Defining a hero

Yesterday, tragedy struck Denver, Colorado in America. a 24 year old man walked into a cinema, threw a couple of tear gas canisters and whilst people ran screaming for the exits, he opened fire on them with his assault rifle, which had been bought legally.
14 people were killed, including children, and another 50 were injured.

Reaction around the World, on tv, radio, the web were obviously that of shock, heartache and sorrow. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened in Colorado- 13 years ago, 2 students opened fire in their high school, killing students and teachers alike.

And underneath all of the sorrow, the discussions around gun laws started, and America's obsession with the right to bear arms.
Before I get into this, I found a few facts on gun-law in the paper this morning:
- In Colorado, any resident can buy a handgun providing they are over 18 and do not have a criminal record.
- Residents do not need a permit and do not need to register their weapon.
- Colorado is one of the few states that allows openly carrying a firearm in public. (Yes, that's right. Not concealed, openly)
- Proposals for more stringent controls were defeated before the new state legislatures in 2009 when the NRA donated $16950 to the legislators (bribery anyone?)
- The 2nd amendment (giving people the right to keep and bear arms) was adopted in 1791, influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

In regards to the shooter:
-This guy had no criminal record and was over 18 so all his guns were legally obtained.
-He was studying for a PhD in Neuroscience, with courses specifically in "the biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders"
A young medical student with no criminal record. Sounds great doesn't he?

So, yesterday afternoon, there was outrage, and some Americans on Facebook and Twitter were stating they were going to go and buy themselves a gun.
One particular comment which really fired up my emotions was this:

"Thoughts go out to the family and friends of those murdered in Colorado. This is exactly the reason we should allow guns to be carried by law abiding citizens. Had someone had a gun in the audience, even with body armour, someone could have shot the attacker, but this will be used as an excuse to take away gun rights because randomly crazed individuals manage to get one and do something of this nature"

Now obviously, this was meant to be inflammatory. And it worked.

"One person shooting back at the guy firing into the crowd could have easily saved a dozen lives- or at least distracted him long enough to let a few more escape unharmed...." was one response.

I argued back that if one person joined in the shooting, how could we trust that person to fire accurately? Or if another had the same idea, how would that 3rd person know who was the criminal and who was the vigilante?
There is a reason cops do not fire into crowds of fleeing people- and if the legally trained armed forces know that firing into crowds is dangerous, how can anyone expect an untrained civilian to do the same?

I put a scenario in the mix and asked the question "if your 18 year old daughter had a gun in her purse and was in that situation, would you want her to flee/hide, or stand up and shoot."

Remarkably, the response I got from one individual was "this guy had time to reload several times, and if my Daughter had been able to save the lives of any of the 50+ who were shot? Yeah I would be very proud of her for taking out the shooter." and went on to say that as soon as she is old enough she will be trained to use a firearm intelligently, safely and lawfully.

And this is where the problem is for me. It's about what makes people heroes.

For me, the real heroes of this tragedy will be the people who do something about it. Who go to schools to educate the next generation about the dangers of guns. The ones who despite their own personal tragedy will go and find ways of being able to provide training for teachers to allow them to recognise any sort of instability in teenagers or children.
The families who lobby government to tighten gun laws to ensure that anyone who has shown any form of uncontrolled anger or depression is never, ever allowed to get hold of a firearm, and give stricter penalties to those who flout the law.
The people who see youths in the street with illegal firearms and decide that as a community they will stand up and refuse to allow this by calling the police.
The friends of victims who decide they want to make a difference and join the police force to be able to legally protect their community.
The unarmed guy who knew unequivocally when faced by crazed gunmen on a plane that he was going to die, and decided to stand up and ensure as few lives as possible would be lost, shouting "let's go!!" before leading a rush against their attackers.

These are the real civilian heroes.

Another guy on this FB feed made a comment about being an advocate of peace, love and compromise, but added that if he saw a rape in progress his first move would not be calling the police, and I totally totally agree with him..... But it depends on the circumstances.
If that rapist had an accomplice who held a gun to the victims head, would I rush in? No, because that's putting the victim at even more risk.
If it was one guy who had physically overpowered the victim, I would absolutely find the biggest brick, stick or rubbish bin lid to brain him with.

Do I think that people who live in remote farms and are at risk of being stormed by gunmen should be allowed to have guns in their home? Yes- but keep them at home.

The importance here is understanding what the most appropriate response is to any given situation, and what you do afterwards to try and make your community a better, safer place, intelligently.

One of my heroes, and inspirations is a girl called Jess Foord, in Durban, who at 21 was walking her dogs with her father. She was jumped by a gang of men who beat them both half to death, tied her father to a tree and gang raped her in front of him. The 5 men were armed with guns and knives, and not only did she suffer this horrific crime, she had to endure the fact that her father was forced to watch.

Did she have the right to go out afterwards and buy a gun? Absolutely. Any jury would find it hard to convict a woman taking revenge after an ordeal like that, so would probably have got away with killing her attackers if she wanted to.
But that's not the avenue she took. She looked at the system and realised the entire process was geared for women to fail at getting a conviction against her attackers. Only 7% of rape cases in South Africa result in a conviction, so she took a stand and decided to make a difference.
It worked, and a year after her attack, 4 or her 5 attackers got life imprisonment. The 4th was sent to a youth correctional facility.

She learned that the men may have done this as part of a culturally accepted initiation practise, and the more she researched, the more she wanted to make a difference.
She started her own foundation within that year, with the aim of helping women be survivors and not victims.
The foundation provides educational support in communities where rape is commonplace and "normal" to teach boys that rape is not acceptable.
They provide support to women in these communities to stand up against rapists, and have the courage to prosecute.
The foundation provides support for training police on how to deal with rape victims. They raise money to build rape crisis centres to provide support to allow victims to become survivors.
They ask women to provide "handbags" filled with shower gel, shampoo, combs, clean underwear, and a message from the heart which is provided to survivors at these centres, to give these women hope that they can and will survive.

That's the right way to go about these type of issues, and this girl (who is not yet 25) is absolutely inspirational, yet we don't shout about people like this anywhere near enough.

My point throughout this entire stream was that allowing more civilians to carry guns does not solve the problem. We need to be tackling the root cause of gun crime if we are to ever reduce gun crime.

The way forward cannot be to "give more people guns" The 2nd amendment was written in virtually lawless times. Surely we have made enough advancement to be able to stop the problem before it becomes a problem, and it just shoot it dead afterwards?

We need more people like Jess Foord and less that want to shoot problems away.


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Location:Spring Bridge Mews,London,United Kingdom