Facebook doesn't have a shooting range.
For that matter, it doesn't have mats or a heavy bag.
I've been noticing another trend.
In the wake of metoo and timesup, more and more ladies are coming forward with the stories of their fears. Not stories of their assaults, mind. These are stories instead of the deescalations they've had to engage in to prevent a violent encounter. Everything from a meh date to pumping gas and buying a cup of coffee gets accompanied of a story of gently letting down the latest in a long line of cock sales associates who take personal offense at not being interested.
I'll go into why (I think) this has occurred and possible solutions, but right now I'm still talking about the stories.
Time and again, they go like this.
(Original post about having to deescalate encounters of the cock sales associates before it got even scarier)
(expression of sympathy/solidarity)
(Declaration of guns and use thereof)

(Declaration of other weapons and use thereof)
(Declaration of combat style du jur and use thereof)
There's a term for this, guys. It's called unhelpful.
You're on Facebook. There's no ranges here. Or mats.

Lemme distill the timeline a little:
(Original post about socio-cultural problems and resulting emotional response)
(expression of emotional support)
(Practical yet unhelpful option)
(Practical yet unhelpful option)
(Practical yet unhelpful option)
Seriously.
Assuming you're a weapon carrier with a functioning higher though process, take it back a bit. Go back to when you first carried and the responsibility stick hit you.
You KNOW what I'm talking about. The first time you stopped yourself from honking at an asshole driver because you were wearing a pistol. The first time you bit back a response to whoever elbowed you out of line. The times it hit you that escalation was something you were gonna have to answer for.
Take that feeling. Knowing you had to let it go or convince a judge why not. How that changed your attitude in a thousand different ways. How it came down and hammered into you to be more polite in your daily dealings.
Now take that feeling and add in an endless parade of cock sales associates. The moderately annoying but ultimately harmless cable sales bubbas lurking in Walmart? Take those, breed them like Mogwai in a swimming pool, and turn them into randomly hostile freakshows when directly rejected.
THAT is what your lady friend is dealing with. Regularly.
And your response was something that would fit in a gun show bumper sticker.
Not very fucking helpful there, mate.
Wanna help?
Go back and read it again.
Is this a typical "dealing with assholes" vent?
Or is it a, "I'm finally admitting how scary this shit is" confession?
Listen to what's really being said, and react appropriately.
If all else fails, shut the fuck up. Don't underestimate the strength in silence. Especially when there's not a lot of listeners around.

Well, it's been 48 hours.
Another mass shooting/active shooting/whatever term you use.

This time at a school. Kentucky again.
The typical reactions ensued.
More screams of "change something" by the usual suspects.
More, "but don't change our somethings" by the usual suspects. Although most of the 2A press is currently at SHOT in Vegas, so the yelling isn't as pronounced as it could be from that side.
More bullshit "this is the XXth school shooting this year!" clickbait, cleverly not mentioning that said number includes at least two suicides, a drive-by in the neighborhood of a school, a negligent discharge, an incident with a pellet gun, and what looks like an armed robbery in a school parking lot.
It is true that mass shootings are the one type of violent crime that's actually growing in the U.S. (Violent crime in general dropped steadily from 1992-2014, went up some in 2015-2016, but looks to have gone down again in 2017, though all of the data hasn't come in on last year yet). Made all the more unsettling by the ambiguous motives of many (LVPD has effectively given up on discovering a motive of the Vegas shooter).
A lot of detail has been obscured due to the shooter being a minor, but enough news outlets have reported that the shooting can be reconstructed somewhat.
The shooter walked into a central atrium of the school, fired a single shot, seemed surprised that he had, and kept shooting. When he ran out of ammo, he ran and surrendered to police.
This fits the most common type of mass shooter I've seen. They enter a target area, keep going until they encounter resistance, then either surrender or suicide.
And this is any kind of resistance: The Aurora had a magazine jam. VA Tech failed to break down a barricade. Gabby Giffords was dogpiled by the crowd.
That this shooter (apparently) didn't have any other magazines meant he met resistance as soon as he ran dry, which is the first bright spot I can find. (In contrast, sandy hook and the SC church shooters only stopped when they ran out of victims).
If I *must* make a guess, I'd say the one weapon and magazine were all he could successfully steal, which limited his options.
As of this morning, the toll stands at two dead, one still in critical, one still in serious, and roughly a dozen others treated and released. No consensus among the press as to how many shot vs associated injuries. Not knowing the shooter's background or seeing a better map of the school (I looked), I'm not going to credit any one aspect over the other as to why he managed to kill so few.
We're still no closer to determining motivation (and definitely no closer to being able to identify potential future shooters). I'm not a psychologist, so this is me as a student of human nature speaking. But if I had to guess what this type of shooter gains for as long as their rampages last?
Control. Not power in and of itself, but control.
From the moment they enter until the moment they encounter resistance, their world is theirs to manipulate.
I may be making a connection out of nothing here. But in a modern world where a sense of how helpless individuals truly can be in the face of all manner of challenges, I suppose it's possible that the prospect of even a few moments of complete control may be seductive enough for some to give in.

