Active Shooter Response Session 5: Defensive Shooting

If you regularly carry a firearm at the workplace or when you move about in the public space it is obviously very possible that you would get caught in a spree killer event and have a gun at the ready. And using a gun in the middle of a spree killer event, absolutely, could be the most efficient way to respond if you need to. Now, just because you have a gun doesn't mean that you should think of yourself as being obligated to help others. Your first priority is probably still gonna be to try to evade and then to try to barricade to get away from the bad guy or make it so that the bad guy can't get to you. And certainly if you have family members who are in danger, you're probably going to wanna take action.

If you have other people you care about, you're probably gonna wanna move in the direction that they are or possibly in the direction of the gunfire. But remember, that's not your job. If you don't have flashy red and blue lights on your car you aren't wearing a shiny badge, you aren't in uniform, it's not your job to run towards the bang bang sounds. If you think about putting yourself in harm's way and actually causing more chaos or causing a problem or putting yourself into a situation where you're way beyond your own capabilities, it probably should be a little bit less exciting for you to think about being a hero or going in to save the day. You don't have an obligation to do more than protect yourself unless you extend that obligation to other people that you care about.

And if you wanna take the position that, "Well I care about people in general and someone's hurting people in general over there, especially if you're in a situation where it's a school attack, someone's in a hospital, maybe an amusement park, a zoo someplace where you know that there are innocent children being slaughtered, I can certainly see how you would be compelled to wanna take action. And I can't say that I wouldn't wanna be compelled to take action either. But what I don't wanna do is think that it's somehow my job or my responsibility or that I'm now training to go in and be a hero. Or the idea of the Sheepdog, you've probably heard about Colonel Grossman has been a friend of mine for a long time, he's been a contributor at personal defense network. And in fact, he's even someone that I quoted when I gave a speech, when I graduated from the Law Enforcement Academy back in the 1990s.

And I told the story of the Sheepdog. But it's important to put it in context. The Sheepdog is the one who overlooks the flock. It's the person in uniform. It's not the sheep.

If you're just the everyday guy, you might be a ram, you might be able to kick, you might have big horns, you might be ready to fight if you need to, but it's not your job and it's not your role to be a hero. And especially for people who carry guns I think it's important to talk about that. But if you find yourself in a position where you're gonna take action, when find yourself in a position where you have no option but to respond appropriately with your firearm, I want you to think about what your capabilities really are. We think about the concealed firearms that most people carry around and protect themselves or people in their immediate vicinity and family every day, we're thinking about personal defense. The idea that someone's gonna show up and try to hurt you in relatively close quarters.

That means that they're probably aren't gonna be any people between you and that person. That person's probably presenting themselves to you as an attacker, which means they're also gonna be presenting themselves to you as a target. They're probably making it easier for you to see them because there are certainly trying to get your attention because they're trying to hurt you or take something from you or hurt someone who's with you. And the idea of shooting them at nine to 15 feet as as the average defensive gun use with no one between you and them, when they're facing you, certainly doesn't seem that daunting. And in fact, we know that we can train people to a reasonable level, to be able to do that with typical small hand guns, or even full-size hand guns that they can conceal on their body carrying a backpack or carrying a purse relatively easily.

But we think about using a gun in an active shooter situation. We think about a situation where there is a crowd, where someone's not specifically targeting you where there may be many people in the environment between you and the bad guy or behind the bad guy relative to your line of attack, things change pretty dramatically, pretty quickly. The idea of using a gun in a crowd is something that we've talked about before. And I want you to take a look at this video that talks about the best practices if you are in a crowd situation and you feel compelled to move into a position to stop an attacker with your concealed carry firearm think about how you're gonna do it. Watch this video.

Now of course, in a true worst case scenario, public shooting, active shooter environment, you may need to defend yourself. You carry your concealed firearm, you're ready to protect yourself or others if you need to, and here's the situation. But it's gonna be a little different than what you usually train for if you've got a crowd of people moving around and a gunman moving through that crowd and you can't get away, you can't hide, you've got to take action. Imminent force is being used against you or maybe one of your family members in that environment, and you're gonna take action with your firearm. If we look down range at this setup, this is the kind of thing you can do to put yourself in that mindset to start to understand what the perceived penalty for missing is going to be like.

