How To Get Yourself Killed In An Active Shooter Incident

Pardon the bluntness of the title.  This article is in response to the countless articles, news segments, and videos offering fly-by-night style survival advice for active shooter events.  After every one of these incidents, as the media hype is in full swing, there are always subject-matter "experts" who are interviewed to provide guidance to people regarding active shooter response.  A good bit of this advice is usually pretty solid and well-founded.  Usually that's the common-sense stuff though; the easy stuff like maintaining situational awareness, identifying points of egress ahead of time, etc.  But there's a lot of really bad and in my opinion, very dangerous advice being offered that borders on extremely irresponsible.

In full disclosure, my organization (based in Pittsburgh) provides active shooter trainings to schools, businesses, and individuals, in the local region and nationally.  It's just part of what we do, but it's a big part and it's a program that we take very seriously and have devoted a great deal of resources to its development.

So you may be thinking at this point that my beef with the high-profile advisers is simply turf war bickering.  But I assure you, that's not the case.  In fact, I think it's great that there are serious organizations out there who fight the good fight and help to empower people to protect themselves.  We're all on the same team.  My problem with the advice basically boils down to this:

1. The media considers anybody who's ever worked for any government entity, written a book, or claims to know what they're talking about to be an expert.
2. The techniques that are offered are never vetted for validity before putting them out there to the public.
3. The format in which it is presented lacks the full context that's required to properly absorb and retain the training material.
4. Quite frankly, as the title suggests, a lot of is more likely to get you killed than it is to save your life.

This week alone, following the San Bernardino, CA terrorist event that left 14 innocent Americans dead at the hands of two crazed Islamic nutjobs, I have probably seen about 30 articles (blog posts, etc.) come across my computer via social media or email that have all had the title "How To Survive An Active Shooter Event" - or similar.  And every time I turn on the news, some self-proclaimed expert is putting in his two-cents.  I usually just let it go and figure people will be smart enough to wade through it and make sense of what's valid and what isn't.  But today I heard a piece of advice that sent me over the edge.  On a major cable news network, the on-air expert instructed people to "run in a zig-zag formation" as they are evading the attacker(s).  For a moment I thought: "now hold on Dan... maybe this guy is confused and he thinks we're talking about getting away from an alligator or something".  But sadly no, this was legitimately his active shooter advice.  In a way, I suppose I can understand how somebody might arrive at that piece of advice.  But only if they have never done any kind of training before, have never shot a gun, and have no grasp on the dynamics involved with an event like this.  The basis of the theory is that if you are changing direction, the shooter won't be able to track you and fix his sights on you.  But let's break down how this one falls apart:

1. The most important thing you can do when you're on the defense, is to "get off of the X", which means getting out of the direct line of sight/impact of the attacker.  That applies to any kind of attack.  By zig-zagging back & forth repeatedly, you are repeatedly re-entering the direct line of sight of the attacker.
2. Every time you change directions, your movement will pause and you are wasting very valuable time that could be spent on increasing the distance between you and the threat.  You are prolonging your time inside of the kill zone.
3. You're adding physical and cognitive complexity to a situation in which you will have capacity for neither.  I won't get into all of the physiological effects of extreme duress during a violent encounter.  But basically, under an adrenaline dump, you can expect degraded fine/complex motor skills and you can expect your ability to perform complex thinking to be diminished.  You're in survival mode.  The last damn thing you're going to be able to think about is "ok that's ten steps to the right, now switch again."
4. And finally, it's simply not necessary to change directions to make it difficult for the shooter to hit you.  Here's a question for you: Have you ever tried to hit a moving target?  Maybe you have, but I'm betting that most of you have not.  Hitting a target standing still (especially with combat-effective accuracy) is not an easy thing to do to begin with.  When we add the dynamics of a moving shooter and moving target, it becomes extremely difficult.  The very fact that you're on the move, already gives you an advantage.  Changing directions actually devalues that advantage and gives the shooter an observable pattern that may make you EASIER to hit.

So if you're going to run, JUST RUN!  Do it efficiently and tactfully... get out of his direct line of sight, don't run straight away from him if you can avoid it.  And get your ass to cover.  Then, immediately start looking for better cover.  And make sure you understand the difference between cover and concealment.

But the zig-zag advice isn't the only thing that alarms me.  There are lots of examples.  One very popular system that's being rolled out to school districts includes a component that advises stock-piling canned food products and having the kids throw them at an attacker.  Again, I understand the underlying theory and it's not all bad.  But there are a few problems with this one too.  First of all, we (INPAX) believe that it's generally a bad idea to include school children in the response model.  One reason is that kids are unlikely to be able to process & perform as expected in such a stressful scenario.  The big 250-pound football player is going to be cowering behind the 110-pound Spanish teacher asking her to save him.  These are not adults and we can't expect them to behave & perform as adults.  But another reason is that one of those kids may be a potential attacker themselves and it's a bad idea to compromise the security infrastructure by revealing portions of it to a potential threat.  Not to mention the fact that the kids won't have the opportunity to train for what you're expecting them to do.  "Training" doesn't mean telling somebody something.  And it doesn't mean rehearsing something once or twice.  Training, of any kind, takes repetition and refined development to become properly conditioned to perform a task.

