I was inspired to write tis after a series of public shootings including the murder of over 20 staff and elementary students in Uvalde, Texas late last May. It’s a tragic trend that doesn’t show many signs of slowing down.
The only thing remotely resembling good news about this trend is there have been enough of these shootings for experts to learn what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, not all of the messaging or even the professional trainings, match the best practices. Whether you’re on your own, teaching your kids, or discussing this as you teach classes, here’s what we now know will best help somebody survive one of these events.
What We Know Doesn’t Work
There have been enough shootings for us to have data behind what behaviors improve your chances, and what don’t. Here are some that don’t.
Blind Obedience
If you’re in a shooting situation at work or at school, somebody in authority there might have instructions for you. Sometimes those instructions are good. Sometimes they are not.
It’s important to remember that school and company policies for these events are usually based around protecting that institution from lawsuits, not about saving individual lives. Consider each instruction or step in a safety plan on its own merits and decide for yourself if it’s actually making you safer.
If it isn’t, give yourself permission to take whatever steps you deem necessary to stay alive.
Hoping For the Best
Hope is not a plan, and you’re going to need a plan if you want to maximize your chances in a shooting event. Relying on hope takes two main roles in this area.
First, you can’t just hope you’ll never end up in a mass shooting. These events, though tragic and splashy on the news, are vanishingly rare, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan. Like many other aspects of our training, having a plan you never use is much better than needing a plan you never had.
Second, you can’t hope for the best in the middle of a shooting. Passive responses get people killed in these situations. Accept the responsibility to take action for your own safety, then take those actions.
Waiting For Police
The overwhelming majority of active shooter situations are over in five minutes or less. The average response time for law enforcement who know it’s an active shooter event is eight to eleven minutes. That means, most likely, it will all be over before the police arrive.
Which means it’s on you to do whatever needs to be done to save you from the shooter. As martial artists, we might feel the call to save others, too. That’s great, but you can’t rely on police to help you do it.
Run/Hide/Fight
This slogan for how to survive an active shooter is catchy, and well intentioned. It’s so famous they even made a really, really bad movie named after this advice.
But it’s bad advice. It’s such bad advice, it deserves an entire section of its own.
Why Run/Hide/Fight Is the Wrong Advice
Run/Hide/Fight is a sort of standard, knee-jerk response a lot of “experts” in shooting survival will trot out, but it has problems going back to its origins.
The system got its start for captured military pilots as they escaped and attempted to return to friendly territory. The advice was to run until they were too tired to run, then to hide and rest until they had enough energy to run some more. If, while resting or running, they could not avoid enemy patrols, then and only then were they trained to fight.
How much does an escaping POW have in common with a civilian stuck in an active shooting situation? I would argue not enough. The circumstances are different. The goals are different. The timeline is different.
For martial artists, the word “fight” conjures images of using our martial arts skills to quell an armed attacker. That might work in Kung Fu movies, but in real life it’s a good way to get yourself killed. More on that in a bit.
What Works Better
Some of the people I trust most who work in this area use the Escape/Deny/Attack method when teaching how to survive active shootings. This takes the most applicable parts of Run/Hide/Fight and combines them with a realistic approach to the situation.
Escape
Move, by whatever means are necessary, towards a safe place. Sometimes this means running. Sometimes it means crawling, climbing, or leaping. Sometimes it means holding still for a moment so you can time your movement. Move intelligently, and with a goal.
Some good goals for escape include breaking line of sight, getting behind cover, moving toward or through a lockable door, reaching a vehicle, or getting out of the building. Don’t just run. Run toward safety and use every method of mobility available to do it.
Deny
The trouble with Hide is that it’s very passive. It works for hunkering down to sleep while patrols range nearby but doesn’t work in an enclosed area with a murderer on the hunt. Deny means to deny the shooter access to you and to your position.
If you have no other resources, Deny can just mean hiding so they don’t know where you are. In most cases, though, you will have many additional options. Locking doors, setting up barricades, closing blinds, and creating booby traps are all ways to deny access in ways that can save your life.
Once you’ve denied access to your current position, it’s time to move back into Escape mode and put more distance between the shooter and you.
Attack
If escaping and denying don’t work, you have two choices. One is to hope the shooter chooses not to shoot you, which is not a good choice. The other is to attack them with everything you have.
Attack works better than fight here, because “fight” conjures images of fair combat between two willing combatants. This is not what you want when facing a murderer holding a gun. This is not time to test your crane stance or praying mantis skills.
Instead, it’s time to ambush the shooter while stacking everything possible in your favor. Attack en masse with everybody with you who’s willing. Use weapons. Create boobytraps. Pour water on the floor so he slips as he comes in. Blast him with a fire extinguisher, then hit him with it while he’s blind.
Use every advantage you can to attack the shooter from surprise, with overwhelming odds. You can be merciful and fair once he is helpless and disarmed.
One Last Little Thing
I said earlier that it’s a mistake to assume this can’t happen to you. That said, mass shootings kill approximately one tenth of one percent of firearm homicides each year. Since firearm homicides represent about two-thirds of murders in America, the chances of an active shooting happening to you are very slim.
This subject should not occupy much of your time or mental energy. But for many people, especially martial artists, the best way to prevent that is to internalize a plan of action for if it does.