It's not shooting a steel target, it's not shooting a paper target. It's actually shooting a moving target in the midst of other moving objects that aren't threats. In front of, behind and beside the actual target that you're gonna have to take out, if you're going to take action. Now, just a glance here, just moving around and let's pick out that pink balloon. There's one pink balloon.

Let that be the threat in our mind. As I move around in this space sometimes I can see the pink balloon, sometimes I can see part of it, and every once in a while, I can just about see all of it. Just looking at that, thinking about this subcompact firearm that I'm carrying for personal defense, usually up close, usually a single bad guy, usually facing me, this is pretty intimidating. Thinking about taking a shot into a six or eight in circle that that balloon represents, that high center chest area at this, I don't know, 30, 35 feet mark, really isn't that big a deal in general. I wouldn't sweat that that much, even with video cameras or students around or anything else.

But trying to hit that target while it's moving a little bit, we think about that active shooter. He may be moving through and stopping and shooting. Boom. He just stopped, I have an opportunity to take a shot. But if somebody is in the way, or if somebody is right behind him, I may not really have an opportunity.

Maybe the person shooting a shotgun and they stopped to reload, they reach into their pocket, they just stopped. They're still moving a little bit but that chest area that I'm gonna be shooting at or maybe even that headshot that I'm gonna try to take is relatively stable. So that's the situation we've got. We've got a pink balloon attached to a wooden stick, it's relatively stable, but it still represents some of that dynamic environment we're gonna deal with, with our target in an active shooter situation. Of course, all the balloons around represent that non threat.

I suggest you try this. It's not gonna be very easy the first time, it's not gonna be very easy to last time and it's certainly not gonna be very easy to take a shot in the midst of a crowd in a public space. One of the things we say about the balance of speed and precision is that sometimes you're just gonna be in a situation that you can't take the shot. Coming out into a training environment like this and actually practicing it trying to get the shot, it's going to be worth doing. Let's see how it's gonna look.

One of the things you're gonna see is that it's important to be patient as well and wait for the right time. In this case, that wind just picked up. I don't have any shot at all. Balloon's back out, I maneuver myself so I can get a sort of clear shot. I get a sort of clean background, I wait for that target to come out.

As you saw that first shot missed. Probably went a little high. The angle I had on the balloon, the balloon was covered up in the front, there was a blue balloon behind it, I wasn't able to take a clean shot through the center of it, my first shot probably sailed just an inch or two over it. That's very realistic. If I were to come out here and pretend that I can just whip my gun out and take that shot in the midst of those balloons and we edit it that way, it would probably give you a false sense of my capability and definitely lead you down a path of a false sense of confidence in this actual situation.

Taking a shot with a bad guy in a crowd is something that you probably don't wanna do. If you find yourself forced to do it, you need to ahead of time think about the discipline, the patience, the amount of precision, the amount of deviation control that you're going to have to put into that situation. And remember, you may be needing to take that shot to save your family member or to save yourself. The pressure is gonna be an immense. Simply sitting down at a keyboard and posting in an internet forum about how you would act in the middle of an active shooter situation is a lot different than really thinking about what's gonna happen if your family is involved in that environment and it's even a lot different than coming out here and really testing your skills in that situation.

Next thing we're gonna do, we're gonna keep doing the same thing. I'm just gonna pick a different target. Let's say that I'm gonna decide that the red balloon, there's one red balloon, I'm gonna use that as my new target. Well, if I'm standing here, I can shoot that red balloon all day long. But there's no point in really practicing shooting a moving balloon at 25 feet, 30 feet, 35 feet that's not the scenario.

The scenario is, that balloon is in the middle of the crowd. Now I'm over here, I'm gonna get a different angle, I'm gonna extend, I'm gonna lower myself a little bit to see the balloon a little bit better. Take that shot. Of course, I get the slide lock. I always wanna be able to recognize slide lock, get that gun back into battery, simulate that situation.

When you're out here training with these balloons remember, it's not supposed to be easy. If you find yourself like, "Oh, look, I can shoot that one blue balloon. It's off to the side, that'll be easy." That's not the shot you're supposed to be practicing. Try this next time you're out at the range. Get some balloons, get some sticks, make sure you have a clear backstop.

And when you change levels, make sure you're not shooting over your berm. Training to defend yourself in an active shooter situation using your concealed carry firearms should push your abilities to their absolute limits. In addition to thinking about moving through that crowd so you can get into a position to defend yourself or other people in that environment from this spree killer, you might also wanna think about the angles that you're going to be shooting at when you get into a position to shoot. Remember, just because you can see the bad guy clearly doesn't mean that there won't be other people moving in the environment. And you always have to remember about the potential background just in case you miss the bad guy or if your bullet should happen to push through.

