Civilian Response to an Active Shooter

Respond Correctly, Quickly, and Efficiently

I was talking to a retired federal law enforcement officer after Mass today. I've written EOP's for churches and know how critical it is to have an armed expert at each church these days. I asked him if he carried. He raised his pants leg and showed me his gun and 2 magazines. "If they come in our church, I yell DOWN DOWN DOWN!!! Most church goers will drop, but the murderer will still stand and I will drop him quick."

I love that Americans like him and others are the most heavily armed people on earth. It is one of the basic pillars of American tactical civil defense (water, food, medical, shelter, guns.)

Unfortunately, active shooters exist, especially in urban areas of the U.S., and your chances of survival if they happen to you are higher if you prepare. More unfortunately, they are increasing in number. They are highly organized, encouraged by rogue politicians, and well funded by communists, domestic and foreign. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray is the philosophy many of them use to justify their extreme violence.

Their manifesto reads like a Marxist playbook. It is filled with tactics, techniques and procedures all calculated to completely destabilize the rule of law, and completely upset peace in the U.S. Their ultimate goal is to transform America into a Marxist state (“You will own nothing and be happy as the World Economic Forum puts it).

There are many ways for us to respond to this threat. We must recognize what it is we are facing. These are not unorganized groups of street thugs. They are trained professional shooters and assassins as we just saw in Washington, D.C. and Boulder, CO.

Whether it is a politically motived, criminally motivated, or just an insane active shooter, the result is the same: They kill indiscriminately, and you could be their target. By responding to an active shooter correctly, quickly, and efficiently, you can live to see another day and go home to your loved ones.

Enough active shootings have taken place we know how to take steps to live and avoid steps to die. I can't cover everything here, nor can survival be taught in a three hour class. But survival is a mindset that must be exercised every day. With training, you can survive a mass murder event. I pray some of the information below may be of use to you to keep you and your family safe.
Anglican Pastor: Why I Pack a Pistol for my Parish

Active Shooter Training

I went to a three-hour Response to an Active Shooter training at Calvary United Methodist Church in Mt. Airy, MD. I have attended similar training at the Emergency Operations Center in Westminster, MD, at my former church St. Michael's in Poplar Springs, MD, at the Mt. Airy Volunteer Fire Company, and at multiple other venues. One was even for the librarians in Howard County. Two hundred of them were taught how to respond to an active shooter if one came into the library and started shooting. Libraries are easy targets and active shooters know that.

I started doing research on active shooters and active shootings when a hoax one was called into my son's then high school. You can read about it here.

Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE)

Maryland State Police First Sergeant Jon Hill was the instructor for the Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE). He emphasized that it takes, on average, three minutes for the police to arrive at an active shooting. (The police arrived in one minute to the Capital Gazette shooting in Maryland...but the murderer was still able to kill 5 in that minute.)

Sgt. Hill taught a three hour class class on what to do, and what not to do, in those three minutes. He explained that you must be ready for the 3-minutes BEFORE the police arrive. In a word...if you cannot flee...have a plan to bum rush the mass murderer.

As he said, if the biggest, meanest Navy Seal stood in the middle of the gym where the class was held, and if the 340 people in attendance picked up items, threw them at him bum rushed him...numbers favor even the unarmed. This is a concept I heard years ago from an Israeli intel guy.

He was shocked how, back then, American children were being taught in public schools to hide and stay quiet. When a mass murderer burst into an Israeli school, the children were taught to pick up items and throw them at them and take them out. I'll leave it to you to figure out which approach saves more children's lives.
I include the one-page program below. It is brief but loaded with resources.

Staying Alive and The Unthinkable are both excellent books on how to prepare.

CAT Tourniquet

Two of the most important items you can purchase to prepare for and to survive an active shooter are a CAT tourniquet and lightweight armor plating for your (and your children's) backpack(s) or briefcase(s). I know that CAT tourniquet's save lives. My brother-in-law used them to save a number of guys on his A-Team in Afghanistan. The best ones have been tested in Afghanistan and Iraq and are made and sold by North American Rescue.

