This video was filmed live on Facebook on 8/2/17 as part of a Go Live Every Day in August challenge. An active shooter event, or different active threat may cause a crowd to become dangerous or deadly. The information in this live video is not only applicable to active threats, but other situations with crowds and swarms of people. And because it was filmed live, sometimes there are other tangents due to comments and thoughts that come up. Learn from the video and enjoy live safely.
There is a reason “Move!” is in the center of the Active Shooter Triangle used in the Survive a Shooting course and featured on the Survive a Shooting posters. (See them over in the right sidebar.)
In an active shooter situation, you must do something immediately. You must move! When the adrenaline rush hits, people go into the fight or flight response, but there is another “f” and that is freeze. We can’t afford to freeze in such situations. Remembering to breathe, having a plan, and prior training are all important to reduce or prevent this freeze reaction. Freezing and remaining motionless can mean death. Movement can save your life.
What Movement Saves Lives?
Any movement is better than freezing, but what you do will be determined by your location to the shooter and your environment. You can escape, which could be running away or going out a window. You might move quickly to lock and barricade the door to deny the shooter access to you by keeping him out. If the shooter is right there, your best option my be to attack back and take him out. You attack back with anything available. If you are armed, use what you have. If unarmed, grab an improvised weapon or just use the tools you were born with by tackling the shooter and pounding his head into the floor with hammer fists. What you do is sometimes not as important as doing something. In almost every situation, doing something is going to be better than doing nothing.
I remember when a report came out regarding a plan to throw cans at an armed intruder if he came into a classroom. Some people were quick to criticize this. I’m not going to criticize it, because it’s better than not moving! Creating chaos and movement make it extremely difficult to shoot someone. Being hit with cans is going to mess up the killer’s OODA Loop and make it difficult to focus on his original task. This can create the opening to then tackle and take out the shooter. This is a lot better than jumping under desks to hide and hope.
Bottom Line
Movement saves lives, so move. Do something. Escape, deny, or attack back. I’m always ecstatic when people in my classes say, “I never thought of that, but I could do it if I had to…” That is what the Survive a Shooting course (read review) is all about. It provides people with options to increase their chances of surviving. Moving is key. Movement saves lives!
Movement Saves Lives – FaceBook Live video recorded 8/1/17
This is why Alain Burrese created the Survive A Shooting course:
After the July 2012 mass shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Alain made and posted this video to his Best Safety Tips YouTube channel. (Later moved to the Survive and Defend channel.)
Alain made a commitment right then to do something to help people so they wouldn’t have to live in fear and be helpless victims when these sick killers took out their frustrations and sick notions against innocent people.
Less than six months later, December 2012, the terrible Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred. Being a father of an elementary school age daughter, this senseless killing hit Alain hard and he reconfirmed that he must do something to help people.
At this time, Alain had considerable experience teaching people. He’d taught conflict resolution, safety and self-defense classes and courses, as well as the martial art of Hapkido. But these Active Shooter and Active Threat situations needed something a bit different. So to add to his knowledge of safety and self-defense, Alain started studying Active Shooter incidents and how to respond to them.
This study included books, DVD programs, on-line courses, and articles (both on-line and magazines) on the topic. It included networking and discussing the topic with other experts. It also included attending an 8-hour Emergency Response To An Armed Intruder course taught by Safariland Training Group certified instructors. Alain then went through the instructor training and became certified himself. Over the last three and a half years, Alain has taught as part of a team that has taught this 8-hour course to around 4,000 community members on what to do when the unthinkable happens.
Alain started appearing on radio shows around the country to share information to help people when these events happen. He’s been on the radio in Florida, New York, California, Montana, Nevada, Michigan, Texas, and he continues to appear as time permits.
Alain found with all of this study that many of the resources lacked what he wanted to see in a book on the topic, so he is working on his book Survive A Shooting. It will be the definitive book resource for people on this topic. But just reading a book or watching a short video on YouTube isn’t enough.
Literally thousands of evaluations of the course Alain and the team were teaching commented on how empowering the training was. But because that course takes a team to teach, logistically it is difficult to get it out to more organizations. The 8-hour time commitment is also difficult for many businesses and organizations.
