Althouse: Megan Silberberger "heard the gunshots first and she came in running... She just grabbed his arm...."

October 25, 2014

Megan Silberberger "heard the gunshots first and she came in running... She just grabbed his arm...."

Silberberger is the heroic young teacher who began to stop the Seattle school shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, and then came the shot that killed him.

At the Daily Kos, there's this headline: "Young, petite, UNARMED, female teacher stopped today's school shooter."

Fryberg shot himself in the end. That's what stopped him. It sounds as though Silberberger even tried to prevent that.

CORRECTION: Originally, I referred to Silberberger as "first-grade" teacher. I misread "first-year" to mean first-grade. In law school, "first-year" means the first year of school for the students, but I can see that the linked article was referring to the teacher's level of experience.

43 comments:

rhhardin said...: Another hey kids want to be famous shoot up the school lesson from the media.

Ratings rule.; 10/25/14, 8:47 AM
madAsHell said...: So, the message is.....If you're a young, petite, UNARMED, female teacher, then you can do almost anything.

Now which one of those adjectives applies to Hillary??; 10/25/14, 8:57 AM
Michael said...: Megan acted like men used to act. She ran towards the trouble, not away from it.; 10/25/14, 9:05 AM
traditionalguy said...: The shooter was a popular young Tulalip Indian who went after his friends and family members over the seriousness of his feelings of rejection caused by a woman.

So you could say he went tribal in defense of his emotional ownership of one special woman, at age 15.

This is Shakespearean Tragedy. But so was the Whitman Mission Massacre.; 10/25/14, 9:23 AM
FedkaTheConvict said...: "Silberberger is the heroic young first-grade teacher who began to stop the Seattle school shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, and then came the shot that killed him. "

First grade in a high school???; 10/25/14, 9:23 AM
The Godfather said...: "First year" teacher, not "first grade".; 10/25/14, 9:31 AM
Wince said...: As a new teacher, she was just worried there would be fewer kids left to have sex with.; 10/25/14, 9:35 AM
David said...: Unarmed?

Venus de Silberberger!; 10/25/14, 9:40 AM
mccullough said...: Admirable bravery.; 10/25/14, 9:41 AM
MayBee said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/25/14, 9:44 AM
MayBee said...: Kids acting out adult lives- sex and drugs- and emotionally can't handle it.; 10/25/14, 9:45 AM
David said...: More seriously, good for her. That was very brave. It could also have turned out to be foolhardy, but taking that risk is what bravery is about.; 10/25/14, 9:48 AM
Anonymous said...: "Young, armed male student, Silberberger, stopped today's school shooter."

EDH, that comment is beyond the pale.; 10/25/14, 9:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Guess I mixed up the names in my previous comment. Sorry about that.; 10/25/14, 9:52 AM
Anonymous said...: Good work Silberberger; 10/25/14, 10:03 AM
garage mahal said...: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a union schoolteacher without a gun.; 10/25/14, 10:08 AM
hombre said...: Progressives take heed: The second best solution to the problem of such shootings is security guards who are petite, unarmed women.; 10/25/14, 10:14 AM
Mark said...: Can we agree, garage, that NOT waiting for the police to come fix it probably saved lives?

Good to know even a union member can be brave when bravery is what's needed.; 10/25/14, 10:16 AM
Birkel said...: And here comes "garage mahal" to make the political point, explicitly, that the "journ-O-lists tried to make implicitly. What an ass!; 10/25/14, 10:16 AM
Michael K said...: That could have been foolish of her but many heroic acts have the same potential. I heard another eye-witness who did not mention her but he said he dived under the table when he realized the noise was shots. He said he ran out when the shooter "stopped to reload."

Witnesses stopped the Tucson shooter when he stopped to reload.; 10/25/14, 10:21 AM
Greg Hlatky said...: That could have been foolish of her but many heroic acts have the same potential.

I seem to remember something that went along the lines of "Any action worthy of the Victoria Cross is probably not worth repeating."; 10/25/14, 10:33 AM
JPS said...: Brave woman.

garage, at the risk of taking some of the fun out:

No one but a fool would argue that the good guy (gal) must always be armed for this to work. Being armed just makes it a less unfair fight. I'm glad she survived.

Greg Hlatky: I like that. It's always seemed to me that whatever the formal criteria for the MoH, the common thread in the citations is, the recipient made a conscious choice to go ahead and get killed, if necessary, to save fellow soldiers or stop the enemy. That they happen to survive, maybe half the time, is beside the point: They had no reason to expect they would.; 10/25/14, 10:45 AM
BrianE said...: Marysville is 35 miles north of Seattle.; 10/25/14, 10:58 AM
Michael K said...: Does this mean garage is a union teacher ? Could be. Lack of education is typical.; 10/25/14, 11:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Now that Garbage and the Kos diarist are agreed that it doesn't matter whether or not someone has a gun, perhaps the law can resume its old indifference to the subject.; 10/25/14, 11:40 AM
Big Mike said...: If Jaylen Fryberg had been intending to pile up a body count, along the lines of Adam Lanza, Siberberger's courage would have been praised during her eulogy.; 10/25/14, 11:47 AM
Paul said...: The Daily Kos is just trying to rationalize why teachers should be unarmed.

In this case, the nutjob offed himself. Lucky he was not in the mood to blow away a bunch of other kids.

That is when an armed teacher could have stopped it.; 10/25/14, 12:06 PM
n.n said...: She may not have stopped him, but she did confuse the situation. Perhaps delaying or preventing another outcome, including other victims.

