There is no longer any middle ground, no longer any third option. Either John Derbyshire is the biggest bad-ass on the face of the earth who, simply by sheer chance and studiously avoiding any personal risk whatsoever during his life, has never had an opportunity to prove his mighty awesomeness; or John Derbyshire is the single most obnoxious, self-aggrandizing, insensitive, delusional jackass on the interweb.

If you liked his comments about how the British Marines taken hostage should have been beaten, you're going to love this.

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat...Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? ...I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

Honestly, if he's going to keep making statements about how much better a hostage he'd make than people who are, you know, abducted and/or murdered in cold blood, then clearly he's either pretty tough for a guy who admittedly cannot shoot straight, or he's abjectly full of both himself and crap.  Given all available evidence to date, I'm going with "full of both himself and crap."