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Originally Posted by Marquezj16
What if you were armed and in an active shooter situation?
Would you actively try to engage the shooter?
How would you respond?
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It's my job to train on these scenarios and to pray to a forgiving God that I never have to use my training. So, with the distilled knowledge of my instructors, here goes. I am a resource officer in a local high school, with 10 years in this duty assignment. Our training over the years has changed, with increased study of the active shooter phenomena.
My job is to locate, engage, and neutralize the shooter. I can do this through one of two ways. Either by killing him, or pushing him into a place where he can't harm innocents. It's my job to maneuver against him and bring fire upon him; to take his focus off the innocents and to bring it on to myself. If I'm lucky enough, and good enough, the tactical problem will be over before the SWAT team gets there.
If he goes to ground and barricades himself somewhere in the building, it becomes a barricaded shooter scenario. I'm going to hold him there until the cavalry arrives. In short, if he's not actively shooting, he's not an active shooter. I'll wait till help gets there before I go charging in.
Our training shows that, generally, an active shooter believes that he's in a firearm-free zone, and he's the only one there that has a gun. Having someone lob bullets at him disrupts his plan and allows the innocents a chance at retreat. The best plan, from my perspective, is to violently close with him and take him out before he can fulfill his plan.
There is some evidence that the best course of action (from a citizen standpoint) is to attack the shooter. Disrupt his plan. Make him change his attack. If you're unarmed, this is heroic and not everyone is built to do this. I won't judge anyone who runs and hides during an active shooting scenario.
In broad, general terms, I think that the film is accurate and reasonably presented.
If you want to read more about actual lessons learned, go to the
Hard Tactics Blog. They've got some good research there.