Cincinnati shooting, another senseless act of violence… My thoughts go out to all who were affected, but thoughts and prayers are not enough. I was literally in the middle of writing an e-mail to the Superintendent of one of Montana’s school districts in regards to bulk Survive A Shooting book sales and the Reflex Protect training we did the first half of for his district yesterday when I got a phone call. (This district is the first Montana school district to implement Reflex Protect throughout all the schools and buses in their district.) The phone call was from Scott Sloan of the Scott Sloan Show on 700WLW in Cincinnati, OH regarding the shooting this morning in Cincinnati.
While many facts are still unknown, and like I said on the radio, these investigations can often take a lot of time, and sadly like the Las Vegas shooting investigation, not answer all of the questions we have. But this is what I do know, the Cincinnati shooting is another senseless act of violence.
It saddens and sickens me that people think the answer to their problems is to kill people. Especially sickening is to kill innocent people that have absolutely nothing to do with these sick individual’s perceived problems. And I’m not using “sick” in medical terms, although I believe mental illness is a contributing factor to many of these tragic incidents, I’m using “sick” as in, ANYONE who wants to hurt or kill innocent people is sick. I have stronger feelings and words, but will refrain from using them here.
I was talking with a couple of other trainers yesterday after training 70 some teachers in the use of Reflex Protect as a component to their active threat and armed intruder response plan and training. We all agreed that we wished this training wasn’t needed. We wished we knew the solution to stop others from wanting to kill innocent people. We wished my book Survive A Shooting wasn’t needed. We wished Reflex Protect wasn’t needed. We wished people would just stop hurting and killing each other. Sadly, we acknowledged that our wishes were not going to come true. History shows us that people have been preying on others and killing each other as far back as you can go, and it doesn’t look like any change is coming. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. And as a father I worry about my daughter in this world almost every day.
What I do know, and what I do understand, is we can do things to better prepare ourselves. We can practice safe habits and have a plan for when the unthinkable happens. That’s why I wrote Survive a Shooting. That’s why I teach workplace violence and active shooter response classes. That’s why I teach people how to enjoy life safely. And that’s why I’ve teamed up with Reflex Protect to offer a non-lethal option to people to defend themselves.
We must all take personal responsibility for our own safety. And if we are in leadership positions, we should provide training and tools for those that work for us to keep them safe. This not only increases moral and reduces anxiety, it has been shown that workplace violence and active shooter response training saves organizations money. I’ll be writing and talking about that more too. It is morally and fiscally sound to prepare our employees through training and the implementation of making locations more secure.
The Cincinnati shooting this morning is just one more, and sadly not the last, that illustrates the need of doing something proactive to protect yourself, your loved ones, and those who work with or for you. And again, my thoughts go out to all those affected by today’s shooting, and all those from shootings past.
Last October in Las Vegas, Steven Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree, fired more than 1,000 rounds into a crowd of 22,000 concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. He killed 58 people and injured some 800 more. Months later, investigators still don’t know what Paddock’s motive for the shooting was.
The Capital Gazette Shooting in Annapolis, MD, is another tragic incident where five lives were lost, and countless other affected by this senseless and needless violence. I truly wish I wasn’t writing and teaching about this topic because it wasn’t needed. I’d gladly teach mediation skills, negotiation skills, and effective communication as those are topics I’ve taught and written about since law school. However, because these killing continue, and statistics prove they are more frequent than they use to be, I will do everything I can to help people be better prepared and increase their survivability.
Angela McQueen, a teacher, took down a gunman inside Mattoon High School, an Illinois high school, after he opened fire in the school’s cafeteria on Wednesday, September 20, 2017, at about 11:30 a.m. Police say Angela McQueen’s quick response saved lives. A 16-year-old student was shot and later released from the hospital, and the suspect, who the police said was a student, is in custody. The shooter, whose identity was being withheld since he is a minor, acted alone.
Recent active shooter court rulings throughout the country have allowed negligence suits filed by victims of Active Shooters to proceed against employers for failing to provide defensive training to their employees. In other words, companies can no longer avoid their corporate responsibility to provide training on both how to spot potential active shooters and on how react if so confronted.