Here's another clip on dealing with multiple people in an environment with an attacker that you're going to shoot. Let's look at some specific considerations for shooting in a crowded environment. If you're in a spree killing situation or even a act of personal violence when there's a lot of other people around, you obviously need to take into account what's going to happen to your bullets even if you do hit the bad guy and happened to go through him or of course, if you miss. If you think about a situation where we've got people behind the threat, especially a situation where maybe this person is trying to hurt them. If we were to take action, draw our firearm and take a shot and end up hitting one of the other people in the environment, that's just going to maximize the tragedy.

Okay, I'm gonna have Kelly come in now. And we're gonna to take a look at what some of those special considerations are going to be for the crowd environment. Now normally, if we think about just training on the range, dealing with a target that's directly in front of us and shooting to stop the threat without regard for who's around us, we're simply gonna draw, extend, and fire a shot. Go, if we go ahead and put a shot through the high center chest here. Good and holster.

And predictably, shot perfect in the high center chest, but clearly if that had gone through the bad guy and hurt this bystander, or gone through the bad guy and hurt this bystander, we don't really get a win. The fact is that we might plan on hitting the bad guy with every shot, and we might also assume that our rounds are going to perform appropriately and stay inside the bad guy, but that might not be the case. A lot of different factors come into play. The width of the bad guy, the power of the bullet, the close distance that we may be in, the clothing of bad guy is wearing, all of these things can affect the performance of the bullet. And don't forget some bullets could actually fail to perform appropriately and over penetrate because of thicker clothing.

If you're using a hollow point design that gets clogged and acts as a ball ammunition, acts as a solid round it might push all the way through a bad guy because of the thick clothing they were wearing as opposed to what we might think intuitively that the bullet would be more likely to stop inside of someone who's wearing thick clothing. So there's a lot of variables here. Now normally the way we deal with this situation is to sidestep. If I were in a situation where maybe the bad guy were turned around, they were holding someone I cared about at gunpoint, I wouldn't wanna shoot through the bad guy at the person I cared about, so I might sidestep. But in a crowd that may still not solve the problem.

All right. So Kelly, give you a good sidestep to the left and two shots in that high center chest on your own. Good. Again, two shots into the bad guy. One dead center, one just a little bit off to the right, no problems here, but as we look at the target in the back, we can see that we've got one shot going right into the chest area of this bystander.

So regardless of how much lateral movement we do in a crowd situation, we may not be able to get offline enough. And of course, this all assumes that the bullet actually hits the bad guy. It may not be that the bullet even strikes the bad guy no matter how much you practice, how good you are, especially in a crowd environment, maybe somebody bumps into you as you were about to shoot, maybe somebody bumps into the bad guy, or the bad guy flinches between shots during your string of fire. Even if you just miss a little bit, you could endanger people who were standing behind the person you were actually trying to stop. And of course that takes this spree attack tragedy and makes it even worse.

Let's take a look and see what happens if you do miss a little bit with some side step to the left. Again, just that miss of a couple of inches something that's completely plausible, something that could happen in a real dynamic situation results in damage to the bystander. So this is if everything's performing perfectly with the bullet, we can't assume that the bullets actually gonna hit the bad guy. The crowd environment is fraught with a lot of problems for us. We don't wanna be so worried about it though that we don't take action.

One of the best ways that you can get into a situation where you can use your firearm responsibly in the crowd environment to stop the attacker is to lower yourself to another plane. If you lower yourself by taking a knee, what this is gonna do is give you a completely different backstop than you would have. If you were standing up straight. In this situation here, as Kelly's drawing her gun, she drops to a knee, takes a little extra time and takes a headshot. Back in and holster.

Great. And as we can see, we've got a shot straight into the head exactly where we'd want it. Even at that upward angle, it's coming in, going into the area that we want between the corners of the eyes and the top of the mouth. And if we look back here, you can see this targets even set up a little bit taller than me, so probably about six foot tall. And the bullet hole is well above that six foot tall person.

