Tag Archives: active

Civilian Response To Active Shooters Situations

In recent weeks, with active shooter events having occurred at a mall, a church and as children got off a school bus, I’ve seen some postings in various online forums from civilians who hold concealed carry permits asking, “How should we react to this?” The question they are asking, in general, is what they should be doing if they’re on the scene and the shooting starts. I was at first conflicted as to how to answer this question. Then, having developed an answer, I strongly prefaced it with “this is just my opinion“. There are far too many “what if”s that come into play when considering a response to an active shooter – even for police officers who are off duty. Those “what if”s multiply tenfold for a civilian who is legally armed and happens to be on hand when a shooting starts. What to do? Continue reading →

Motivation and…?

Leave a reply

…Age

Just recently, as many readers know, I’ve renewed my focus on my health. I am not participating in any type of fad diet, nor using any diet “program.” I’m not paying into CrossFit, Isometrix, Tone-ex, yada yada. I’m using that ancient and under-appreciated method that has been proven over millennia: I’m eating cleaner and exercising more.

The challenge I sometimes find is my motivation waning. As I considered that this morning, I realized that my maintaining motivation seems more difficult now than it did when I was… say… 19. Of course, there’s a major difference: I don’t have a Drill Sergeant yelling at me now. Continue reading →

Good and Bad Expiration Dates

Leave a reply

This morning I saw a quote that said, “Even bad days have an expiration date of 24 hours.” The editor in me wondered if a time limit was a date and then I realized I was missing the point. The point is that even bad days have a limit to them; they only last a maximum of 24 hours and then it’s a new day. But the thoughts made me think about two other things: the expiration dates we use for food and, far more importantly, our own expiration date. Continue reading →

Miles Instead of Years

1 Reply

Some years back when I was responsible for fleet maintenance for my police agency, we kept track of the service life of our patrol vehicles by how many miles they had on them. Another agency I knew of tracked the service life of their patrol vehicles according to service hours. We scheduled maintenance according to miles. They performed service in accordance with service hours. Back then, everyone who worked fleet maintenance kind of thought that the “service hours” method was kind of silly. Sure, it made sense to do that for things like boats and aircraft, but police cruisers? Why? Continue reading →

Fish In A Barrel

Leave a reply

“It’ll be just like shooting fish in a barrel.” We here that phrase used all the time. It’s just a figure of speech. What does it mean? Something will be easy to do. Why is shooting fish in a barrel easy? Because you have a “target rich environment.” For you folks who have never been in a combat-oriented position, that means you have an area so full of targets that you can shoot randomly into it and you’re still likely to hit a target. Now, I’d like to discuss two ways that this applies to active shooter events and our preparation/response protocols for them. Continue reading →

Time Equal Lives

Leave a reply

The one thing we can all count on is change. It’s the only constant in life. Every day… something is going to change. We have no choice, if we’re going to live successful lives, but to adapt to the change and keep on. This is perhaps not as evident anywhere else as it is in how active shooters attack. As an Active Shooter Response Instructor with approaching 18 years of experience teaching such, I’ve done my share of studying historical active shooter attacks, doing my best to analyze tactics so that the most efficient response protocols possible can be developed and trained. Continue reading →

Pro-Safety: Screw Politics

Leave a reply

Nine days ago – as I type this – a single gunman went into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and shot 31 people. He killed 17 and wounded 14 others. Unlike so many other active shooters, he didn’t commit suicide but was arrested. He was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. What makes this active shooter event different from others? There are a few characteristics of it in its totality and I’m going to review them, but the one thing I want to focus on throughout this piece is: VERY LITTLE focus has been given to the 17 dead and 14 wounded. MOST of the focus has been on the weapon used, gun control efforts and then, almost as an afterthought, some of the heroic actions taken during the event by faculty and students as they protected others. Continue reading →

Teaching People To Be Helpless

Leave a reply

Most recently I had a conversation with a gentleman who is a Marine, a veteran police psychologist and an avid supporter of self-defense. The conversation started because I had been asking questions about families and the environment set dependent on whether the family itself – that being the mother and father (or other primary care-givers) – either taught self-reliance or they taught dependence. I was amazed to find out that studies had been done which revealed children were born predisposed in their reactions to challenging events. I’m having to be very careful in my wording but to simplify it some, what I discovered was that some babies are born apparently less fearful of certain events than others. When such children are raised in households that teach self-reliance and over-coming challenge, then the adults that result stand a better chance of dealing with traumatic events without negative side-effects. Continue reading →

America’s Future

Leave a reply

As I stood amongst some peers last week, bragging without shame about my children, one of the fellows kindly listening to me made the following statement: “The hope of our country is in our children, and if we don’t drastically change the societal message they’re getting, our future looks dim.” My very first reaction was to absolutely agree with him. My second reaction was the fearful realization of what that statement meant. I take great faith from some of the legislation that has been passed at the federal and state levels across recent years, but on the other hand, I’ve seen more than I’m interested in seeing on television and in movies. And most of what I’ve seen that I have no use for seems to be what the teenagers of today are drawn to like they’re addicted. The sad truth is that those movies, music videos, etc. are not ABOUT anything. They GLORIFY something, but most often that something is gore, sex, drugs, money, or some other extremely temporary “good time”. The combination of all of that really made me stop and think about our current teenage generation and what we should expect from them in about two decades when they’re running this country – or just taking over. Continue reading →

The Power of An Aware And Active Mind

1 Reply

How many times have you been out in public some place – it could be the mall, a city street, a restaurant – and you see those folks who are so busy looking at their cell phones that they are completely oblivious to what’s going on around them? How many times have you seen someone walking along and you can tell they’re not really there? That mentally they are somewhere else; they are “day dreaming?” How many times have you caught yourself doing the same? All too often we disconnect from the real world in ways that lull our mind into a sleep-like state; at least where our awareness is concerned. In doing so, we cost ourselves the potential experience of seeing beauty or blessings. Continue reading →