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What's worse, to me, is the current insistence by many "school administrators" to change it to "Hide, Run." My daughter is a HS teacher. During their last "active shooter" drill, she was on lunch duty - with five other teachers, and about 120 students. The cafeteria has MULTIPLE exterior doors, as well as several interior doors from the rest of the school, and two doors from the kitchen (which has two doors leading to the rest of the school). During the drill, she was directed to herd all of those children into an adjacent "study hall" room, and hold them all there. The study hall has an entrance from the cafeteria and one from an interior hallway - no external exit. In other words, it's a killing field.
But, rather than have the students - all teenagers and mature enough to not wander off and get lost - LEAVE THE SIGHT OF THE SHOOTING, they're being herded into a densely crowded room with nothing between them and a possible shooter but wooden interior doors. How does that make any sense?
I actually got into a very heated discussion about this with the administrators at my kids' middle school when, during a drill, they did what I taught them - went out the nearest window and ran to hide in the adjacent woods - instead of hiding under their desks as the administration wanted them to do. It's like the administrators learned NOTHING from Columbine. Or any subsequent school shooting. "Hiding" is a prelude to dying, at best it's a hopeful approach that the threat won't come near where you have our kids hiding.
None of this even STARTS to touch the obvious, blatant truth that the only way to stop aggressive violent behavior is with aggressive violence that overwhelms the attacker. But, let's not even start to unpack that little gem...
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On that thought, when we had practice bomb threat drills, everyone just hovered about the entrances to get back to classes and labs. I mentioned that a secondary bomb or attack would be aimed at such a site or first responders. What a crazy idea! I told some kids, get as far away as you can. Let's not go to the big sign that said Evacuation Report Site.
So we had a threat and the campus police asked me if I would walk through the building to look for any weird things. I said, I will when the President and Academic VP were by my side.
Get off the campus! Run. If told to stay in place, recall those who did on 9/11. Sadly, faculty are useless for the most part. When they ran a Run, Hide, Fight class series - only 30% of those intellectual giants showed. When they did for the staff, most did - as it got them out of work and free donuts!
I did scare the Academic VP when I was a 'terrorist' for the campus police FOF. Helmeted, vest, guns (not real) - the dude walked by looking askance at the tactical mob. I raised my visor and said: HI, ED - he blanched.
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It's all about always having your coloring book and crayons with you and knowing where the nearest safe-space is.
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Well, it didn't work when you invade Klendathu with just fully auto Mini-14s versus a heavily armored beserker species. Or when a giant flame throwing bug eats your pontificating high school teacher.
Yeah, a few mini nukes and some underslung pump guns but - It's Bug Planet - AARRRGGGGHH!
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Actually, I believe it should be Assess then Run, Fight or Hide.
A portion of active shooter training should be devoted to (hopefully) teaching folks how to determine which tactic is best for the situation.
Personally, I think run (escape) should be the first consideration for unarmed folks in the conflict area.