And obviously then no one in the background is going to be hurt either. The reality is in a crowd situation, you're probably gonna be shooting slower and taking the time to take that headshot, maybe the thing you wanna do even in an extremely close range situation. Taking the shot that you need to take and only taking a shot that you feel that you need to take and taking a shot that you feel you can make are important things in any shooting situation but they're even more important in a crowd. Even if you're not dealing with a crowd situation if you have a firearm in the public space and you're trapped in a spree killer event, and you're gonna shoot in defense of someone else, a lot of things begin to change. You may think about trying to control someone maybe patrol your kid, maybe control your wife, maybe just take anyone else out of your way so that they're not part of the equation and hold them out of the way and shoot one handed.

This is something that maybe you've only trained in the context of being injured. Well, those situations obviously can be a lot different. We've got two clips now that I want you to watch from previously recorded material. And these specifically come from our DVD on shooting in defense of others. The first one is on defending a child.

Thinking about what you would do and how you would shoot and how you would stand in position yourself if you were holding a small child, but still using your defensive firearm to stop a spree killer. We've talked about what to do if you have a full-size person, a full grown adult or even an older child that you can just push behind you pin against you if you need to defend them while you're shooting with one hand. We've talked about then the best thing to do would really be to step on their foot, pin against them, or just try to keep in contact if you had to do a reload, you'd be able to bring this hand back and then regain control of them. If we have a smaller child we have someone that's not able to run away that we're not able to just push behind us that we actually need to pick up, that's gonna change things significantly. Now, the way I normally see this trained is usually pretty choreographed.

And it's usually with something very lightweight. If you think about a newborn, some one-year-old maybe even a two-year-old that you're carrying around anyway that may be something that weighs very little, that child may weigh five pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds less than 20 pounds. But if we're gonna think about a child that's actually walking around the mall with you, walking around in a public environment, that's where we get to heavier weights. We get to maybe the three-year-old, maybe the five or six year old. The child that you can't just sweep behind you but that you actually are to need to pick up and control, while you engage that threat.

You're gonna need to protect this person with your body as much as you can. Get your body in front of this person. Now, this is a kettle baby. It's a kettlebell, it weighs 35 pounds and it's got a handle. But that's a great way to start thinking about exactly how much weight and exactly how the leverage is gonna work, when you think about controlling that little person that you wanna protect in a worst case scenario.

Of course we can move up to the 50 pounder, same thing. I step in front of the child, I reach back, maybe I'm grabbing them up under the arm. Maybe I'm scooping up my arm all the way around them. I'm gonna scoop up and then come up and protect. Maybe throw them behind me.

Maybe carry them behind my back. Of course, that takes a lot more effort and energy. Carrying around 50 pounds in that awkward angle that's gonna take some effort. So we think about how that's gonna integrate with our shooting. It's obviously going to have an effect on our balance of speed and precision.

I'm gonna get my shooting glasses on and then I'm gonna go through some drills. I'm gonna have my training partner Don give me an up command. I'm gonna be moving around, I'm gonna move in a figure eight, I'm gonna start with the 35 pounder and then I'm gonna go to the 50 pounder. So with the 35 pound kettle baby in my environment I'm just gonna move around. When I get the up command, I'm gonna protect the kettlebell and take my shots one handed.

Up! Now, while that may not be a complete one-to-one on exactly what I'm gonna need to do if I have a person behind me an actual child that I'm trying to protect, it does certainly increase the ante over. Just simply pushing my hand back here or carrying around a doll that weighs a pound and a half and that I can squeeze and hold on to by the hoodie or whatever it is it's wearing. This really raises the ante on making your training more realistic. Now, the other thing we have to be aware of is, I cannot just drop my kettle baby and do a two handed reload.

So now I'm gonna have to think about how do I do a one-handed reload while moving, while still providing protection to that child that I'm trying to hold on to. Let's take a look. Up! Now in this case, if you don't have the skills developed for one-handed reloads, you can't just jump into doing this in a dynamic environment, while you're trying to hold 35 pounds. But if you have developed your one-handed reload skills here's a perfect opportunity to test them under some realistic stress.

If you have children, you move around with them and you're also armed, these are the kinds of drills you should build up to. Maybe your children a little older, let's try it with a 50 pounder. Up! A lot more weight, a lot more strain. A big difference in my balance of speed and precision, as I'm trying to balance that weight behind me and protect as much as possible.

At a certain point, you're not gonna be able to support the weight of your child, the balance of having to deal with that human being behind you protecting them with your torso and shooting squared off like we normally do. And that's where we're gonna change the technique. Let's say that I had a heavier child or less strength, less leverage. Here's a technique that might work for you to be able to get the shots you need to get while still providing protection. Up!

