Active Shooter Response Session 1: Introduction

This Personal Defense Network course on active shooter response is going to be a comprehensive course that covers all aspects of dealing with an emergency where someone is trying to kill you and or other people in a confined space. Now, whether this is a workplace or a public space or an entertainment venue, the idea of a spree killer trying to hurt a number of people who are potentially unarmed, unprepared, and unprotected is something that really does plague us in the everyday society that we live in. We hear about it on the media, we hear about it over coffee, we think about it maybe when we go to work, and when we think about taking our kids on a vacation, or to visit a park, or even to go to the movie theater. Now, certainly we wish that wasn't the case, and we have to be realistic about the fact that these things are incredibly rare, but when they happen, you're gonna wanna have a plan, you're gonna wanna have some responses already set in stone in your brain, a script that you can hit play on, execute quickly and efficiently, and protect yourself, other people that you care about, and as many people as possible. The idea of active shooter response has undergone a huge evolution over the last 20 years. In fact, active shooter really wasn't even a term of common parlance. It wasn't something that we talked about very much before the Columbine attacks in the late '90s. After Columbine, we thought a lot about school shooters and school attack and law enforcement and private security, even the education field started to think about how they would deal with these school attacks. But as spree killings have become more common, as they've become the tool of not just the deranged lunatic or the person that's angry at society in general, but also of the political terrorist, we've had to deal with spree killing in a very different way, not just law enforcement, not just in schools, but really in any public space, and now it's something that everybody thinks about. Just like you might think about having a fire drill in your workplace, now you're gonna have to think about having a spree killer drill in your workplace. But what are you gonna do? Are you just gonna hide and hope? That was the initial response that was born after Columbine. The advice from law enforcement was, well, now that we've thought about it, we're gonna get in there as quickly as we can. What you need to do if there's an active shooter is lock the door, hide in the corner, and hope that we get there before the bad guy does. Well, in almost every case, when the bad guy gets there first, people who were told to just cower in fear and sit still were hurt, sometimes killed. The people that survived didn't just hide in hope. They took action. And that's what this Active Shooter Response course is going to be about. What actions should you take? What actions should you be prepared to take if you find yourself and those you care about trapped in a space where someone is trying to kill not just you personally, but anyone and everyone that they can find? There are really three simple steps. Evade, get away if you can, barricade, make it harder for the bad guy to get to you if you can't get away, and then of course respond if necessary. These have been shortened to run, hide, and fight in many popular conversations. In fact, the government is now putting out advice that says do more than just lock down. Run if you can, hide if you need to, and fight if you must, and that falls right in line with our approach of evade, barricade, and respond if necessary and as appropriate, and that's what this course is going to be all about. What can you do, what is the most appropriate thing to do, and how can you be prepared to do those things as efficiently as you can? Now, in addition to those simple steps, we're also gonna talk about arming yourself. In other words, what type of tools exist in the everyday environment? What type of tools might you wanna carry with you? What types of things that aren't specific defensive tools that you can improvise or put into play as defensive tools in a worst case scenario during a spree killing? These are things you wanna think about ahead of time. So in addition to evading, barricading, and responding if you need to, when you have the opportunity, if you need to, you should arm yourself, and that might mean tomorrow. Tomorrow, you decide that you're gonna commit yourself to getting a defensive tool, carrying it with you in the public space or in your workspace, and learning how to use it, and thinking about how you would use it during an active shooter situation. Another important aspect that doesn't happen immediately and really has much more longterm ramifications instead of short-term, immediate action, is to communicate. Think about the communication you're gonna do inside of an active shooter situation. So maybe you're gonna communicate with other people in the workplace, maybe you're gonna need to communicate with your family, maybe you're gonna have some quick signal words, not necessarily secret codes, but signal words that let other people in the environment that you're there with know, we need to get out of here. You saw something that wasn't right, you know that something's happening in another part of the building or the amusement park or the airport, and you're going to use your signal words, your communication, to execute the evasion or the barricade or to arm and prepare to respond if you need to. And then of course there's the communication with outside authorities. There's the communication with the police or emergency response. What are you gonna say to 911? How can you help from inside of an active shooter situation to get those first responders to be able to get where they need to be, stop the people they need to stop, and help the people they need to help as efficiently as possible? So we evolve our program based on the idea that if you're watching this video, if you're gonna take this course, you're prepared to do more than just hide and hope during an active shooter event.