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Controversial opinion from someone with extensive experience with assault weapon violence. GOOD The current "shelter in place" model of active shooter drills

Controversial opinion from someone with extensive experience with assault weapon violence. GOOD The current "shelter in place" model of active shooter drills KILLS CHILDREN. In combat we had another name for "shelter in place"... "die in place". People must be taught to fight back or flee. They must because it is not instinctive. Most of us were raised in relatively peaceful societies and have a school yard/Hollywood understanding of violence. For those who haven't seen the Christchurch video, the killer was ALMOST taken out by one lone person who rushed him while his back was turned. Sadly, this brave soul was alone in his efforts and perished. He came literally within inches of getting the drop on the shooter. Had there been a second brave soul with him the shooting could have ended with far less death. Two unarmed adults in close quarters can absolutely disarm one person. In a fight, two are four times as effective as one. If someone is attacking you there are two options, run or fight. Hiding in a room with no exits is to wait for death, as evidenced by every eyewitness account we've ever heard on the news, "I heard the shooting in the other room, I knew we were next". From a tactical point of view a school/church shooting is a de facto "raid". There are principles of conducting and defending against a raid. The active shooter drills I've seen are in total ignorance of these principles.

ameister14 8y ago
Whether you disagree with the practice of sheltering in place or not, it still doesn't seem like a good idea to mock execute teachers. You don't need to get shot to get training.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  Unfortunately such training is for the limbic system, so pain and fear are required. The limbic system doesn't speak English and cannot reason.
  - bootlooped 8y ago
    I think it's a little absurd to think that shooting somebody with a pellet gun once is going to benefit them in an active shooter situation. With repeated training, maybe, but this is something that is never going to happen again.
    - ryanmarsh 8y ago
      That’s because you’re thinking. The limbic system doesn’t think.
      - bootlooped 8y ago
        I'm not arguing against the limbic system, I'm arguing against your assertions.
    - b_t_s 8y ago
      The training is fairly reasonable for someone who has a reasonable expectation of engaging in combat. You need to drill reactions under duress until you stop thinking and just do what you've drilled instinctively. The problem is that that this is not a reasonable expectation for school teachers. They shouldn't and don't really have a statistically significant chance of seeing combat. They're also a population that strongly self selects for physical and mental inability to be effective in combat. For the majority of school teachers, trying to turn them into halfassed semi-trained soldiers is hopeless and cruel.
      - bootlooped 8y ago
        If you read the article it sounds like they just put them up against a wall and shot them in the back. It doesn't sound like training, it sounds more like punishment or hazing.
        b_t_s 8y ago
        I did read the article, and I maintain that it is training. It can save lives. They're trying to make you more afraid of dying through inaction than dying through action, and get you familiar with the fear so you don't freeze. This sort of training can be traumatic but it can also be effective. For young high agressive males, it's high on effeciveness and arguably lower on trauma, and reasonably justified if they are going into combat. For your average middle age female school teacher who has probably never even been in a fist fight let alone a firefight and probably never will, it's largely ineffective, much more traumatic, and likely pointless. I'm sure there were even a few teachers in that session who got some benefit from it. What is training for one person can be hazing for another. Try stepping into a ring with a thai kickboxer for some medium sparing in preparation for a fight. For some people that's just another day at the gym, while for others it's assault, and the most violent traumatic thing they've ever experience. The training has to be calibrated to the students, and in this article it clearly wasn't. To me it sounds more like executive incompetence/misunderstanding than deliberate malice.
  - penagwin 8y ago
