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joe817 wrote:

Excaliber wrote:This well reasoned article by Mas Ayoob pretty well summarizes the situation:

The Israeli Answer to Terrorism

This should be required reading by all and prospective CHL holders. Thank you for posting this Excaliber. Fascinating article with much food for thought.

My pleasure, Joe.

This well reasoned article by Mas Ayoob pretty well summarizes the situation:

The Israeli Answer to Terrorism

Mithras61 wrote:Just remember:

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!

It doesn't matter if it is 2 or 5 minutes.

How many aimed shots can you take in 2 minutes?
Do you really believe that some thug can take less?
Are you willing to bet your child's life on that answer?

It's important to hold folks accountable for the consequences of their plans.

When someone suggests a plan for responding to an active shooter incident, examine it for the likely casualty count, which is determined by adding up the time in minutes and multiplying by 4 (the average number of shots fired by an active shooter per minute - some fire much faster). If the plan calls for letting the folks who are confronted and can't escape call a time out and wait for the police, here's what you need to look at:

- time for first call to be successfully communicated to law enforcement
- time for dispatch to assess a cascade of calls with conflicting information and dispatch first 1 or 2 units
- travel time for units to arrive at scene
- time for enough units to arrive at scene to meet department's active shooter entry guidelines
- time for entry team to make entry and neutralize offender

The total minutes times 4 figure you arrive at here is the casualty figure the planner considers acceptable. You may or may not agree with the numbers he is willing to tolerate.

7 minutes total for the arrival of the first officer is a great response time. Few departments can consistently do better than that, other than by sheer luck in isolated situations. Also keep in mind that arrival does not equal effective intervention. Many departments forbid a single officer to make an entry, and many require 4 or more. Some departments don't have that many officers on duty, let alone available to respond in time. It goes downhill from there.

Here are some facts that might help in these considerations:

In a study of approximately 100 active shooter incidents by a police trainer in Ohio, police intervention made a difference in casualty counts in 6% of the cases because active shooters typically plan their attacks to be over before police can intervene in order to guarantee their success.

Plans that totally fail 94% of the time don't meet my requirements for a good idea.

The factor that most influenced the outcome of an incident was immediate action by people at the scene at the time. If armed good guys are present, the outcome has a good chance of being much less bad than it would have been otherwise because they can effectively engage from a distance. If the good guys have to go with throwing staplers and textbooks in order to close the distance and engage a shooter hand to hand while waiting for police, that may still be the best option for them, but you can expect higher casualties.

This article concerning some of the leading edge thinking in the law enforcement community may be of interest to our members.