Unfortunately, much of the advice available on the web is downright ridiculous.
You mean like this:
STEP #8: Play Dead. If you’re shot, lie down and play dead. With any luck, the shooter will not come over and finish you off.
Uh, no. If I’m shot, and it’s possible, I’m going with:
STEP #7: RUN! If the shooter actively shoots at you, run away in a zigzag pattern. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to hit something that’s moving like that.
I’ll play dead when I am.
Obviously “Get the f*ck out of there” is obviously #1.
And I can’t help but notice that nowhere does it mention “Shoot Back!”.
STEP # 7 leaves out a very important part.
Run while yelling “Serpentine!” like Peter Falk.
Turning and running away may keep you alive, but it also means you are pitting yourself against everyone else. Kinda like that old joke, ‘how fast do you have to run to get away from a grizzly? Just faster than the other guy’
It goes against human nature, but the best way to keep everyone alive is to turn towards the attacker and charge. The heroes on United 93 figured that lesson out just in time.
Run, as fast as possible. It is next to impossible for an untrained perp to hit a moving target, let alone hit enough to kill. Tears me up when my son has to go through “lockdown” drills in school. We are teaching him otherwise.
“Tears me up when my son has to go through “lockdown” drills in school.”
I share your pain on this one jpa. One of my children has graduated from college. The other one has another year, so he’s experienced them at the JC that he attends.
Under Minnesota law, you are required to make “reasonable” efforts to get away. What is “reasonable?” It means “to a jury, sitting in a warm, well-lit courtroom with all the time they need to decide”.
The law in MN also says that one must “reasonably” fear death or great bodily harm to ones’ self or others to use lethal force. So if you’re at a Rainbow and some leftyblogger starts shooting at a Congressperson, do you retreat, or do you fire to save the “others?” Good question; the answer depends, more or less, on how anti-gun your DA is, and how many cases of potential mistaken judgement can be found in your decision.
Mitch, I think you also forgot to mention that how media will convict you in the public forum will also depend on whether Congressperson had an “R’ or a “D” behind their name.
What Mitch says, and “stand your ground” can’t come quickly enough to Minnesota.
Interesting that in a gun-happy state like Arizona, there were apparently no permit holders around. Sad.
At the Night Writer Academy for Girls we didn’t have lock-down drills. My daughters did, however, learn to load, shoot and clean a gun. NB: the Mall Diva is an excellent shot with a rifle. Tiger Lilly, on the other hand, would prefer to kick the stuffing out of you, and has a thing for knives.
Your decision should also depend on your backdrop.
I usually leave my backdrop at home.
To quote a (good, service-oriented) cop friend of mine: “The world is full of backstops. Trouble is, lots of ’ems got families.” (I guess you had to be there; he said that in a that’s why I take chances with my own life sort of way, rather than a sucks to be an innocent bystander sort.)
bubbasan: There was at least one armed carry permit holder. But by the time he would have been able to shoot, a bunch of people had already jumped the lunatic; he, reasonably, decided not to. (See above comment about backstops.)
As to the “play dead” notion, that didn’t work in Luby’s; the killer was putting anchor shots in people who were down, alive and dead.