And I actually have another problem with this advice.  It ties in with other types of advice that people are receiving.  At one of the schools that we recently trained, it was mentioned that the school district had previously advised teachers to just "hit the attacker with a nearby fire extinguisher".  Could that work?  Maybe.  Is it likely?  No way!  Expecting somebody to use an improvised impact weapon in an effective way with zero training, is the epitome of unrealistic.  But a bigger problem is that they've been given no "tools" (knowledge via training) to capitalize on that kind of defense technique and follow up with actions that would actually terminate the incident.  In other words, you might get a few good hits in if you're lucky.  But if you don't know what to do after that, you're as good as dead.  Sorry.  Most of the systems that I've seen, give people a few things to try, but leave them hanging if/when those things don't work.  The goal of all training (of any kind) is to get you to a point where you can continue to think on your feet in a dynamic situation.  We're not trying to turn you into a ninja, you just have to be able to think, and keep thinking, so that you can execute effective countermeasures.

Which brings me to my next point... I need to be careful with this one because I don't want to leave the impression that I'm criticizing other, perfectly legitimate, systems & approaches.  But in my opinion, if your goal is to terminate a violent incident that involves a force multiplier like a gun/knife/etc., and your first steps involve anything other than neutralizing that threat (the gun/knife/etc.), then I believe your approach is flawed and dangerous.  In fact, I just recently saw a video that was a great example of this: In the video, a guy took down his attacker and put him into an arm bar restraint.  The problem... the attacker followed up by using his other arm to repeatedly stab the good guy in the stomach as the good guy wasted defense resources on addressing something other than the immediate threat.  Most systems that I've seen, advise techniques that arrest the movement of an attacker, and only discuss weapon neutralization as an after thought.  That's completely backwards from what you should be doing.  Get the damn gun off of the attacker.  Once he's disarmed, he's just a guy and YOU have the force multiplier.  That being said, you have to be properly trained to do this safely and effectively.  If you don't do it right, you could get yourself killed.  Weapon disarming is complex and dangerous.  It has to be taught under controlled conditions by professionals.  A prime example of how this can succeed, but still go wrong if done without training is the 2004 rock concert shooting where Pantera guitar player "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was murdered while onstage.  The shooter was subdued and disarmed, but 3 additional people died during the scuffle as they disarmed the attacker (one person died while administering aid).  Going back to the soup can and fire extinguisher points, the same concern applies.  Hitting somebody with a fire extinguisher might hurt him.  But he's still got a weapon and he's still pulling the trigger.  Your inefficient response is helping him increase the body count and is likely to make you his next target.

Bad advice doesn't just come from the civilian world though.  Unfortunately, it also sometimes comes from the law enforcement side as well.  And that's hard for me to say because I'm pretty much the biggest supporter of law enforcement that you'll ever meet.  I rarely criticize anybody in that community.  But, my wife is a public school teacher and her district has received several trainings from a law enforcement agency and I'm also privy to training material offered by other law enforcement organizations.  In every case that I'm aware of, law enforcement active shooter training to civilians basically goes like this:

1. Here's what gunshots in the hallway might sound like
2. Here's how you implement a lock-down procedure (shelter in place)
3. Here's what it looks like when we show up on-scene and start making entry to secure the facility
4. Here's how we want you to comply with instructions to evacuate as we clear the building
5. And "if" you happen to encounter the shooter, "don't be a hero" and just "try to talk them down if you're going to do anything".  If they address making contact with the shooter at all, the material is limited and the techniques don't serve to effectively neutralize the threat.

I put those segments in #5 in quotes because those are real pieces of advice that my wife's district received.  And generally, if reflects the training approach that most law enforcement and school districts provide for this type of scenario.  It's presented in a very legally-safe "cover our ass" (from a liability standpoint) position, and what it essentially teaches the would-be victims is that they are helpless.  It teaches them that there's nothing that they can/should do to save their lives and the only people who can do it are the professional responders.  The problem with that... first of all, it's completely false.  But beyond that, the police are almost never on-scene in time to terminate the event as it's in-progress.  Most of the damage is done in the first few minutes and they often terminate prior to law enforcement arrival.  The best chance that you have of saving yourself and others, is acting decisively and immediately to terminate the incident, or at least minimize the carnage until law enforcement can respond.  I don't give a damn what the school's attorney's opinion is on this.  Even the FBI states (in the concluding statements of a recent report) that the actions that civilians take in the first 3 minutes are what is most important in determining the outcome.  When law enforcement shows up, most of the time, it's over.  It's time to count bodies and conduct an investigation.  Like it or not, you are your own first responder.  Start acting like it!

