There is a difference between risk and consequence, however many people ignore this when it comes to personal safety. An “Active Shooter” situation/scenario is a high consequence one (you stand a good chance of being shot) but a low risk one i.e. you are unlikely to be involved in one – whatever your imagination and the media may tell you. A mugging is a relatively high risk, but low consequence crime i.e. you are more likely to be targeted, but the consequence is low: you lose your wallet/purse. Unfortunately, it is the dramatic, high consequence incidents that grab our attention, and get us thinking about violence, rather than the types of assault we are more likely to face. It is worth noting that there are high threat, and high consequence assaults that we forget, such as sexual assaults on women i.e. if you are a woman, worrying or focusing on “Active Shooter” incidents is probably the most inefficient use of your time/energy; as you are more likely to be sexually assaulted, and experience a similar or higher rate of trauma as you would if you were involved in an active shooter situation. In saying all of that, much of my own time recently has been spent dealing with individuals who believe that active shooter scenarios are the health and safety issues of the day. Because of this, I would like to spend some time, demonstrating how general personal safety issues can be used to increase your survival chances in an active shooter situation, and also/more importantly protect you from the higher risk situations that you are more likely to face (regardless of whether they are of low or high consequence).

The standard advice that is being given to people if they find themselves involved in an active shooter situation is to run, hide then fight. This is good strategic advice, however it doesn’t give any directions on the tactics that are required to be successful. It is akin to the police telling individuals to be more situationally aware, and to look out for suspicious activities etc., after a crime or spate of crimes have been committed e.g. how do you become more situationally aware? What are suspicious activities? This is not to knock the police, or question the advice, rather to illustrate that there is a big difference between telling somebody what to do, and teaching/training them in how to do it. Running away from danger is generally a good survival strategy, but you need to know where you are running to. Simply, following everyone else may not be a good idea; it may be that the shooter(s) is funneling people towards a particular and obvious exit, so that an accomplice can have a mass of people to shoot at. It may be that the people you are following, are working to an out dated and inappropriate survival strategy – when the planes hit the Twin Towers on 9/11, many people headed up rather than down, as previously when there had been a fire in one of the towers, people had been air-lifted from the roof. When faced with danger, running/disengaging is a great idea; however you need to know where you are running to i.e. you need to have a direction to go in.

Good situational awareness that is appropriate for general safety will give you this. If you are concerned with your personal safety, you should be thinking about fire safety, as well as active shooter scenarios. If you are staying in a hotel, you are much more likely to be involved in an evacuation due to fire, than because of an active shooter i.e. fire is a much greater risk, and carries a similar consequence to an active shooter. The same plan for exiting due to fire, will generally work for an active shooter situation. That is, you don’t need a radically different plan. Your plan for exiting a building due to fire, will require little to no modification if you have to exit due to an active shooter. Is it good to know the specifics of fire safety, and the specifics of an active shooter situation? Absolutely. However, if you don’t know where the exit and entry points, such as the fire escapes are, the specifics of the danger are irrelevant. It is no good having specific personal safety plans/ideas, if this is not founded upon a good general safety basis. Awareness of your environment is not specific to active shooter scenarios, it is something you should have all the time. Fire safety may not be sexy or trendy, but it should be something that concerns you as much as an active shooter situation.

Hiding is an appropriate survival strategy when involved in an active shooter scenario, but is shouldn’t compromise your ability to fight, if necessary – and this is where a simple piece of advice, such as run, hide, fight, can be interpreted too simplistically. These are not three separate individual choices, but a continuum of ideas, that may flow/run into each other. It is possible to hide in such a way that you are basically putting yourself in a coffin e.g. you can get inside a cabinet, or hide under a desk etc. In these situations, if you are noticed it will be game over for you – you have no ability to defend yourself/attack your assailant. You can also hide in a way that allows you to fight. If you work in an office or school environment there are several cheap ideas that can be implemented to help increase the survival chances of those who have to hide. Fitting the windows with blinds that can block sunlight, so that a room can remain in complete darkness will impair a shooter’s visibility (it may be worth smashing light bulbs if involved in an incident, so that a shooter can’t turn the lights on). Fitting doors with internal locks, that would require training to breach (most gunmen won’t have trained this skill), may cause a shooter to move on to another room etc. Even having something as simple as a door stop that can be wedged under a shut door will slow down a shooter’s entry, and possibly create the space and time for the “fight” component to be effective. The fight component doesn’t have to be sophisticated, and may involve nothing more than rushing the shooter (preferably from the side, as they enter the room), bear hugging them, and possibly the weapon, and taking them to ground etc. Short and long barrel disarming skills are good to have, but in certain situations big, simple, non-technical solutions have their place (especially if you are trying to co-ordinate untrained individuals).

Having a strategy, understanding how to tactically employ it, and what to do as a last resort, are the things that will increase your survival chances. If you don’t already possess good situational awareness, including identifying and knowing different escape routes, that can deal with general threats and dangers (including fire), you should forget about trying to train specifically for one type of threat, such as active shooters. Developing general personal safety skills, that can help you notice anything that is out of the ordinary, will allow you to potentially identify muggers and sexual predators, as well as active shooters. Good fire safety training will not only teach you how to disengage from an advancing fire, but also from an active shooter. This type of training may seem ordinary and boring, however it will develop the foundations, which will keep you safe from all manner of threats (most of which are more likely than active shooter scenarios). Don’t equate high consequence situations as being high risk ones.