Over the weekend we saw another mass shooting tragedy, this time in Colorado Springs where five people were killed in an LGBTQ nightclub, but in this terrible event, two individuals fought back and subdued the shooter. It is no doubt that the brave actions of these two heroes prevented the deaths of many more.
The title of this article (See below link) teases the reader to believe that we should rethink the Run, Hide, Fight active shooter response training, but the author goes on to demonstrate that it is an effective tool to address the active attacker. Obviously, in this recent act of violence, it worked.
There are numerous active shooter training programs out there but they all are very similar in that they all mimic, to a certain degree, our basic human response to survival. I wouldn’t go as far as say this is common sense, but most of us developed these skills of avoiding danger as young children. If we were afraid and in danger, we would run away, if we couldn’t run any longer or it wasn’t possible we would hide, and lastly, when necessary we would fight.
Systems such as ALICE – Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate; Run, Hide Fight; and Avoid, Deny, Defend have many similarities. Their dedicated trainers may disagree but the best part of all these trainings is that they get people thinking and talking about what they would do in active attacker situations. That is the most important thing we can do to mitigate these terrible events.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/rethinking-run-hide-fight/672196/