately though, aggression has become the new normal and directed at minorities, homosexuals or any other group the right-wing religious police have designated undesirables that need to be converted or eliminated. Witness two days ago a shooting at Planned Parenthood perpetrated by a crazy Christian zealot attempting to rectify what he thought were sinners being bad. He just took the Republican party agenda to it's logical culmination.
Soldiers now are conditioned to kill other people. If they were taught otherwise, they wouldn't be much use in combat. Most people, as a rule, are not soldiers or ex-soldiers. their knowledge of fighting and death are gleaned from TV shows or video games. So they go out, listening to the NRA propaganda, buy themselves a gun to feel safe, take time to shoot at paper targets and get themselves a license to carry it around, feeling like a combination Marshall Dillon and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. I feel
that before getting a license to pack their gun, they be required to spend a weekend observing or helping in the emergency rooms of a large metropolitan hospital actually experiencing what their little safety toy can really do. See how many people actually shoot themselves or someone they love accidentally.
I believe that if a terrorist were to attack normal people in a crowded, darkened venue, most of them would shoot themselves or their fellows and terrorists would escape unscathed. Luckily the odds of such an occurrence actually happening are about the same as being hit by a meteor from space.
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