In this case, I'm providing protection to the baby, I've got the baby up in front of my torso and I'm shooting back over my shoulder. As you can see, this isn't very different in terms of my head's relationship to the gun. I'm still at full extension in, in parallel with my site but I've changed the orientation of my body to provide protection with my torso to that child that's over here while I'm shooting. Keeping the child up in front of my body. Providing protection to a small child is probably gonna mean getting that child up off the ground and using your support hand to actually hold them behind your torso.

Learning to shoot one-handed, possibly reload one-handed, even deal with malfunctions one-handed is part of being able to protect them in a public environment. Now you may not have kettlebells. You may not have access to that kind of equipment but everybody's got an old duffel bag laying around or just maybe just an old garbage bag. Maybe a laundry bag, whatever you got. So I'm gonna have a backpack.

This one happens to have a 20 pound bag of kitty litter in it. This is gonna give us a really good simulation of that kind of weight from a small child. And the bag itself simulate some clothing that we might be able to grab a hold of or we may choose to pick the baby up and cradle it and then put it in some place, some position that we can protect the baby. So I'm gonna let chuck go through he's just going to kind of meander around in here on the up command, he's gonna secure the child, protect the child and get the hits he needs to get. Up!

Good and now if we look at this, so we're just gonna have you turn face the camera. We see that there is a lot of baby exposed here. We're gonna get the baby behind the back as much as we can. Exactly. Now the baby's protected.

So think about that. Go ahead Dan. Now, of course, Chuck's done extensive training prior to this drill in one handed reloads. So we're gonna see him go through his one handed reload when he reaches slide lock. Meander.

Up! Protect the baby, excellent! Eyes on the threat, try to move around a little bit. Find that magazine, good, keep the baby behind you. Keep the baby behind you.

Tap, rack. Excellent. Assess and holster. Good work! Skills in isolation aren't enough.

We need to be able to develop skills that will help us in our context of use. And working with this improvised baby simulator certainly will help us do that if we have small children in our environment and we carry a gun for personal protection. This next clip deals with training to defend someone that you're pushing behind you. Obviously not a child that you're gonna pick up but somebody that you care about that you wanna get out of the line of fire, keep out of harm's way and then use your firearm to defend both of you. And again, this is from our shooting in defense of others DVD.

Now if we think about the real context of shooting to protect somebody else it's unlikely that as soon as I get touched or pulled up behind the person who's trying to protect me that I'm just gonna rock solid, stay still. But that's how we build our skill of course to be safe because this is relatively complex. Whenever we learn a new skill, we always slow down and make sure it's safe. So when we had Chuck out here a moment ago, I was very static. He'd pulled me behind him and I would just stand here and let him get his shooting done.

Now we're gonna do it a little differently. Don still gonna mind the action of responding to the threat and then pushing me out of the way. But once he begins to shoot, once that gun is extended and he's got it clear of his holster it's out in front of him, pointed down range, I'm then going to using his arm and his shoulder, maybe his hip, I'm gonna start giving him some energy. So while he's engaging the threat, it's gonna simulate the idea that if you were holding me against your back, that I'm actually here trying not to get shot. I'm scared.

I'm in a dynamic situation. I'm moving. I may be trying to run away. I may not understand the safest place for me is right here behind Dan while he takes care of the threat. And I may be trying to get out of the place.

So if I'm moving around, that's obviously gonna have a significant effect on his balance of speed and precision. Dan is completely responsible for his shots. If he's being swung around by me, he's gonna need to take more time, effort and energy, and only press that trigger when he truly feels that he can get the hit he needs to get. So let's try it. Again, you're gonna do this startle response, you're gonna do that simulation of pushing me out of the way and just keep your hand back here and I'm gonna start slow and then build up the energy throughout several commands.

Standby. Up. And remember, you wanna think about staying squared off and not bleeding out when you extend with one hand. Don't worry about grabbing me, just simulate that and then I'm gonna take control you want your hands back here. Up!

Now we're gonna up the ante a little bit. Maybe I'm holding on to him, maybe he's trying to pull him away. And he's still able to maintain his balance of speed and precision. And then we're gonna really get a little more aggressive as far as trying to pull away from his grip. Up!

