TexasCHLforum.com

I've been living in the UK since early May on a work assignment. In a discussion with three of my colleagues at the office yesterday, after expressing condolences for the dead and injured, I stated that I can't understand why 5 or 10 of the youth on the island didn't rush the guy and take him down. That he may have been able to shoot a few of them but not over 60 of them and that in an hour and a half, there had to have been opportunities to disarm him, like while reloading, or something.

The Brits all looked at me like I had lost my flipping mind.

One of them re-explained the turn of events to me as reported in the media as if I obviously didn't understand what had happened. Again I asked, why, after a few minutes, when it was apparent that help would not arrive in a timely manner and their friends were being executed, didn't several mass attack the guy and take him down? I was given the explaination that, "Well, that's the job for the police". To which I replied, "Who took an hour and a half to get there".

I could see that I was making everyone uncomfortable, so I ended the conversation by turning it into a general industrial safety point (we work for an engineering / construction company). I pointed out that we are all responsible for our own personal safety. That governments, companies and projects are all trying to look out for our best interest, and many safe-guards and systems have been put in place to minimize our exposure to risks in an attempt to make our lives safer. But at the end of the day, when and if the excrement impacts the fan blades, we still have to use our heads, think for ourselves and exercise good judgement. I reminded them of the Piper-Alpha disaster many years ago in the North Sea where 168 people died, many of whom were mustered at the escape capsules waiting for the order to abandon the platform, but since the initial explosion took out the control room, there was nobody left to give that order. The few that did survive are the ones who thought for themselves, realized the situation on the platform was going from real bad to worse, and decided to take their chances at being rescued by going overboard near rescue craft.

My colleagues looked very troubled by the entire exchange, but one of them looked me in the eye, nodded and winked.

Maybe a spark of understanding???