Alain wanted a course that would still empower people and show them that people don’t have to be helpless victims and that there are things that can be done before, during and after these horrific events to increase your odds of surviving. Alain wanted to empower people and teach them to be survivors.
The Survive a Shooting course does just that. It is only 4 hours long, so it is much easier for many businesses and organizations to fit into their schedules. Alain can bring this course to businesses and organizations all over the world. Bring him in and he can teach your people. So logistically it is also much easier than the course taught by the team of instructors.
Alain is saddened by the increase in these horrific events. But he is glad that his goal, standing out in front of the Batman movie poster, of helping people in these situations is now materializing on such a large scale. Helping thousands of people is not enough, he wants to help tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. People should not be helpless victims!
To increase these numbers into the hundreds of thousands, or millions, yes, let’s think big and help millions, Alain will finish the book to introduce the basic information to people in that format. He will continue to teach as many as he can, but realizing that he is limited to so many days a year, he is also creating a Train the Trainer course so others will be able to learn from him and use the Survive a Shooting course as a platform and class to teach their own organizations and communities. He’s also looking at developing an on-line course to help others in that format.
Yes, the goal and commitment Alain made in front of that movie theater is materializing. Stay tuned for these new developments to occur, but right now, go ahead and book Alain to teach your group or organization while he still has time slots on his calendar.
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.
One of the allegations in the lawsuit against the town of Newtown and the Newtown Board of Education was lack of training. The lawsuit also alleges the town and school board were negligent in not having a more secure entrance to the school because it did not have bulletproof glass on the front windows and for having classroom doors that couldn’t be locked from the inside. (All things covered in the Survive a Shooting course.)
The 66-page lawsuit filed after the terrible Sandy Hook shooting lists a variety of reasons why the plaintiffs consider the school system to have been negligent, resulting in the many deaths there.
According to the lawsuit, school officials failed to provide the school with classroom doors that could be locked from the inside, thereby making the “lockdown” aspect of that school’s safety procedures virtually impossible to follow.
The lawsuit also alleges that school officials failed to sufficiently train and supervise the staff on the proper way to implement lockdown and evacuation plans. Classrooms in the school could only be locked from the outside with a key, in violation of state law, it alleges.
According to an article by James Cameron, CPP, recent active shooter court rulings relative to liability lawsuits have shown active shooter scenarios are now considered a “recognizable hazard” to employees.
One of the regulations under the Occupational Safety & Health Administration Section OSHA of the United States Department of Labor *General Duty Clause, Section 5 (a)(1) states, “Each employer shall furnish to each of his/her employees, employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his/her employees”.
Example from Cameron of recent active shooter court rulings:
In a July 2, 2013 court decision from Hennepin County, Minneapolis, MN, the court found fault with the employer for negligence and failing to train their employees. District Court Judge Denise Reilly allowed two negligence counts to proceed against the company, Accent Signage. The civil case was brought before the courts by the victims’ family members in response to an active shooter incident at a place of business.
This incident occurred as the gunman, Andrew Engeldinger, walked into his place of employment on September 27, 2012 with a pistol. Once inside, Engeldinger shot and killed numerous individuals before taking his own life. Court rulings like the one above places the liability on the employer to train their employees to recognize the indicators of the potential active shooter and how to respond when they are faced with an actual active shooter incident.
The charges basically follow the OSHA guidelines set forth under the “General Duty Clause” that the employer needed to make training available and reasonable safeguards to be put in place. One of the victims, Beneke’s family sued the Accent Signage and Engeldinger’s estate in February. Releasing the shooters estate from liability and holding the company responsible is a new shift in thoughts regarding pre-planning and prevention. Engeldinger shot and killed Beneke, and four other employees and co-workers along with a UPS deliveryman before committing suicide on September 27, 2012.
This case has now settled for an undisclosed amount of money by Accent Signage to the Beneke family.