Excellent. Now, a couple of things about being the training partner in this drill. One, you wanna make sure that that gun is up and clear of the body before you start engaging with any energy. As you saw, I started very slowly with very little manipulation. I'm also manipulating the shoulder and the hips, right?

I'm not pushing the head around because we could have an injury to the neck, I'm not just yanking on the hand from back here where we can injure the wrist, the shoulder, the elbow. I'm also not down here, messing around with the legs where I can affect the balance and have the gun go up over the berm. So what we're trying to do here is, gradually build the amount of energy, the amount of interaction we're having with this person as if we were that scared person they're trying to control, and I'm just trying to get away from the bad man with the gun or the bad man with the knife. So understanding how to apply your deviation control one handed shooting in the protection of someone else with dynamic energy, actually involved certainly ups the ante. Now we're gonna go even a step higher.

My commands could include a number. Don's been working on being able to put the brakes on, being extremely precise, taking that extremely precise simulated headshot on the numbers when he needs to. We're gonna integrate that again, with a little bit of energy. Up! Six!

And assess. Not easy. Not easy at all to try to hit that two and a half or three and circle while you've got somebody moving you around. But that's exactly the kind of situation you might be faced with if you're shooting in the protection of others one-handed and you need a precise shot. In addition to the mechanics of shooting one-handed and thinking about applying those mechanical shooting techniques to the situations where you're holding someone or pushing someone behind you, we also need to think about the context of how we're going to be assisting others while we're armed.

You know, if you think about it, it'd be very easy to get sucked into a situation where someone that we care about is hurt and we want to immediately help them. But maybe helping them is actually gonna put us in more danger and therefore eventually put them in more danger as well. If you think about it, you've got a family member who's been shot in the leg, they're off to the side and you wanna help them. But if you go running out from behind cover to help them, and you then get shot and taken out of the fight, you've put yourself in more danger. And if the bad guy decides to walk around the room and finish everyone off as tragically happens in so many spree killing events, now you're both injured or maybe you've been killed and that person's going to eventually die as well.

Why? Because you exposed yourself to unnecessary danger trying to help someone else. Take a look at this next clip that deals with a more disciplined and appropriate approach to assisting others inside of a violent encounter event even when you're armed. Now, let's say that you're in that active shooter situation and you need to act to assist someone else. Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a coworker, maybe it's just someone that's been injured or is about to be killed and you've decided that the appropriate thing to do is take action.

Now we're not here to discuss whether or not that's the right thing to do, or even whether legally you're able to do that at that moment. What we're gonna say is once you've decided to do that how can you best do it? How can you maintain your safety and still be of assistance to that other person in the active shooter environment? Well, if I'm inside of a room around a corner, near a building or behind a vehicle that represents at least concealment and quite possibly and probably covered to some extent, and I see a person over here who needs help. Now, you don't need to have elaborate forests on forest scenarios.

You don't need to have role players, you don't need to have any of that. That's one of the reasons why in our approach to dealing with active shooter response strategies, you've just got me, you've got targets, you've got a vehicle out on the range, all of these things are things that you can recreate to train this exact situation to start thinking about this scenario as it will be. Well, if I'm standing here behind the vehicle I'm at least concealed and probably covered from that threat. If I look over here and I see someone who needs assistance I'm here in my ready position, I might even be down on the ground in a ready position, I'm in a place where I don't need to defend myself but I've decided that I am gonna take action to help that person on the ground. Maybe they've been shot, maybe they're wounded, maybe they're cowering behind a vehicle and this person's clearly coming towards them, shooting around the vehicle, shooting the vehicle up maybe getting ready to penetrate that concealment.

Here's the problem. If I just rush out there and decide to help that person by giving them medical aid or I'm gonna grab them and pull them back behind this vehicle I'm exposing myself to danger. If I have the means to defend myself and if I've decided to do it I need to keep myself as safe as possible, stop that threat, get that threat away from me and from the other person in order to be of the most assistance to them. So prior to coming out, I'm simply gonna use my good shooting around cover skills, lead out, drive out, get that hit that I need to get, maybe it's gonna be multiple hits that I need to get. Maybe I need to drive up.

Drive several shots in the bad guy. Once the bad has stopped, once I'm in the situation where I can bring the gun back in make sure everybody knows I'm not the bad guy, make sure that the bad guys down, now I can act much more freely to really be able to give assistance to that person. And ultimately the biggest assistance is, I have stopped the threat from being able to hurt them. That's how you wanna think about defending others or assisting others in that environment. Don't rush out and try to be the hero, don't run out there and grab a hold of them, trying to drag them back in only to become a victim yourself.