    Okay but we aren't training solders here, they took teachers, told them to kneel against the wall, and shot them in the back repeatedly without telling them what was about to happen. These are elementary schoolteachers - they're job is to educate (and half baby-sit) children. I'm not making any statement with training, I'm just saying the method here is inappropriate. EDIT: Plus how is this training? Are they expected to "fight back"? Okay cool a pellet gun hurts - what's the point? A gun hurts more anyway - if it doesn't kill you.
    - ryanmarsh 8y ago
      Okay but we aren't training solders here Maybe not but it sure looks like a battlefield[0]. 0: when you’re in the midst of a school shooting
      - penagwin 8y ago
        Does it? According to the US Naval Postgraduate School, 56 people died in school shootings during 2018 (includes shooter). While this is terrible, I'm not sure this counts as a "battlefield"? According to the CDC, over 3x more children died from the flu (185)! [0] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/ https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/ [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... EDIT: Yes during a shooting your environment does resemble a battlefield. Shootings are not common however (see above statistic) so I feel resources may be more valuable elsewhere.
hippich 8y ago
What if you have a gun on you and no place to escape, do you attack right away, or wait for the shooter to come in and take him by surprise?
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  “Violence of action” is the military version of our beloved “Zero to One”. What you lack in skill you make up for in aggression.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    This applies most in the situation where there is no escape and no one other than the shooter has firearms. If one is able to use tactics to even or upend the odds, then do that. Aggression is just the tactic of last resort.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  It depends. If immediately rushing the shooter would result in fewer casualties, maybe that's the best choice. However, if that would only result in your getting mowed down, then setting up an ambush and waiting for the shooter is arguably better. My recommendation, if you are in this situation, is to think one more time about your chance of escape. If there is truly no chance of escape, and if there are willing confederates, create a situation where the shooter is distracted and you can get the drop on him. (If possible, such that your confederate stands a chance of escape. They could distract by running and ducking into a doorway in the other direction, for example.) If there are multiple, determined, trained shooters, it's probably best to run.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  As someone who carries a firearm every day and is not law enforcement, it's situationally dependent. If my family is with me, my first objective is to get them to safety. If that's not possible I'm certainly not leaving them to "hunt" the shooter. If someone is actively engaged in shooting innocents and I'm alone, I'm going toward them under cover or concealment. I'm going to try my best to be as accurate as possible, and accuracy is proportional to the time taken to take the shot. The best resolution here would be firing before I'm seen and preventing the shooter from being able to continue their assault. That said, most mass murderers don't intend to survive to be captured, and someone returning fire is often enough for them to cut their massacre short through suicide to avoid that - so if I don't have a means to get closer, taking a shot that is unlikely to be effective is better than waiting and doing nothing. Even if they attempt to return fire at me, that means that innocents being targeted by them have more of a chance to reach cover. Finally, and by far the most likely, I wouldn't be close enough to the shooter to immediately stop the situation. In that case I would keep my firearm holstered and try to help others flee to safety. For what it's worth, I don't see any of this as being at all likely. On any given day I'm extremely unlikely to need a firearm; over the course of a year, a decade, or a lifetime, that chance goes up to merely "unlikely". By far the most likely circumstance I will ever use a firearm is self-defense is demonstrating the ability and motivation to defend myself, probably by merely preparing to fire by reaching for the gun. I'm 36, and this has held true in the handful of situations I've encountered thus far; I've had one instance where I made the decision to draw and fire, and in the second or so before I had drawn and began to pull the trigger my assailant had stopped their assault and began to flee.

