Modern firearms and the collapse of heroism

[Loaded dice]

Not what I asked you. You were kvetching earlier that killing from a distance isn’t heroic. What I’m asking is if you think Islamist terror fantastic who stab people in crowds are acting heroically. It’s a ‘yes or no’ type question.

Boru

The answer is no, of course. There is nothing heroic about stabbing an innocent up close, even though it's much harder to do than firing at them with a gun.

There is a reason why the infamous Einsatsgruppen, the extermination units of Nazi Germany, went from a holocaust by shooting to a holocaust by gassing, it's less personal to gather crowds of people in a confined space and gas them to death, than to shoot at them at close range. Even less personal, of course, is to drop an atomic bomb from an airplane then fly away while thousands of people behind are enjoying the nuclear blast.

That's the modern world, a realm of anonymous, large-scale destruction. Keep it up, weapon manufacturers.

You're thinking of a duel again.  The only reason I can think of to go hand to hand with a guy is to hold him for my buddies to stab or shoot him.  The most likely outcome being that this is exactly what happens to me, doesn't matter if I'm the bigger or smaller guy.  That's not heroism, it's gambling.  The no 1 rule of hand to hand combat is to never -ever- get stuck in a hand to hand combat situation.  You'll laugh your ass off about this, but my hth training instructor sent himself to the hospital trying to demonstrate a bayonet against a tire.  Came back and went straight into his mouth.  Guy took it like he was made of stone.  Full on official handoff, nice and calm, then briskly walked off the range to his vehicle.

This is what going hand to hand actually looks like.  It's not an exhibition for the camera.

It's true that hand to hand combat is gambling, one sucker punch can lead to a knock out, possibly followed by permanent brain damage or death. It's never worth it. But weapons aren't better, one random bullet and that's it. All of it is random. 

If only there were some cheap, accessible, sure-fire way to stop any kind of bullet, explosive or projectile from hitting you, that would be worth ten Nobel Prizes at least. All wars would become impossible or meaningless.

There are heroic people though. People who risk their lives and their freedom to do what's right.

Julian Assange is an obvious example. Daniel Hale.

That's definitely true. I do think that, sometimes, there are smarter and more discrete ways to do what's right. If you're fighting for, say, freedom of the press, just use an ultra secure VPN and an anonymous pen name and criticize whatever you want, why join the list of thousands, perhaps millions, of dead journalists and activists who were killed because they thought it's courageous to openly fight very powerful governments?