Playing the terrorist game
by digby
A group called The Truth About Guns organized a simulation of last week’s terrorist attack in Paris. They hoped to learn how things may have played out differently at Charlie Hebdo, or any other mass shooting.
“It’s the one people are Monday morning quarterbacking at the moment,” said group member Nick Leghorn. “It’s interesting to see how people react under stress. It’s not what you’d expect people do.”
Volunteers took turns on a set designed to look like the offices of the French satirical weekly magazine. But unlike the terrorist attack that killed 12 people, volunteers played the role of armed civilian.
“He started shooting – and I started shooting,” said volunteer Linda Cruz.
And here’s the kicker:
Time and time again, the armed civilian “dies” – shot by a round that marks him or her with paint.
In only two cases volunteers were able to take out one of two gunmen in the process.
“Still got killed but did better than I thought I would,” said father of four, Parks Matthew.
That made me emit a strangled mordant chuckle. They also forgot to mention how many fellow civilians these armed civilians took out in the process.
This is absurd. We have mass workplace shootings by the dozens in the United States. If they felt the need to “practice” at any point they could have run a simulation on one of them. But it’s not as sexy as pretending to fight off crazed jihadis which I’m fairly sure were played by guys dressed up in Ninja costumes shouting something incomprehensible in pidgen Arabic which makes it so much more exciting.