ameister14 8y ago

Whether you disagree with the practice of sheltering in place or not, it still doesn't seem like a good idea to mock execute teachers. You don't need to get shot to get training.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
Unfortunately such training is for the limbic system, so pain and fear are required. The limbic system doesn't speak English and cannot reason.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  I think it's a little absurd to think that shooting somebody with a pellet gun once is going to benefit them in an active shooter situation. With repeated training, maybe, but this is something that is never going to happen again.
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    That’s because you’re thinking. The limbic system doesn’t think.
    - bootlooped 8y ago
      I'm not arguing against the limbic system, I'm arguing against your assertions.
  - b_t_s 8y ago
    The training is fairly reasonable for someone who has a reasonable expectation of engaging in combat. You need to drill reactions under duress until you stop thinking and just do what you've drilled instinctively. The problem is that that this is not a reasonable expectation for school teachers. They shouldn't and don't really have a statistically significant chance of seeing combat. They're also a population that strongly self selects for physical and mental inability to be effective in combat. For the majority of school teachers, trying to turn them into halfassed semi-trained soldiers is hopeless and cruel.
    - bootlooped 8y ago
      If you read the article it sounds like they just put them up against a wall and shot them in the back. It doesn't sound like training, it sounds more like punishment or hazing.
      - b_t_s 8y ago
        I did read the article, and I maintain that it is training. It can save lives. They're trying to make you more afraid of dying through inaction than dying through action, and get you familiar with the fear so you don't freeze. This sort of training can be traumatic but it can also be effective. For young high agressive males, it's high on effeciveness and arguably lower on trauma, and reasonably justified if they are going into combat. For your average middle age female school teacher who has probably never even been in a fist fight let alone a firefight and probably never will, it's largely ineffective, much more traumatic, and likely pointless. I'm sure there were even a few teachers in that session who got some benefit from it. What is training for one person can be hazing for another. Try stepping into a ring with a thai kickboxer for some medium sparing in preparation for a fight. For some people that's just another day at the gym, while for others it's assault, and the most violent traumatic thing they've ever experience. The training has to be calibrated to the students, and in this article it clearly wasn't. To me it sounds more like executive incompetence/misunderstanding than deliberate malice.
- penagwin 8y ago
  Okay but we aren't training solders here, they took teachers, told them to kneel against the wall, and shot them in the back repeatedly without telling them what was about to happen. These are elementary schoolteachers - they're job is to educate (and half baby-sit) children. I'm not making any statement with training, I'm just saying the method here is inappropriate. EDIT: Plus how is this training? Are they expected to "fight back"? Okay cool a pellet gun hurts - what's the point? A gun hurts more anyway - if it doesn't kill you.
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    Okay but we aren't training solders here Maybe not but it sure looks like a battlefield[0]. 0: when you’re in the midst of a school shooting
    - penagwin 8y ago
      Does it? According to the US Naval Postgraduate School, 56 people died in school shootings during 2018 (includes shooter). While this is terrible, I'm not sure this counts as a "battlefield"? According to the CDC, over 3x more children died from the flu (185)! [0] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/ https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/ [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... EDIT: Yes during a shooting your environment does resemble a battlefield. Shootings are not common however (see above statistic) so I feel resources may be more valuable elsewhere.

hippich 8y ago

What if you have a gun on you and no place to escape, do you attack right away, or wait for the shooter to come in and take him by surprise?

ryanmarsh 8y ago
“Violence of action” is the military version of our beloved “Zero to One”. What you lack in skill you make up for in aggression.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  This applies most in the situation where there is no escape and no one other than the shooter has firearms. If one is able to use tactics to even or upend the odds, then do that. Aggression is just the tactic of last resort.
stcredzero 8y ago
It depends. If immediately rushing the shooter would result in fewer casualties, maybe that's the best choice. However, if that would only result in your getting mowed down, then setting up an ambush and waiting for the shooter is arguably better. My recommendation, if you are in this situation, is to think one more time about your chance of escape. If there is truly no chance of escape, and if there are willing confederates, create a situation where the shooter is distracted and you can get the drop on him. (If possible, such that your confederate stands a chance of escape. They could distract by running and ducking into a doorway in the other direction, for example.) If there are multiple, determined, trained shooters, it's probably best to run.
LyndsySimon 8y ago
As someone who carries a firearm every day and is not law enforcement, it's situationally dependent. If my family is with me, my first objective is to get them to safety. If that's not possible I'm certainly not leaving them to "hunt" the shooter. If someone is actively engaged in shooting innocents and I'm alone, I'm going toward them under cover or concealment. I'm going to try my best to be as accurate as possible, and accuracy is proportional to the time taken to take the shot. The best resolution here would be firing before I'm seen and preventing the shooter from being able to continue their assault. That said, most mass murderers don't intend to survive to be captured, and someone returning fire is often enough for them to cut their massacre short through suicide to avoid that - so if I don't have a means to get closer, taking a shot that is unlikely to be effective is better than waiting and doing nothing. Even if they attempt to return fire at me, that means that innocents being targeted by them have more of a chance to reach cover. Finally, and by far the most likely, I wouldn't be close enough to the shooter to immediately stop the situation. In that case I would keep my firearm holstered and try to help others flee to safety. For what it's worth, I don't see any of this as being at all likely. On any given day I'm extremely unlikely to need a firearm; over the course of a year, a decade, or a lifetime, that chance goes up to merely "unlikely". By far the most likely circumstance I will ever use a firearm is self-defense is demonstrating the ability and motivation to defend myself, probably by merely preparing to fire by reaching for the gun. I'm 36, and this has held true in the handful of situations I've encountered thus far; I've had one instance where I made the decision to draw and fire, and in the second or so before I had drawn and began to pull the trigger my assailant had stopped their assault and began to flee.