OK, I told you I had more thoughts on this active shooter business and I want to
share them with you today. This is a follow-up article to THIS one.
Sadly, few people really have even the remotest concept of just how critical proper
defensive training is in a fluid, dynamic situation like an active shooter scenario. I
don't care how well you can shoot. I don't care if you're an NRA instructor. It
doesn't matter that you used to be in the military or were the captain of your
college pistol team (yeah, they used to do that!) or even if you were a police
officer. What matters is how well you can address a violent threat in the midst of a
mass of screaming, hysterical people.
Now, I don't mean to be disrespectful to NRA instructors, cops or soldiers. I would
never try to take anything away from them. They are each well trained and
qualified to do specific things for specific reasons while working with specific people.
It's just that defensive shooting, especially when it involves active shooters, is not
the same as combat in the jungles and deserts, shooting on a range or walking the
streets of the city. The majority of your rank and file police officers qualify maybe
twice a year at a stationary target under very strict supervision and very, very few
of them had even the smallest modicum of active shooter training outside of
classroom discussion. That is the one thing, one of the biggest myths in the
firearms world, that just because someone spent years in any of the above
professions that they are automatically, uniquely qualified in defensive shooting
instruction or active shooter interdiction (I'm going to call it ASI for the remainder
of this article). Experience is a great teacher but that doesn't always mean that the
experienced are great teachers.
Good accurate shooting is a very small part of this equation. Virtually anyone can
shoot reasonably accurately in a matter of just a few hours with good, patient
instruction. However, standing on a level range with the sun shining and the birds
singing, shooting at a paper target that is not particularly angry with you hardly
prepares you for neutralizing one or more religious zealots or drug-crazed fanatics
in a crowd of people who are desperately trying to get out of the building and make
it home safely. Target shooting does NOT prepare you for this! There are just way
too many things that can go horribly wrong in a heartbeat. Think about this, can
you reliably make a head shot on a person from a standing position at 15 or 20
yards, or even more, in a room full of terrified people? Can you do it when you can
only see half of the head in a hostage situation? Can you reliably engage multiple
moving targets while you are also moving? In all honesty, no one can 100% of the
time but I think I make my point. Without competent training, practice and the
proper mindset, there is literally no possibility of accomplishing any of these feats
outside of that “one-in-a-million” lucky shot.
The tactics employed in defensive shooting, especially ASI, are best described as an
art, not a science. In saying that, it means that sound tactical decisions are for the
thinking person. One can study tactics to help in making those sound decisions but
there may be 100 ways to accomplish the same goal correctly. You will rarely, if
ever, do the exact same thing in any 2 scenarios and it would be impossible to plan
or study for everything that you may run into. If it WERE possible, it would mean
that, theoretically, everyone could have read the same book, including the bad guy,
thereby making the possibility of ever achieving a tactical advantage very difficult.
So, with that in mind, let’s look at what Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says are the
2 definitions of tactics:
1: a device for accomplishing an end
2: a method of employing forces in combat
Both of these definitions apply to some degree to defensive handgunning in that
when our assailant made the decision to cause us or someone else harm, the
confrontation has turned into a combat situation and whatever strategy that we
employ will be the tactics that we hope will be accomplishing an end... an end to
the threat.
Why do I share all this with you? Because if you carry a gun for self-defense (which
I strongly advocate) and have not had some degree of training outside of
recreational shooting, you are more likely to be a liability (read danger) to yourself
and everyone around you if you try to be a hero in one if these crucial, dynamic
situations. Personal defense is one thing, but ASI is quite another. For your own
safety and everyone around you, you may find that retreating to a room or safe
area away from the shooter and using your weapon only for the defense of yourself
and others in your area, may not only be the safest thing to do but would make it
less likely that you would interfere with those that are more qualified to deal with
this event.
It doesn't make you a coward, it makes you smart and responsible!