Think about what you're doing. If you have the means to defend yourself the best way that you can help the person that you were immediately focused on and everyone else in the environment, including yourself is going to be to stop the threat. Deal with the threat first, direct assertive response to that bad guy in an active shooter environment is the way that that situation is gonna end as quickly as possible. The next thing we have to think about when it comes to shooting in defense of others is that when someone's attacking you, when someone's presenting themselves to you as a threat, you have a pretty predictable target area set that you're gonna think about. Either the high center chest, or the center of the head.

And overwhelmingly, if someone's trying to hurt you in a personal violent attack, they're gonna be facing you. And these areas will be available to you to target. These are the areas that we generally train on. We think about the average defensive targets that we use. We train on chest shots from the front or head shots from the front.

But the bad guy may not be facing you. The bad guy may be facing over here. And you have to think about shooting to the side of the head. The bad guy may be facing in this direction, and you have to think about shooting to the side to the torso. And if we think about the high center chest and our preferred target area, the area underneath the collarbone above the diaphragm and in between the nipples, or if you drew a line just across the points of the shoulder and put that area under the head, then that wide open hand, that eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper that high plate that ends up right here, this is our preferred target area.

But if I turn to the side, then that preferred target area ends up potentially behind my arm. It ends up potentially through the shoulder and behind the body here. The idea is to get into the middle of the torso. And the human torso is a three-dimensional oval. We talk about things like behavioral cover.

The idea that you might wanna think about shooting into the body even though the good stuff is behind the shoulder. And it's really easy to get into the torso through the arm. We know this. So we think about where the points of the shoulder are when someone's extending their arm out here, when someone's shooting a rifle here, shooting through the arm, into the shoulder area and then again, just under the arm into the upper chest this represents our preferred target area. Training on three-dimensional targets instead of two dimensional ones is rarely all that important in terms of defending yourself straight onto an attacker.

When you think about defending others a three-dimensional target can really help you understand how the bullet will travel through the human body. Let's take a look at this next clip that deals with that. Target areas on a three-dimensional target. Now obviously there's a big difference between this standard two-dimensional target that's pretty plain and non-threatening and this three-dimensional target with clearly a replica gun in it's hand and some sinister fashion accessories here. The idea is that training on a three-dimensional target though has to be very specific because there is a lot more costs, there's a lot more setup, time, effort, and energy.

We need to think about what can we really gain by training on this type of target versus this type of target. Now, one thing that people immediately say is that behaviorally, this helps you get into a mode or a zone where you're actually afraid. But the fact is we just spent 20 minutes setting this up. We're standing around it, I'm not afraid of this target. So while it may help visually on a kind of geometrical standpoint the reality is that this isn't scaring me.

So I can visualize a threat around this target and put myself in that same place, and I certainly can train on this type of target and apply whatever I develop in terms of skill to a realistic threat in that worst case scenario environment. So that's not the main reason I like to use a three-dimensional target. One of the best things we can do with a three-dimensional target is to start thinking about angles, that we're going to shoot into the human body to stop a threat. And not as much a threat that's facing us. I used to be a big believer in the idea that it was huge value in training on a three-dimensional target.

If you were to move laterally, if they move laterally, and all of a sudden you're shooting at an angle. But if you watch enough actual fights, you see that that's not really what happens. If you right now were to take your perspective from this camera angle and move 30 yards to the left, this bad guy wouldn't take his gun and turn it with his head and leave his body facing over here where he is now. Obviously the bad guy is gonna follow you. So the presentation of the torso, if someone's trying to hurt you, is almost always going to be what you see when you look at the two dimensional target, the actual torso.

So we can still use that outline, shape, the points of the shoulder, the area of the head and the outside of the ears to denote what is the highest center chest area. Where three-dimensional targets really come into their own and really become valuable is if we think about shooting in the defense of others. Now, whether that's a law enforcement, security or military person, or you're shooting to protect the family member, this can be really valuable training. Now let's take a look at what I'm talking about. We're gonna leave these targets oriented towards you but I'm gonna move off angle.

I'm gonna move over here, I'm gonna put my eye protection on, I've got my ear protection in. And the idea is let's imagine that I was shooting to defend you and I wanted to stop this threat. Now, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the paper target threat. So I'm gonna take my gun out, I'm gonna drive out, I'm gonna try to hit that center of that target, we're gonna think about where those shots would go. Now I'm gonna move back, put myself in the same relative position to the three-dimensional target and take very similar shots.

