One of the great things about running short courses (we have just completed) the 5th week of our latest 6 week course, is the questions you get asked. In regular” classes people assume that their questions will eventually get answered, in short courses this is not the case and people come straight out and ask them. One I just received concerned a gun disarm – and I will answer this more clearly and practically on Wednesday in our hostage/abduction training – when you see someone else being held at gunpoint if and when should you act?

I want to rewind this question a bit and look at the role a bystander/witness has when confronted with aggression and violence towards another person, in a variety of situations: ones where you are in possession of the facts, ones where you aren't and ones where you have an emotional commitment to act.

As a kid, I was bullied and always wondered why people never felt compelled to act against the injustices I knew they saw and recognized. That was my viewpoint as a child. As an adult I can look back and understand how they saw things i.e. an aggressive and intimidating individual focusing on someone else, someone who wasnt them. Self-preservation is a strong motivator for inaction and it is built into our DNA and Survival system (I understand this now) – it is why you can never rely on anyone else helping you deal with a violent situation. At the time I might have screamed out about the injustice and unfairness of the situation however I now recognize and accept peoples inaction for what it was (I also recognize that it is up to the individual/target in question to form a survival strategy and not rely on someone else to save them). Nobody at the time should have felt guilty for not stepping in (those that added to the gossip and name calling behind my back or cheered on those who engaged in such violence another story…). People with high but unstable/questionable self-esteem (the common profile of the bully) are always dangerous and volatile– and are basically/always best left alone and avoided. A bystander has to be able to understand their role and position in a situation before trying to understand that of the victims. This is perhaps their greatest challenge.

There are also situations where we are placed in the role of bystander, where we are not in possession of all the facts and are unable to make a judgment call on what is occurring. Just because we see a person being held up at gunpoint, doesnt mean that they are the victim; what we could be witnessing is a plain clothes officer conducting the arrest of a dangerous criminal. In a bullying incident we may be aware of the dynamics of the situation whereas in the above scenario we are not. In both cases there are strong motivators not to act.

Your first priority as a bystander is to ensure your own safety. I always come back to the warning given in the safety instructions on airplanes, In the unlikely event of the air pressure in the cabin decreasing, oxygen masks will fall from in front of you, please make sure you secure your own mask before helping anyone else with theres.” It may seem that the safety instructions on planes are simple, basic and not very in depth however much thought has gone into them. They contain a very simple message: be responsible for your own safety and know where to exit the situation. Pretty good advice for life.

So when as a bystander do you act: when the moral, emotional and physical consequences of not acting are those that you are not prepared to live with. If not intervening in an incident of bullying is going to cause you a level of trauma and unease in your life that you are not prepared to live with act. If seeing a lone knife attacker going on a random” killing spree in a Kindergarten compels you to act, then act. If you cannot bear the consequences of somebody hurting a family member or friend, then act. But and this is a big but, ensure your own safety first. Another dead or injured bystander may not have been any use to anyone e.g. if I attempt a gun disarm to the side where no one is standing but have only practiced disarming on that side a few times, whereas I am well versed in disarming to the other side then I may be better to go to the side I feel more confident at even if it carries a higher risk to other bystanders. Failure means we will both definitely get shot.

The role of the bystander in incidents of violence is a tricky one. The aggressor/assailant and the target/victim have well defined roles, whereas those watching have to make decisions based on all three of the roles, not just their own. Again we will talk more about this in hostage/abduction scenarions tomorrow. See you on the mats.