Reading a WAPO piece that is desperate to blame the deaths and panic at Nationals Stadium this week on guns, which is every bit as typical, cliched and uninteresting as you imagine.
It’s the same old Dezinformatsiya you always see when violence is on the rise and Blue City officials can’t stomach admitting that their own policies are the cause… it must be guns!… which they’ve been saying for as long as I’ve been alive. This reflex can be ignored, the people have spoken and they no longer trust the government with their safety. They want to own guns so they can handle it themselves. The numbers are clear.
But what I think is a worthwhile takeaway from the piece is where it discusses (albeit briefly) the utter confusion that started when a rumor began that there was an active shooter in the stadium. People panicked and ran pell-mell for the exits. Something to think about is that this might be a case where, when the crowd runs one way, you ought to think about running the other. The crows is not smart, it is dumb, and it can be manipulated by a smart killer (or killers).
George’s advice is take a minute to breathe and think. Resist the panic and make smart decisions about what you do next. The panicked mob is almost certainly not telling you to do something smart. And wherever they are going, might very well be the last place you want to be.