“Default Setting Brave”
Posted by Sappho on September 2nd, 2023 filed in Daily Life, News and Commentary, Peace Testimony
“Default setting brave” is how my coworker who’s friends with Glenn Sprowl’s brother describes Glenn Sprowl.
Three people died last week at Cook’s Corner: Tonya Clark, there to celebrate her birthday, and dining at the same table with Marie, the ex-wife of the shooter. John Leehey, 67, the urban planner and landscape architect whose last words, on being shot outside Cook’s Corner, were, “I think I am dead.” And Glenn Sprowl, the one who is said to have told his companions to lock the door and get behind the bar, that he was going to take care of the situation. And then set out for the parking lot to confront the shooter.
Yesterday, as it was one of my WFH days for the week and Cook’s Corner is minutes to walk to from my home, I went down the hill at my lunch break to see the “soft” (no live music yet) reopening. The motorcycles were back in force in the parking lot, and a crowd was there to show support, both indoors and at the outdoor tables. Reporters were there from several outlets, including Telemundo. The memorial out front had been enhanced, since my last visit, with large photos of the three who died.
Of the three, it’s Glenn Sprowl who has been on the mind, because he’s the one whose choice raises the question, would I try to fight a mass shooter? It’s not a moral question. I’m a Quaker; I don’t have a gun, and therefore can’t kill a mass shooter even if I wanted to. Unarmed people can, under the right circumstances, subdue a mass shooter, and I can’t possibly hold an opposition to the use of force so severe as to object to nonlethal force to stop someone from killing. At the same time, I can’t imagine I’d have any moral obligation to try to fight a mass shooter when most of the time running or hiding is a more effective way to survive. In a review of 433 mass shootings, people without guns subdued the mass shooter about 10% of the time.
It’s not a moral question. It’s more a question of, under what circumstances would my survival instinct and fight/flight response swing me toward fighting, and under what circumstances would it swing me toward fleeing. I don’t know. I’m not “default setting brave.” I’m not “default setting cowardly.” It’s all about what looks possible in the moment. Am I near an exit? Near an entrance to a room that can be locked? Near something that looks like a good impromptu weapon, and the shooter isn’t looking at me, so I can take him by surprise? That’s why it’s so easy to swing these hypotheticals to the answer you want, whether it’s the answer you want to give about yourself, or the answer you want to prod someone else to give.
Run/Hide/Fight, says the FBI, in that order, and that makes sense to me. But also, we shouldn’t live in circumstances where active shooter training is a normal thing. It wasn’t always so. And now each mass shooting is pushed out of the news within days by the next mass shooting.