Active Shooter Response with Family Member's Gunshot Wound: Staying Behind Cover

C'mon John, let's go. Yeah. Hurry. Darce, give me your belt! John's been hit!

John, get over here. Whatever you gotta do, get over here. Geeze! John, come on! Come back behind here, come on.

All right. And Darce, just take a step to your left and go to your holster. Cool, I appreciate you guys role playing that. Again, this kind of activity is exactly what we need to do to prepare for that worst case scenario in a public environment with a family member. If you find yourself in an active shooter situation.

In other words, you find yourself the victim, or a family member of the victim, of an attack in a public space. Again, just like this range, of course which we're pretending is a parking lot, as you're approaching your vehicle, you're a few steps ahead of someone in your family, or maybe just a bystander, somebody else who happens to be in the area, and shots ring out, you have your normal human reaction. You go to your gun, you go to the ready position and you see that family member out there just like Darcy did. She turned around and she saw her friend, John, over there on the ground. He had been hit.

He was calling for help. In that moment, in the heat of that moment, the natural emotional human response is gonna be to rush out there and try to help them. Well, we don't want to try to be that hero running out there grabbing that person and dragging them to presumed safety, if by running out here, we actually expose ourselves to the danger. Now in a situation where you see the threat, you're right here, the threat's right there, the threat's over here wherever it is, of course you'd address the threat. But if you don't know where the threat is and you're here behind cover, you're behind at least concealment.

You have to figure the shot came from over in this direction. Maybe the person's telling you that there's a shooter out there. You're looking through your concealment. You're looking through those windows. You can't see the person.

You can't do anything except remind that person, if they can, get to safety, whether they have to crawl, drag, whatever it is they have to do. Maybe you're gonna take off your belt and throw it to them and give them the instructions and tell them how to put the tourniquet on. Maybe you're going to take off your shirt and give it to them and tell them to use it as a compression bandage. But if you expose yourself to that danger, if you end up getting shot too, you're not really helping anybody. Think about it ahead of time.

That's the reason you watch these training videos. That's the reason you talk about this stuff with your family. Think about what you would do. You're behind cover. You might be able to stop the threat if they appear but you don't know where they are.

And that person is completely capable of crawling over to you, call them over. Encourage them to take themselves out of the fight, get themselves over here, behind cover. And then you can start applying first aid or addressing a threat as appropriate.