Based on these recent active shooter court rulings, and OSHA recommendations, employers should implement training and notification programs/systems to educate employees on the known risks for workplace violence and the steps that can be taken by employees to minimize the potential for workplace violence. This includes being trained on how to effectively respond to workplace emergencies to include active shooter situations.
Never fight back? What are you on? Every time I hear this I yell and scream at the television and the person saying it. (Okay, that’s a little exaggeration, but not much.)
Here is a paragraph from the Survive A Shooting book I’m working on that prompted me to write this blog:
There are some out there that teach that you should never attack back. (They usually refer to “fight” from the “Run – Hide – Fight” model.) Never fight? I’ve seen them on television spouting off this nonsense with the word “expert” after their name. I vehemently disagree with this this so-called expert advice to never fight back. I just told you there is evidence that armed and unarmed civilians have stopped active shooters. The scum that are killing innocent people are cowards and they want victims that won’t fight back. Surprise them and send them to their maker sooner than they anticipated without the body count they wanted.
The part where I say, I just told you…, refers to earlier in the chapter where I wrote about both the statistics from the FBI, and watching the news, that show armed and unarmed civilians have stopped active shooters. This proves that the things I’m writing about in the book, and the things I teach in the Survive A Shooting course save lives. This includes Attacking Back!
Never fight? Ridiculous! If escaping and denying access to you are not options, you must attack back with everything you have. If armed, great. If not, arm yourself with anything available. If no improvised weapons are available you either aren’t being creative enough or you are someplace pretty barren and remote. But you still have your body, so attack back with what you have. Never just be a victim.
I agree that escaping and denying access by locking down and barricading are preferred options to physically confronting an active shooter, especially if you are not armed with a firearm yourself. Unfortunately, we don’t always get our preferred options. I’d prefer that no one ever started shooting innocent people again, but sadly I don’t think that will be the case either.
Never fight? Not hardly. Attacking Back is the ONLY acceptable option in some situations. It’s that or die a victim, and to me that’s not an option. If I am going to die, I’m going to go out doing everything I can to stop the killer or at least take him with me. I hope you have that attitude too.
This is the interview I did with Brian Copeland in San Francisco regarding the shooting they had there yesterday at the UPS facility. Thoughts go out to all the friends and family of those killed and injured.
This is the interview I did earlier today on the Live with Renk Show. The show is on WBCK 95.3 in Battle Creek, MI. We discussed the Active Shooter event in Washington DC yesterday where Congressman Steve Scalise and three others were shot while practicing for the fund raising baseball game.
This is the interview I did today on the Ronn Owens Show on KGO-AM in San Francisco. We discussed yesterday’s active shooter at the UPS facility and what you can do in such a situation. It was a good interview and I hope to be on with Ronn again in the future.
With two shootings today, one in Washington DC and another in San Francisco, I was a guest on a couple of radio shows to discuss what you can do in an active shooter event. This is the interview I did with Brett Winterble on his show on AM 760 KFMB out of San Diego, CA. This is the second time I’ve been on Brett’s show and look forward to talking with him again.
Movement Saves Lives!
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.
Never fight back? What are you on? Every time I hear this I yell and scream at the television and the person saying it. (Okay, that’s a little exaggeration, but not much.)
This is the interview I did with Brian Copeland in San Francisco regarding the shooting they had there yesterday at the UPS facility. Thoughts go out to all the friends and family of those killed and injured.
This is the interview I did earlier today on the Live with Renk Show. The show is on WBCK 95.3 in Battle Creek, MI. We discussed the Active Shooter event in Washington DC yesterday where Congressman Steve Scalise and three others were shot while practicing for the fund raising baseball game.
This is the interview I did today on the Ronn Owens Show on KGO-AM in San Francisco. We discussed yesterday’s active shooter at the UPS facility and what you can do in such a situation. It was a good interview and I hope to be on with Ronn again in the future.
With two shootings today, one in Washington DC and another in San Francisco, I was a guest on a couple of radio shows to discuss what you can do in an active shooter event. This is the interview I did with Brett Winterble on his show on AM 760 KFMB out of San Diego, CA. This is the second time I’ve been on Brett’s show and look forward to talking with him again.