The growing call for police to have better training in dealing with the mentally ill.
This is the most diplomatic way of putting it that I can make:
Unless you're a working therapist with a very heavy client calendar, the average metro cop dealt with more cases of mentally ill individuals before lunch on Monday than you will for the rest of the month.
Because "call the cops if they won't stop being my problem" is our go-to societal solution, they're the ones who get called in. Doesn't matter if it's a kid foaming at the mouth, throwing books and screaming about demons, a hobo taking a nap at the side door of your office building, a guy with no thumbs and three teeth begging for change for their next meth fix, or a lady stripping bare-ass in the middle of the airport before waving her vagina at the TSA agents and loudly propositioning anyone in earshot.
And day in and day out, they handle it as situations dictate, almost always getting the problem out of your hands and off into somewhere else.
And occasionally, tragedy strikes.
As I had to point out to someone the other day, when someone had a knife out and is going for your kidneys, nobody, least of all you, has the time or inclination to ask about their medical history. You either let them have you, or you stop them.
So yeah, I could be salty and ask where the fuck you've been since the Regan administration. Or ask how the fuck we'll pay for who exactly to administer such training, given how less than ubiquitous body cams still are.
Instead I'll point out that they've been dealing with the mentally ill a lot longer and a lot better than they ever get credit for, because out of sight and out of mind is all a part of the service.

Fun fact: I made knives. Mostly for film & theatrical purposes. Found out something interesting along the way.
Anything less than 10 inches long with a 5" blade, vanishes in the actor's hands and the audience never sees it. Even in a black box. The letter opener I made for No Exit was bigger than a steak knife at longhorn, and even then it was hard to see.
Now, the multitool I use? 4.5" handle, 3" knife blade. Blade's hard to see even inside Tueller drill distance.
Now, the ambulance chasing fuckweasel representing the family of the asshole who committed suicide by cop on the GT campus the other night is claiming the officer overreacted. The deceased was supposedly carrying a closed multitool.
Bullshit. If anything, the officer underreacted. He allowed the deceased to come within Tueller drill range while armed with a knife. The fact that the knife wasn't opened couldn't be determined by the officer at distance means shit. Because by the time they could get a positive ID, they already would've been in range of a lethal attack they couldn't stop.
It's the same principal that lets cops shoot you if you shove a hand into a pocket when told to keep your hand in place. They have NO obligation to let you shoot first, nor are they obligated to read your mind and discover you really have a gun in there. Said actions constitute a threat whether the FB armchair quarterbacks agree or not.

P.S.: 21' is an average.
I will neither confirm nor deny the existence of individuals who can do such a thing from twice that distance. Nor rumors of it being done in a relatively uncrowded ballroom.

P.P.S. : About a year back a German cop shot a machete-wielding guy in the leg before managing to arrest him. Never saw any followup on how much mobility the machete guy had. But I did remember headdesking with a thought of, "oh, peachy. Now every amateur hour dipshit out there has an exception that proves the rule to crow about."