Surviving An Active Shooter

What would you do or hope to do if you found yourself in any kind of emergency situation?

When I drop my son off at school, I think for a minute, “What if I was in school still and what if while in class I heard gunshots?” I ignore the fact that my son is five and pretend for that moment that I would have the knowledge and experience that I do now. What would I do? As mass casualty incidents are increasing in frequency and the face of horrific crimes changes, shouldn’t the way we respond to them adapt and change, also?

In the past, students and some adults have been taught to “hide,” or “take shelter in place” when they hear gunshots. On June 6, 2018, I did a quick Google search to see what other web sources say about responding to an active shooter. The following is an excerpt from one of the top five ranking results of my search:

“Because workplace violence can happen without warning, Ready.gov recommends that when gunfire is suspected, employees should find a hiding place and stay quiet. If possible, workers should hide in a room (preferably under a desk and away from doors and windows) and lock and barricade the door.”

WHAT?!

This is the information that people out there are getting and following? Being told to act like a pig at a slaughterhouse? Just hide, pull the covers over your head, and the bad guy will go away? When did this become acceptable? Did we learn nothing from Sandy Hook, when our children were mowed down in piles trying to find safety inside classroom closets and under desks?

Listen, I know I am going to die one day. Death is inevitable. But I will be goddamned if I’ll go down without a fight and at the hands of someone who cannot handle life!

The question should not be “Why did this happen?” or “Is it gun laws or mental health?” It’s society, it’s life, it’s our world now. If you want to analyze and study all of these horrible incidents, that’s fine, do it, but do it after you prepare yourself and your loved ones.

Here’s what I tell my son: if you hear gunfire in school, catch your breath, think for long enough to understand what’s happening, and run in the opposite direction. He’ll be taught to “be tactical” about it, to pretend it’s a game.

I’m a cop, so guns are present in my life and the life of my children and they always will be. This perhaps gives them an advantage over the children whose parents believe that guns should not be anywhere and shelter their children from the idea of them. My oldest son has heard gunshots since he was two years old — he’s familiar with them, and he understands the concept. This makes life a little less shocking if he hears one in real life. I’m not saying he’ll turn into a superhero and unarm the masked gunman at five years old. I’m saying that it gives him a little leg up. At least, that is my hope.

The animals that commit these crimes and create these horrible situations, taking thousands of people from the earth and from their loved ones, are usually not trained. Understand this.

Law enforcement trains and shoots multiple times throughout the year, and we are required to meet a quota of training hours of training each year. Your mind may be telling you that if I’m in a public place and a shooter comes in, every round that he fires is going to kill someone. Not true.

Sure, some active shooters have had firearms experience, some have been around firearms their whole life. But, none of them have shot and killed someone before, it’s a brand-new experience for them and they like you have no idea what to expect.

Take a minute and think like a bad guy. Seriously, the next time you are out in a public place and have some time to waste, run the scenario through your head. If you were a bad guy and wanted to hurt the most amount of people in that area, how would you do it? Allow your brain to stop thinking like the straight edge that you are. Because criminals don’t think like you and I do. Criminals have a skewed sense of reality and each one who commits violent crimes against others has their own reasons — right, wrong, or indifferent — for committing them.

Think like the enemy. Act like the enemy. Become the enemy. I’ve said so many times after these incidents, how are more people not killed? How did the shooter not gun down more victims? Honestly, read the stories. Their guns jam because they’re firing too quickly for that weapon’s capacity. They can’t reload under the stress of the situation. Their aim sucks. They’re not tactically firing and are just randomly firing with no real target in the crosshairs.

If you get put in the middle of these situations then you must find your opportunity to save lives. You must collect yourself, take a deep breath and realize that yes, this is happening to you.

Don’t be the person hiding under the wooden desk, or behind the hollow-core wooden closet door. Find what motivates you to fight, and take action. You have to decide not to be a victim, not to puddle in the corner, and certainly not to allow some other person to decide how your die, or how your children lose their mother or father.

Find your fight. Prepare yourself to defend yourself. Prepare yourself to realize that you can survive, and you have the courage to do so.

Don’t be the statistic, be the hero.