What Could Possibly Go Wrong: North Lake College Active Shooter Drills

They are lucky there wasn’t a concealed carry student there to end the mock shooting in a real one.

Damn good thing one of those uninformed students didn’t respond with a gun to the “active shooter”. See how well gunfree zones protect admins from their own screw ups. And of course this proves, or should prove to these students, just how helpless they were in a gun free zone.

Your choices are build a fort with your book bag and pray the gunman spares you or pull the pistol out of your book bag and take control of your own fate. Which choice would you like to have?

Unannounced drills are extremely useful, because they give you an unvarnished view of how people will react.

Unannounced drills are extremely dangerous, because you don’t know how people will react.

Wow. Somebody needs a good, old-fashioned ass-chewing. Any CCW holder would have changed this clusterfvck from partial to complete. Want to know how people will react? 95% will panic, and those who are prepared won’t. Unarmed citizens are not prepared to deal with active shooters. I could care less what FEMA advises – I’m packing heat. Call me crazy, but a Biology 101 textbook loses a gunfight even worse than a knife.

In all the classes I’ve taught in two colleges, I always make time to teach active shooter response,whether it’s a criminal or business law class. I encourage them to consider what they have on them that could hurt(like 5+pound texts) and think about volleying them at the bad guy. Then, follow the missles immediately with a mass dogpile. I tell them to seriously consider the definition of the word”emergency”,and alter their lifestyles accordingly and immediately. I also encourage carrying pepper spray. Of course, I have a more effacacious response, but we don’t talk about that.

This is the funniest ever TTAG post, especially the part about the nitwit student who thought that turning turtle was going to help. In a Darwinian sense, it’s important to have people like that in society so that the BGs will have easy targets.

Used to work for an employer that prohibited carrying a firearm in the office. (I’m not saying if I did or did not carry, but I will mention that a NAA Mini-Mag revolver can be easily concealed in the watch pocket of your pants.) If the employer had tried one of these “unannounced drills” at our office, they would have needed to replace the window on my ground floor office. I figured that if someone came into the building shooting, I wasn’t about to try escaping through the only doors on the central long hall – talk about a shooting gallery. I would have thrown my chair through the non-opening window in my first-floor office, and left through that window.

And if I heard gunshots and screams, I wouldn’t have stopped to ask if it was real. The window would have been toast. This only works on a ground floor, or maybe one story up if you can take the drop, but I wouldn’t be using a common hallway and door to escape.

Unannounced? What if other students not involved in the game ran for their lives and someone tripped down the stairs or a female nursing student who was eight months pregnant went into labor?

I wonder what the post-shooting legal case would conclude if an armed student (who otherwise had a right to carry) shot an “attacker” believing he/she was going to the rescue of innocent people?

Some real idiots running the nation’s schools.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck in one of said gun free zones the majority of the time (There’s no campus rule against pocket knives, which I do carry, but that’s not exactly a match for a gun. The campus security told me they were fine with folks carrying their work knives anyways). I’ve watched the campus security (most of which I know) perform active shooter drills, and they seem pretty competent. But I’m not foolish enough to believe that if some crazed gunman showed up in one of our buildings and started shooting that they’d be able to defend anyone immediately.
Because of that I’ve looked at the layout of most of the class rooms I’m in. I’ve noted which way most of the doors open and which ones lock automatically. I know that most of the East side class room doors open into the room and are easily barricaded, where as with the West side class rooms you’d have to use most of the tables in the room to effectively block the room off (which could take time if I can’t get other people to help me). And if the shooter begins the killing in the room I’m in……Well my options pretty much suck.

I was part of an actual emergency evacuation of a high rise hotel in the Philippines due to a fire. My grade school teachers would have all been proud of the way I remembered “WALK! DON’T RUN!” as we left the school on dozens of fire drills. The stairwells were wet with water cascading down from above, so running would have most certainly resulted in falling down the stairs. The ability to NOT panic, remain calm, access the situation, and awareness of what is going on around you will serve you well in any emergency situation. I was asked by a fire inspector at my current place of employment if I knew all the possible exits in case of emergency. I replied that there were 4, the back door, the side door, the front door, and the window by my desk. He said “But that window does not open.” I replied that it would be open if needed, because I’d throw a chair through it. When it comes time to escape, do NOT be hesitant about breaking out a window. People escaped the World Trade center attack by making holes in plaster walls because doors were not accessable. It is of course nice to have tools, a firearm, a knife etc to protect yourself, but the MOST important thing to have is a PLAN!!!!! A PLAN to escape, or a plan to defend, or a plan to hide, ideally have all of them. This unannounced drill could have been a disaster, but the plus side of repeated drills is they induce calmness and avert panic. If every one practices evacuating a building often enough (like school fire drills), then everyone knows what to do and how to do it. Panic is largely caused by people not knowing what to do.

This is what you get when you expect someone else (like government) to take care of everything. You have no idea what is going on and are almost always incredibly vulnerable.

When no one except police are armed, there is a price to pay as well … like being scared sh!tless while a bunch of people run around shooting (blanks — unknown to the public) and still more people (police) run around shooting still more blanks.

Screw that.

What an idiotic idea! Somebody shoots a blank around me and I get half a chance, they will be injured. That fight or flight response is powerful and if I can’t run or if I fear for friends or family, I will fight and it won’t be fair. My company turned the HoustonSWAT down on one of these due to the dangers and the shear stupidity. The difference was it was going tobe announced and on a weekend.

I hope they never try one these around me or they are going to be pissed. If there is an active shooter and I’m carrying, he’s taking fire. If I’m escaping and the actor is getting in my way, he’s getting a taste of whatever weapon of opportunity I picked up and Marine Corps Martial Arts. The sad thing is the same would occur around any Marine because that’s what we are trained to do. The idiots who come up with these stupid ideas may want to think about that before they run another one of these anywhere.

A retired Marine myself and now a university professor I can tell you that in this age of terrorism and oft delayed “official” response, I know exactly what a combat veteran would do and it would get very ugly indeed for the terrorist role player. How a College Chancellor and campus Security Chief could possibly authorize such a foolish and dangerous escapade like this is beyond rational thought.

So what happens when somebody with a decent-size folding knife charges the fake “active shooter” and successfully aims for the neck?