More on Active Shooters
I have been obsessing over videos and articles about active shooters lately. Something occurred to me today as I was watching the hundredth training video on Youtube. They are almost all titled "Surviving an Active Shooter"/"Active Killer Survival" or something similar. None of them are titled "Stopping an Active Shooter" or "Kill the Killer" or "Shoot the Sonofabitch in the Face". Why not?
This highlights the problem. We're not training people to defeat evil, we are training people to "survive" evil. We are ingraining cowardice into our population. That's not going to work in the long run, folks. I have asked some of my friends who are former SWAT cops to help develop a training program to "Stop an Active Shooter." The longer you let an Active Shooter live, the more people get shot, and also the more people bleed out waiting for the EMS to get the all clear from Law Enforcement to go in and start medical treatment and evacuation. Time is the real enemy in an active shooting, not the bad guy. The bad guy is probably suicidal and has very little interest in the next day. The shooter is almost always going to die in the end, but how FAST that happens determines how much evil he can commit. Time is the enemy, therefore Running and Hiding only cause more death. Perhaps not yours, but his next victim may be one of your friends, or a family member, or a fellow parishioner, or an employee, or a student, or a patient. This is the problem with the "Survive an Active Shooter" model instead of the "Stop an Active Shooter" model. Innocent people are going to continue to get shot every ten seconds an active shooting continues until somebody stops it. The average response time to an active shooter in this country is ten minutes. That's an average, with some responses in rural areas taking up to forty-five minutes. But even in cases where the response time is under five minutes, that's still fifty people shot. On average, about half of the shot survive. But, the longer it takes to end the shooting, the longer it takes EMS to get in, so the more people die of blood loss. Please, please watch Tim Larkin's interview with Ed Monk regarding these statistics, available here:
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So why is "Fight" the last option in an active shooting? Entitlement. We as Americans feel that we are entitled to a life without violence, unlike the rest of the world. We "should" not have to worry about our personal protection. We "should" be safe in our schools. We "should" be safe in our hospitals and churches and offices, et cetera. Maybe we should, but we're not. We're only as safe in those places as we make ourselves. An active shooting is a form of combat, and the same principles that work for a tank battle or a mugging also work in an active shooting. But you have to first commit to Fight first, Run if you are physically unable to fight and Hide only as a temporary means to launch a counter-ambush. Fight is not the last option, because TIME IS THE REAL ENEMY. Your friends, family, coworkers are going to continue to get shot until somebody FIGHTS. So, how do we fight?
1. With a WEAPON. The first rule of unarmed combat is: DON'T GET INTO IT! Carry. As much as you can. If your church doesn't allow you to carry, you need to find another church, because they are suicidal and will get your family killed. If you work in a place that doesn't allow firearms, get another Weapon. Mace. Bear spray. Wasp spray. A knife. A fire extinguisher. A letter opener. Here's the second component to Weapons: if you see yourself as the Weapon, than anything can become an extension of your body and your brain to make you a more lethal Weapon.
2. By taking the INITIATIVE away from the attacker. Setting up a counter-ambush does this. So does HURTING the attacker. This is easier with a stand-off Weapon, but it's possible with just your body weight also. Hurting does not mean causing pain...
3. ....It means causing DAMAGE. If you have a firearm, you don't aim it for his little toe, you aim for his chest to inflict massive trauma to the bad guy's body. One causes pain, the other causes Damage. This is true with edged weapons and improvised blunt-force weapons also. Hitting a guy in the shoulder with a fire extinguisher might hurt, but hitting him in the Head will cause Damage. Basically this means aiming. It's not how hard you hit, it's where you hit that matters. If you have to use your bare hands, go for the eyes and the throat.
4. Or if you're a grappler, use TORQUE, also called circular motion, to cause that Damage. Torque is using all of your body weight in a circular motion to defeat a single muscle in his body. Judo and jujitsu are based on this principle of circular motion. You can use it to disarm a shooter with a rifle if you can get out of the line of the barrel, grab it and apply Torque and body weight to take him to the ground by swinging the gun away from you and pushing it in a circle to the ground. Torque is especially effective...
5. ....attacking the HEAD/NECK. Eliminating a person's capacity to think eliminates their ability to do harm. Especially with blunt-force Weapons, attacking the Head/neck is the fastest way to incapacitate somebody. With edged weapons, attack the softer spots like the eyes or the throat or the brain stem. Attacking the Head/neck using Torque can quickly cause Damage and gain Initiative away from an attacker, follow up with body weight stomps to the Head/neck also to render an attacker non-functional.
6. Most importantly, be SIXuationally Aware! Check your SIX. Listen to your SIXTH sense when something or somebody does not feel right. Trust your SIXTH sense when you see a guy with a duffel bag or a heavy trench coat in the summer. Don't be embarrassed by telling a cop or another authority figure. Don't blind your other five senses staring into a phone with earbuds in while drinking or getting high in unfamiliar or dangerous places. Be SIXuationally Aware of your surroundings, especially escape routes AND potential improvised Weapons.
W.I.D.T.H.6.
You have to fight back when evil shows up at your door. Running and hiding from it never works! Just ask the French:)
Be armed. Be Brave. Be Trained. Be FAR MORE Dangerous than the scumbags!
Soule
Easy 6
www.easy6training.com
