Colonel Jeff Cooper’s To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth describes exactly what is wrong with the United States today.  Cooper wrote of the society in which he grew up during the 1930s,

Boys were taught to shoot and use their hands, and girls were taught to expect that in their men.

… In that society, it would have been both futile and ridiculous for two punks to assume control over 159 people.

 Cooper’s position was that there was no excuse — none — for 159 passengers to allow a pair of hijackers to take over an airliner.  It is easy to imagine what Cooper would say about more than a million people in Boston and its suburbs allowing one punk to lock them in their homes, and out of their workplaces, at a cost of up to one billion dollars.  The message to terrorists could not be clearer: Any deranged individual willing to sacrifice his life or his freedom can bring a major U.S. city to its knees.

Cooper explained exactly why:

The press, academe, and the law enforcement establishment preach: Do not fight back! On the street, in your home, on the airplane, on the high seas, anywhere, anytime. Do not fight back! You may be hurt.

 This contemptible, despicable, and pusillanimous culture has not, fortunately, infested the Old South, most of the Mountain States (except Colorado), or rural and suburban Pennsylvania and Ohio.  It is no coincidence that these are places where it is legal to carry a sidearm openly without a permit, and/or it is fairly straightforward to get a concealed carry permit.  The “cringe like sheep” mindset is, on the other hand, most pervasive in the major metropolitan areas that are also the clearly identifiable origin of almost all attacks on the Second Amendment.