Overpowering Gun-Wielding Madmen for Dummies

I'd been ignoring reports of certain pundits publicly speculating as to why no one at Virginia Tech made the decision to recreate the heroics of Flight 93 ("Let's Roll!) and rush to disarm the gunman. One such pundit wondered why there was no apparent "spirit of self-defense".

I had dinner with my folks a couple of nights ago, and we started talking about this. I was rather surprised to hear that apparently he and my brother had wondered about the same thing, and before I knew it I was hearing their assertion that perhaps letting everyone carry a gun anywhere is indeed a good idea. I grew up, to some extent, around guns. My father owned more than a few and he even gave me a few shooting lessons. He would hunt now and then, but his guns were always kept in a locked storeroom and other than when he'd go hunting (which wasn't often), we'd never see them. I never heard my parents talk about the need to have a gun around for self-defense. They chuckled when their liberal daughter reacted in the expected way to Dad's suggestion that he teach my two nephews (but not my niece, interestingly enough) how to shoot.

I'm accustomed to feeling odd-woman out when it comes to certain discussions in my family, but I was actually a bit surprised to hear them affirming the NRA party line. So, am I just completely out of touch with this? Colorado, like my home state of Texas, is big on guns, and so God only knows how many people I come in contact with at the grocery store, the post office, etc., who are packing heat. Would this really make me safer in case some deranged person decides to shoot up the produce section at Safeway while I'm picking out tomatoes? I'm wondering also--if the armed forces of the United States, with their sophisticated war machines cannot prevent our soldiers from being killed from "friendly fire", how on earth is the average citizen going to be protected from a Dirty Harry wannabee standing in line at the post office?

So here's a interesting piece from The Explainer at Slate.com. If you're already up on just what to do when facing the possibility of being attacked by a grizzly bear or a mountain lion, then make sure you'd be prepared to know when to fight or fly from a crazy person with a gun.