The Talking Dead

     This is Ben Carson's idea of what to do in a mass shooting scenario: Offer up oneself as a bullet catcher for the common good and take several for Team Z (and maybe do a few lively steps from West Side Story in the act of dying).
     Does this lunatic Carson think we live in The Walking Dead? That the answer to mass shootings is to make their job easier and rush at them simply because of superiority in numbers? The Persians had superiority in numbers and look what the Spartans did to them at Thermopylae.
     Ben Carson is simply the most brainless brain surgeon like Bill Frist was the most heartless heart surgeon ever. And he seriously needs to shut the fuck up about guns and what he'd do in such a situation. To hear him talk, he'd be all Rambo and show us how a real man would handle it... Oh, wait. He did. Let's just say I'm far from impressed.
     Let me give you the benefit of my experience:
     Believe it or not, despite what I used to be in the Navy, I never once had a loaded weapon drawn on me. But seven and a half years after I was mustered out of service, an incident happened in Gulfport, Mississippi in early 1990.
     My then girlfriend's son Bubba (Yes, that was his name) was jilted by his girlfriend. He somehow got a bottle of Jack Daniels then reached under his grandfather's pillow where he knew he kept his .38 revolver. When his mother saw the gun in his hand, she freaked out and tried to get him to relinquish the weapon. At one point, he pointed the gun right at her head. When I found out what was going on, he pointed the gun at me.
     Now, I'm going to hit the pause button here for a moment to compare what I then did to what Ben Carson would tell me I should've done.
     We had to assume the revolver was fully-loaded. The old man wouldn't have kept an unloaded gun in the house. That's just how these people do it. If I had rushed at the kid, I would've taken a bullet and all Hell would've broken loose. I also could've gotten my girlfriend or anyone else killed.
     The kid retreated into the bedroom and sat on the bed while his mother sat beside him. By this time, he'd put the gun against his side, with his finger in the trigger well. Knowing guns as well as I do, I knew the only thing keeping him from partially disemboweling himself was about four pounds of pressure. He told me not to approach him so I didn't.
     Instead, I calmly leaned against the door jamb and softly talked the kid down. I'd like to think between his mother and me, we calmed him down long enough for his father (Also named Bubba) to arrive and finish the job. We peacefully disarmed the kid without even calling in law enforcement (Down there in the sticks they tend to keep things internal).
     It wasn't until after we'd taken the gun from him that I realized it was the kind of .38 that didn't have a safety. And if I'd lost my head, or did what Ben Carson suggested, any number of people in that house could've gotten killed, including me. I wasn't a hero one way or the other. I simply kept my cool and the situation as defused as I could, kind of like applying frozen nitrogen to a live bomb.
     So Ben Carson seriously needs to shut the fuck up about guns and lecturing us about what we should do, especially when he talks about others willing to take one or two for the team.