Three of Colorado shooting victims died protecting their girlfriends

By David McElroy · July 23, 2012

When I’m with a woman I love and something bad happens, my first instinct is to reach out to protect her. It’s not conscious. It’s just the way I feel. But I never feel the same instinct with a man I’m with, even if I care deeply about him.

Some people would say this is cultural, but I think it’s hardwired in some way. The average man has a strong instinct to protect the women in his life that he cares about, and my feeling is that it’s deeply embedded in us in some way. We saw three examples of it on display in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., late Thursday night.

In at least three cases, men died trying to protect the girlfriends they had with them. In a situation such as that, there’s no time for conscious thinking. It’s all about gut instinct. How many other men in the theater that night were doing the same, but didn’t happen to die? There’s no way to know, but I’d be shocked if there weren’t a lot more who were instinctively willing to die to protect women they felt responsible for.

Witnesses say that Matt McQuinn, above, dove on top of his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, when the shooting started. Yowler’s brother, Nick, was also in the theater and helped get her out of the line of fire as well. Samantha Yowler was hit in the knee by a bullet, but McQuinn took the one that could have killed her.

Jon Blunk (in the red shirt below) took his girlfriend, Jansen Young, to the movie in part because they were celebrating her graduation from veterinary school. Blunk is an ex-sailor with hopes of rejoining the military to become a Navy SEAL. He protected her with his body, and he died.

“He’s a hero, and he’ll never be forgotten,” Young told the New York Daily News. “Jon took a bullet for me.”

Alex Teves (in the beach picture below) shoved his girlfriend, Amanda Lindgren, to the floor as bullets flew all around them.

“He pushed her to the floor to save her and he ended up getting a bullet,” said Teves’ aunt, Barbara Slivinske. “He was gonna hit the floor himself, but he never made it.”

What is it that gives so many men the instinct to protect the women they love? Some people have maintained for decades that the sexes can (or should) be the same, but I just don’t think that’s the way we’re wired. Men have certain advantages and roles. Women have certain other advantages and roles.

I think we’re crazy if we believe we can ever make men and women alike — and I think we’re even crazier if we want to.

Note: If you’re interested in more about the 12 people who died in the Aurora shootings, here’s a CNN article covering all of them.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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