CAT Tourniquet's should be in your everyday carry (EDC) kit. Keep one in your car of truck too. If you keep it on your car or truck visor you can get to it if your vehicle rolls over. So many lives have been saved due to a tourniquet being applied and therefore, the person has not bled out and died. Don't listen to the dolts who say, "Oh, you just need a belt to staunch the bleeding." Get a CAT.

Lightweight Armor Plating

Lightweight armor plating is available for your backpack or briefcase. You can stand behind it and use it as a protective barrier when you rush the active shooter (murderer). CRYE Precision in Brooklyn, NY, USA makes a good one that I use. The advantage of the lightweight armor shown below is you can keep it in your backpack or brief case ready and available for when you need it.

Act FAST to Save Your Life

I am alive today because in a variety of situations where others have tried to kill me I acted...fast. From getting jumped by gangs for my paper route collection money in grade school to being attacked by 15 criminals with baseball bats while a crowd of 40 cheered them on in Georgetown, Washington DC to being jumped in Place Pigale in Paris by three guys with a knife to multiple other "situations" here and abroad, what saved my life was being aware that it was REAL.

People die or are injured everyday because they fail to realize that the situation is REAL. Just look up the "knockout" game in YouTube for proof.

When the gang in DC brought down the baseball bats on my head while screaming “KILL THAT WHITE MOTHERF###ER!!” the night before Mayor Marion Barry went on trial, through the blood and sweat I heard "THIS IS REAL AND THEY WANT TO KILL YOU! DO NOT GO DOWN OR THEY WILL KILLL YOU!" Time slowed down as my mind went into overdrive to protect me.

I grew up in North Philadelphia and had been jumped many times as a child so I flashed back, in nanoseconds, to that reality as they kept assaulting me. I made a quick and vital decision. I saw my wife and son (then a toddler...now 40 with his own baby) in my mind's eye through all the blood, pain, and sweat. For those first minutes, I said a quick prayer. I heard the Holy Spirit say again, “This is real” and “Do not go down.” Then I went insane.

I used my forehead, fists, elbows, knees, feet, teeth and hips to strike back as they came in wave after wave. Although I had trained in Taekwondo for years, they had me so packed in I could not even use my legs which were my strong point then. (I actually had to go for an AID's blood test a few days later as one of the criminal's teeth punctured my knuckle.)

I was also blessed that I had a brief case with twenty dollars in quarters for my wife to do laundry that night I was able to use to block their strikes, and an umbrella to strike back. I did 8’s with the umbrella and that drove them back several times.

As I was on my way to a job interview at a restaurant in Georgetown, I had a suit on. Stupidly, I had put my briefcase strap over my neck and 4 of the perps were choking the oxygen out of me the entire fight. In a fight like that you need plenty of oxygen in buckets, and it was all I could do to counterstrike while they choked off my air.

As they were a gang, I was fortunate enough to take out their gang leader. When they parted and he pulled his fist back to finish me off, I pushed the remaining spokes of the umbrella into the leaders face and twisted it. He screamed, fell back, and the fight went out of the rest of them. I took advantage of the new open space and fled.

As a waiter in a restaurant when I visited with a detective a week later said, "You were that guy. We went out to help you but you had 14 of them down."

I'm aware it could have ended differently. What is important here is not the details. What is important is to know that the decision you must take to not say, "This can't be happening!" but to say, "THIS IS REAL AND I HAVE TO FIGHT!" will make the difference as to whether you live or die in an assault…or an active shooter (murder) "event." With Christ as my witness, I can testify that that is true.

Decide to live. Decide to fight back. I got 56 stitches to my face and head that night but I lived for another day. When the female doctor began to put the stitches in my head and face and I finally felt safe, I had an adrenaline dump and I felt like a freight train hit me.

But I was alive.

Never Give Up

There are parallels to martial arts training in this country. Not me, but there were instructors who used to teach women to submit to a rapist. They argued back in the 1960's, mistakenly, that if the women submitted the rapist would go easy on them. Experience and statistics eventually proved that view very, very wrong.
The rapist will harm and kill the woman anyway.

Rapists, criminals, active shooters are not nice or reasonable. When I teach women, I always taught them to use their full arsenal to defend themselves, and to NEVER EVER give up. I tell you the same when it comes to an "active shooter" (mass murderer). Use your full arsenal to defend yourself.

Decide now to do so and plan accordingly.