We can only expect to do what we can, when we can, and if we can. Silberberger was a first-responder who may have materially improved the outcome.; 10/25/14, 12:51 PM
jr565 said...: "Daily Kos, there's this headline: "Young, petite, UNARMED, female teacher stopped today's school shooter."
It's wrong factually. But think about how much better a chance she might have had if she had a weapon.I don't give myself very high odds if I have my humanism and am faced with someone with a pistol.
Nor would I expect to be able to reason with someone who just came into a school and started kiling people. At that point its' get out of the way or kill him so he doesn't kill you. Usually the teachers grab teh kids and then go in the room and cower. They have no defense. UNless the teacher decides that if he tries to get in the door, I WILL KILL HIM OR MAKE SURE HE CANNOT KILL ME.
Guns are the great equalizer. And you'll note that the guy who stormed Canada's parliament had a gun and started shooting. And everyone ran. The guy who stopped him used a gun, naturally.; 10/25/14, 12:51 PM
jr565 said...: n.n. wrote:
She may not have stopped him, but she did confuse the situation. Perhaps delaying or preventing another outcome, including other victims.

We can only expect to do what we can, when we can, and if we can. Silberberger was a first-responder who may have materially improved the outcome.

It would be like the guy in Tienamen square standing in front of the tank. DO you think he can really stop a tank? The guy in the tank could be reasoned with.
Try doing that when the tank is firing at you. Then the issue is how do you stop a tank. Usually with a weapon capable of bringing down a tank.
She's lucky she wasn't shot. And while I commend her bravery, she shouldn't have had to rely on luck alone.; 10/25/14, 12:54 PM
jr565 said...: Saw this on Twitter "making good men helpless doesn't make bad man harmless"; 10/25/14, 12:56 PM
jr565 said...: Shane the movie teaches this lesson best. And I recommend all liberals watch that movie.
Marian, the wife is a pacifist and she doesn't want anything to do with guns. The bad guys hire a gunslinger Jack Wilson to intimidate the locals. And he guns down people in the street.
Someone has to deal with him since non violence doesn't get solve a guy like Jack Wilson who will shoot you dead and knows how to use a gun.
Shane has to explain to Marian how a gun is a tool. nothing more, nothing less. It's the person using the gun that is the issue.
And of course Shane has to go in to fight Jack Wilson to protect Marian's family. As otherwise her husband would and he'd get killed since he's not a gun slinger like Jack.
Always found her character pretty insipid since she demands that other people fight her battles and condemns GOOD people like Shane for being the equivalent of the monster like Jack Wilson simply because he uses a gun.
When push comes to shove though who has to solve the problem? Shane. The guy with the gun.; 10/25/14, 1:05 PM
jr565 said...: If it werent' guns then the bully would be the guy with the sword. And you'd need to fight him. A sword would work better than your hands. Or reasoning to the murderers non murderous impulses.; 10/25/14, 1:07 PM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/25/14, 1:09 PM
n.n said...: jr565:

I'm not suggesting that her method was the best way to mitigate risk. Still, her effort and the outcome should be recognized. Ultimately, the risk incurred, whether she was armed or not, was her choice. She did what she could, with ostensibly a positive effect.; 10/25/14, 1:42 PM
Unknown said...: this story has been pulled from us andd uk sources. ???; 10/25/14, 1:47 PM
William said...: If only the Ottawa Parliament had thought to hire a petite, unarmed woman as Master at Arms, how much bloodshed could have been avoided.; 10/25/14, 3:11 PM
Anonymous said...: For some reason I assumed this teacher had died.

But after reading the story, it looks like she wasn't even injured.

He started shooting, people were injured (Some died) then she runs in, they struggle over the gun, a shot goes off, and the shooter is dead.

Am I missing something here?

The shooter didn't kill himself, she killed him by turning his own gun on him. At least, that's how I read it.; 10/25/14, 4:04 PM
Rusty said...: eric said...
For some reason I assumed this teacher had died.

But after reading the story, it looks like she wasn't even injured.

She was very, very, lucky.
People have lost their lives depending on that kind of luck.; 10/25/14, 4:11 PM
JCCamp said...: I must add this: at the Sandy Hook school shooting, several staff members - including females - ran to the sound of gunfire and were all murdered. Generally, unarmed and untrained civilians at a school shooting scene would do better to grab what children they can and try to get them to safety, rather than confront an armed person while prepared to do nothing more than...what? Staple them? Talk harshly to them? In this case, it apparently worked in the sense that no other students were harmed after the teacher's intervention, but perhaps the shooter intended no other students harm at the point anyway. How can we know? So, it's obvious situational. A physical ed coach who is very close and able to intervene might do so, while the school psychologist who has to run some distance and is prepared mainly to talk to the shooter should forget the idea. Anyway, bravery can easily be conflated with foolhardiness, but something seems to have worked, or at the least, not made things worse here, and the young teacher lives to get in the media and probably encourage others to act the same way in the future, however bad an idea that may be. But her personal courage should not be disparaged, however bad an idea it may be 99% of the time.; 10/25/14, 5:12 PM
Achilles said...: That is an awesome act of courage. Condolences to the victims and families.

Would be even better if we didn't have an entire political movement bent on taking away my right to gun ownorship and self defense immediately politicizing the event. Can they think of nothing else?

The world would be better without you garage. That goes for many on daily kos as well.; 10/26/14, 3:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Shooter student Fryberg could have spared himself the pain of rejection by going with the sure thing and dating only teachers.; 10/26/14, 8:59 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: See, if Kevin Vickers had just been unarmed, the whole Canadian Parliament situation could have been avoided. Unarmed is the way to go, thanks Daily Kos. I'm just glad the anti-gun folks are so scrupulous about not using a tragedy for political ends.; 10/26/14, 9:18 AM