Regarding the "try to talk him down" advice: I think this is one of the worst pieces of advice put out there.  An active shooter isn't a guy on a bridge threatening to jump.  He's WAY past talking and he's declined so far down a path that he's decided this is the end for him and he's taking you with him.  There's a time and a place for psychology & negotiation and this isn't it.  If you try to talk him down instead of TAKING him down, you may as well be trying to use cash to bribe a shark that's biting your leg off.  I'm only aware of two school shooter incidents where the attacker was talked down by school staff.  And the second one wasn't an actual shooting, it was essentially a recent hostage situation that happened to involve a gun, but no shooting.

There's a pseudo-model that government entities try to utilize to teach active shooter training to civilians.  It's the "Run, Hide, Fight" model.  But the problem is, they don't teach you how to fight, not effectively anyway.  Lock-down drills are great and they're often the best thing you can/should do.  But if you don't have a choice, you better have other tools in your bag and they damn well better be the right ones.  Leave the Campbell's tomato soup in the kitchen pantry, get some real training instead.

So what's my point with all of this?  Am I saying that the INPAX system is the only legitimate one and all of the other's are garbage?  Absolutely not!  I meant what I said earlier, we're all on the same team and I think it's great that we're all working towards solutions.  At the end of the day, we just want to save lives.  We have many differing approaches to it, and in some ways that's a good thing.  But you have to be able to identify faulty advice and spend your time on valid approaches.  If the stakes weren't so high, I wouldn't care this much.  If we were talking about something like bad financial advice, I'd mind my own business.  But lives are being lost due to bad advice.  Teachers (for example), are being taught to line their kids up along the back wall of a classroom, which effectively creates a shooting gallery for an attacker to pick off people one at a time.  They're being taught to position themselves in non-advantageous locations that place them at increased danger if a shooter makes entry into their room.  People are being taught to play dead and do other things that are likely to be ineffective.  And for some reason, the public is just eating it up and so is the media.

Look, the reality is that there is no blog post, magazine article, book, or video that will properly prepare you to survive an active shooter situation.  In some ways, the media and other outlets are performing a disservice by giving bits & pieces of information, but not pointing people to where they can get real, proven, effective training.  If you're serious about this and you want to survive, you have to get your hands dirty and actually do some real training.  In fact, I'd advise you to get training from multiple sources.  As an instructor (firearms, etc.), I try to train with as many people as I can because I think it helps you master your craft.  I train with "competitors", as well as peers.  I study different systems and I do a lot of research.  Something this important, deserves that kind of dedication and scrutiny.  It's a different world now.  Terrorism IS occurring in our homeland.  Violence (terrorism or otherwise) occurs everywhere and effects people from all walks of life.  None of us is immune.  If you want to survive, you're going to have to put more into this than just reading a silly article or watching the evening news.

If you're interested in attending one of our trainings, I'm more than happy to provide info.  In my opinion, it is the most comprehensive and realistic approach to active shooter training that I've seen.  Sam Rosenberg (president and program developer of INPAX) has an approach to self defense and a grasp on the real-world dynamics of violence (as a threat and a tool) that is unmatched anywhere in the industry.  But I'm not here for a commercial.  I'm not trying to sell you our training.  I just want you to be on the look out for bad "training" and be able to recognize it.

One last thought to consider... people need to keep in mind that when the police show up to confront a threat, saving the wounded is a secondary priority and it may not happen in the time frame that you expect.  If you are under the impression that the cops will roll in and start caring for the injured, you're mistaken.  Emergency medical personnel won't even be permitted to approach the scene until it is cleared and determined to be completely safe.  They will stage up nearby and wait for the cops to address their first priority, which is neutralizing the threat and making sure there are no more threats.  If the active scene is large and complex, that may take a great deal of time.  In some cases, they may not even be able to start the process right away (if the shooter is well barricaded and still shooting for example).  So you may have severely injured people with fading vitals who are running out of time as they wait to be rescued.  This is another reason why the actions that YOU take early in the engagement are critical to saving lives.  It can save your life and save the lives of those around you.  The people on the inside, in close proximity to the threat when it begins, are in the best position and have the best situational intelligence to address the threat before it escalates any further.  If the threat is neutralized by the time the cops show up, the injured stand a much better chance of being rescued and receiving immediate care.  Incidentally, we believe that a truly robust active shooter response program needs to include emergency medical training as a key component.  None of the "expert" advisers that are dishing out advice even address this component.  We, however, do address it and offer medical training and emergency med kits.  It's something else that you should explore.  The bandaids in your first aid kit aren't going to do much for somebody with a gunshot wound resulting in a tension pneumothorax.  Again, you are the first responder.  The guys who show up in uniform are the second line, not the primary.


Related article:
"If there's a shooting, I'll just run out to my car and get my gun"