Homeland Security Parable

Here’s the secret to homeland security.

My truck blew a tire

On a suicide curve

In a forest so remote

My cell phone would not work

And I was stuck in a forest.

The wind chill factor was minus 5.

I had to pick up my eight-year old Eamon

In a half hour from day care

Or I would be charged a year’s mortgage payment.

When I tried to get the spare tire off

The underside of the truck carriage,

It was frozen solid and would not budge.

My clothes became filthy in forest dirt

As I tried in vain for 45 minutes to remove the tire.

I went into the truck to get warm and think.

I had water and beef jerky in the truck cabin,

So I still had time. I had a full tank of gas for heat.

But the phone… I tried o call my wife. No signal.

I tried to call my brother. No signal.

Then…eureka…what about 911?

They must have a stronger skip tower.

It just makes sense.

I called 911.

“Where are you?”

In Bennet Regional Park.”

“You want the Park Police”

“No…wait…” but he transferred me.

“Park Police.”

“I’m stuck in Bennet Regional Park…”

“You want the regional Park Police.

We’re the federal Park Police.”

“No…wait…I can’t get a signal

From my cell phone where I am.

Can you call my wife and tell her

To pick up Eamon and to call USAA

To get me a tow truck out here”

“Sure.’ He took the information.

An hour later, she and the tow truck arrived.

But it was not over.

The tow truck took me to Pep Boys

Where no one spoke English and, worse,

No one wanted to fix the flat.

On to Wal-Mart where they stated

Emphatically they were closing in 10 minutes.

I told the truck driver to take me to God’s Country,

Mount Airy, where I moved 3 weeks after 911

When I saw biological attack circle maps

Did not reach when they hit Washington, D.C.

On the way the driver said,

“Wait. In Damascus there’s a garage I know

Where the guy is in my AA group.

You can’t say anything because

It’s all supposed to be anonymous.

You said you do volunteer civil defense, right?”

“Yeah.” I answered.

“Well then he has to help you. He’s a firefighter.

Law enforcement has to help each other

When they’re in a fix like you are.”

“But I’m not law enforcement.” I protested.

“I’m a volunteer for homeland defense.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He said. “He has to help you.”

A few minutes later, the firefighter

Who owned the garage opened the door,

My truck was in, and fixed, in minutes.

I returned the next day and bought

Four new tires from the same man.

That’s the secret to homeland defense.

You depend on other people,

And they depend on you.

Some call it the golden rule.

Ocean

Sometimes you need to write

but you’re stuck in traffic

Or the baby is screaming

so loud your head is about to explode

Or you have no pen or paper

so you run into a Royal Farm convenience store

and buy pen, paper, and coffee

but the coffee spills all over your paper

It happens.

Poems get burned by fascists, too,

great poems better than any I’ve ever written.

It happens.

In the end it may be how you treated your family

that determines how your poetry does anyway,

so don’t neglect them for that poem

When you’re no longer around,

they decide what poems are worth preserving,

and which go over to the dump.

Keep that in mind

the next time you just want your family

to go away so you can write that poem.

It’s like the baby about to be born

whose mother cries out

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGH

But instead of childbirth it is 495 traffic,

301 traffic, 50 traffic

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGH

I scream, trying to keep in mind

there is birth at the end of this journey, too

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGH

And just when the mother

thinks her body will break

and the pain that rips

her very being in half

and just when I think

the traffic will bring me

to road rage break

something opens ever so slightly

the head has popped out surely,

the road has begun to glide by in actual miles

and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGHGH

the body bursts forth

from the water of the womb

to the womb of the ocean

and here

renewal is granted

through the baptism

of brine and salt goodness

to clean away all these suburban sins

and as new as the idea of solid land

was at childbirth

is the newly-realized fact that here

is the precious ocean

the holy water of the holy water planet

the only water planet we know

Bow down as at birth

to taste its full bounty

as humbly enter this blue water

as the transparent water of your birth

Realize how that first body

birth water was taken

from this saltwater body.

Grant, if for a moment,

how dependent your life

and the lives of your family

are on this water.

As in a bad marriage

it is never too late

to begin the relationship again

once humility, love, discipline,

grace and respect come with you

to the gaps in the waves.