Thinking clearly in the face of horror is obviously difficult. When an otherwise thoughtful and articulate professional journalist veers this dramatically off course in her debut Newsweek article, it's worth thinking about how such mistakes happen. Here's Megan McArdle's jaw-dropping idea for how to deal with the threats like Sandy Hook:
I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.
The image alone should warn one off from taking this seriously. McArdle is a libertarian, and it seems to me that one of the most appealing features of libertarianism is its hard-headedness about human nature. Mark this, in my opinion, a total failure on that front.
Where were her editors? Wasn't it their job to say "Great dress, but you might not want to go out on stage wearing those ridiculous shoes?" Or is the point just to attract readers with an outrageously ill-conceived idea?
This blogger mostly flies without a net (editors) and I have a few doozy lack-of-proofreading errors to my discredit as a result, but when I am writing something tricky and consequential I try to follow the adage "measure twice, cut once," editing and re-editing and calling upon others for help. Not a bad practice for any writer, including lawyers.
