On Saturday night, I was teaching/talking about Krav Maga at the Jewish Alliance in Rhode Island. This was an interactive session/discussion, and I was asked what you should do if you find yourself as a member of a group, targeted in a mass/spree shooting such as that which happened in Paris the previous night, when terrorists went on the rampage. I also saw over the course of the day many self-defense schools on Facebook and social media urging people to start training in order to protect themselves from being the victim of similar incidents etc. Whenever there is an incident, such as that which happened in Paris, people ask the questions about what they should do, and self-defense schools and systems urge people to start training in order to protect themselves, however most schools and instructors don’t have the knowledge or the training to teach people what they should do in such situations, and don’t really cover these incidents as part of their regular training; and there are many legitimate reasons for this – even though these types of terrorist acts look to be on the rise, you are still more likely to be mugged/robbed than taken hostage, or find yourself part of a group that has been targeted in an active shooter situation etc. and whilst dealing with active shooter situations in theory are quite simple situations to deal with, the situational components “on the ground” can involve some complex decision making and threat/risk analysis, which doesn’t always lead to a successful outcome; something that is hard to sell to people who are looking for simple and straightforward answers and instructions e.g. understandably the group I was presenting to in Rhode Island, just wanted a plan of what to do that would keep them safe if they found themselves in such an incident regardless of the situational and environmental components, and in the time I had I could only give them a quick 5 minute response, which wasn’t able to do full justice to the subject. In saying this I do believe that reality based self-defense training can help you survive such incidents even if your training doesn’t directly touch upon terrorist and/or active shooter scenarios. I don’t believe that you need to practice long barrel weapon disarms in order to increase your survival chances; obviously if you are close enough to the shooter such knowledge is useful and beneficial (and it is something that I cover in my school), however in many instances this will not be the case as you will be too far away – and it would be wrong to think that this knowledge and practice alone would keep you safe or that it is the complete answer to dealing with active shooters. 

Any reality based self-defense training should teach you how to raise your situational awareness and threat recognition skills; if you are a self-defense instructor you should not just tell your students to be more aware, you must teach them how to be more aware e.g. what are the signals that indicate a threat or danger etc. Any attacker, whether they are a terrorist, a mugger, or a sexual assailant will want to use the element of surprise i.e. they will want to deny you the time and distance to react and respond. Being able to notice a person’s actions and behaviors that indicate violence will help you respond sooner. If you are some distance away from the threat, recognizing how other people respond to danger and violence will help increase your survival chances, as you want your cues to the presence of danger to come from them, before the actual threat or danger reaches you. Understanding how other people will react will actually give you a clue as to the location of the threat; those nearest will usually react first.

Good situational awareness should also include an understanding of your environment, including where the exits and entrances are. It may seem that in an active shooter scenario the only danger is the shooter however there are secondary dangers that may be at play. If everyone stampedes for the main exit and you follow, you may be caught in the crush of people and never make it to the door out. It may be that you get slowly crushed to death because of the mass of people, or you don’t get to the exit before the shooter reaches you. In clubs and bars where the doors open inwards, it doesn’t take too many people pressing/surging forward to prevent the door from being opened. Good situational awareness should allow you to see, or consider other exit points, such as windows and other doors etc. None of this type of training is directly about active shooters, it is simply about good situational awareness that should be trained as part of any reality based self-defense system.

Good self-defense training should also stress the importance of threat recognition, and the importance of gathering enough information to make good decisions. In a crowded space where shots are fired, it is not always immediately obvious as to where the shot comes from. If you are close to a wall, you may believe that the echo you hear, is the loudest noise and start moving/running away from it towards the threat/danger. Before responding in such a way, you need to orientate yourself as to where the actual danger is so that you can move away from it rather than towards it. I unfortunately still see some reality based self-defense instructors teach people to react to a threat immediately rather than discern what is actually going on in the situation e.g. if somebody sticks a knife to your throat or a gun to your head they do so for a reason, if they wanted to shoot you they would have done so from a distance, if they wanted to stab or slash you they would have done so without showing you the knife and putting it against you etc. If you immediately respond by trying to disarm them, you may have not picked out their accomplice standing behind them who has another weapon pointed at you etc. By acting you may end up dead, when all your assailant wanted was your wallet. Good self-defense training should train you as to how to quickly assess the situation you are in, before responding/acting.

Perhaps the most important skill that good self-defense training can equip you with is decisiveness. Any attacker has already decided what they are going to do, putting you somewhere behind them on the curve. This means you have to quickly commit to a course of action in order to be effective. This is a skill that your self-defense training should equip you with; once you have discerned what and where the threat is you act with full commitment.

Self-defense training doesn’t have to directly cover every scenario that you may possibly face, because it can develop universal skills which are appropriate in any dangerous situation. We human beings are extremely creative and can develop solutions to situations as they happen as long as we have the base skills to do so. I am reminded of the firefighter who developed a technique called “back burning” after he was caught in an approaching fire on grassland that was moving faster than he could run. In the moment that he realized he couldn’t out run it, he recognized that be setting fire to the grass around him, it would deprive the oncoming fire of flammable material and he might be able to survive. His solution was successful, and is now taught as a technique to deal with that type of situation. He was able to creatively think in a situation he’d never faced before because of the education and experience he had dealing with others. Good self-defense training should give you the underlying skills to face situations you’ve not experienced or been trained in such as terrorist attacks involving active shooters. Even if an instructor doesn’t have the direct knowledge to teach you what to do in such situations, they can help you develop skills that will increase your survival chances if you ever find yourself involved in such an incident.