There's this big sidewalk shoot-out scene in Heat, where Al Pacino's character Lt Vincent Hanna is telling all the bystanders to get down. Nobody listens, they continue to run around screaming and get shot. Tom Sizemore takes a little girl hostage. This little girl was standing there frozen with fear. This little girl was in a red, white, and blue outfit. The thing about people who are insulated from violence is that when it happens they go wild with panic. The thing about your average American is that they are insulated from violence. By violence I mean the reality, NOT merely the idea, that another human being is presently willing to kill you, if not deliberately trying to. You have your paranoid Americans who think that you can prepare for it. You can, but not without an idea of what you're preparing for. Real self-defence, when the the person trying or willing to kill you is armed and already firing, so to speak, is very different from what you see in the movies. It involves being desperate to live, and being willing to get hurt if necessary. It's ugly and fearful and nasty.
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