Now, what we're gonna do is take a look at what happened with these two targets. When I come in here, we can see that these two shots are well inside of the ASO. Now this is a pretty dramatic representation. So we can see that there are slices through the paper, they're not really holes through the paper but we really have no way to gauge these other than that they are inside that down zero, A zone, whatever you want to call it. They're in what we would consider the high center chest, so we kind of have to count them as good.

But we know that the human torso is a three-dimensional target. Now the two shots that I fired on this guy, we had one come in and skip right through the edge and come out through the arm. And we had another one come in here right across the sternum area. And again, you can tell that it's an angular entry. But when we go to the back of the target this is where things really become interesting.

And this is where the three-dimensional target really pays off. We've got this insert, we've got this cardboard insert that has a little bit of depth to it. And that's representing the center of that torso. In fact, we can come up here just and look at the rubber and see that there was no penetration. This is a brand new target.

There's no breaks in the rubber, coming into the center of the torso. So that shot, that looks pretty good, that if we look at it, the one, especially the second one, if we look at it from here, it's inside of the circle. It's inside of that A zone, that down zero, it's in the high center chest. But all it really did was tear pectoral muscle, maybe come off of the ribs, follow the ribs around. We don't know what it did, but we do know that it did not go through the core of this target's body.

And that's really easy and obvious to see with this target versus that target. Now let's change perspective. We go to our traditional perspective. If I'm out here in front of the target, we think about defending myself and I shoot at that paper target. Well, no big deal.

As I drive out on the paper target, fire the shots. Good. As I drive out on this target, fire the shots. Good. Now we're gonna go in and take a look.

Obviously two shots into the chest. They drove straight through the center cavity of the chest, exactly what I'm looking for. I come over here, I look at this target, I've got two shots that go right into the center of the chest. And of course now, if we look at the cardboard we're gonna see that we have these two wounds that came through the center of the chest cavity. And that's what we want.

We want the shots to go through the center of the chest cavity. So what we need to do is think about how are we going to engage this three-dimensional tube, this oval that is the human body if we wanna hit the high center chest in that way from the side. And of course that's gonna mean driving a deeper angle, a steeper angle, maybe even through the shoulder area and the side of the chest and not aiming for that normal area we would between the nipples, underneath the collarbone and above the diaphragm from the front. So again, I'll move over here. And now let's think about where that would be on the paper target.

So with the paper target, I'm gonna fire a couple shots. One there, one there. I'm gonna take a couple shots over here. And let's see where those ended up. So we can, these two shots, basically in the same hole over here and we come over here and now we've got shots that went in through the shoulder.

Now, if we come around here with this camera and take a look and see what I'm seeing now we can see that these entry wounds, well, one of them's in the shoulder and one of them's up here in that high center chest area, just above the shoulder. Obviously, if this were a human being that would be completely through the shoulder area coming in here at the top of the pectoral muscle. And sure enough, if we come around back and take a look you're gonna see that now in our cardboard insert, we've got those new holes. We've got one up here at the top of the high center chest and we've got one over here in the middle of the high center chest. So that's what we're looking for is proof and evidence that we're driving through the middle of this target that we're actually cutting through the middle of that oval and not just superficially skimming across the front of it.

And we really can't tell the difference. If we come back over here to where those two holes went these don't look like good shots, right? These holes don't look like good shots. They look like they're off to the right. And it's really hard to gauge that.

So when we think about what we've got with a three-dimensional target showing us the high center chest and the reality of where the internal cavity is, we're much better off for teaching this lesson. So that's the kind of access that I like to give our students too. We may bring a three-dimensional target out once during a two day class, just to teach that lesson especially when we think about defending other people and shooting into the torso and an other than to the front angle. The last section of this course that deals with having your own defensive firearm in a spree killer event, is interacting with law enforcement or other armed good guys in the environment. Once you take your firearm out of the holster, once you bring your firearm into the event, and you think about defending yourself, you see a threat over there, you drive out and you shoot.

What are we gonna do now? The threats down on the ground, there's no longer an active killer situation going on but you can be sure that there are still good guys coming. There may be other people in the area who are prepared to respond if necessary. And certainly you've got law enforcement and or private security assets coming to render aid and to stop what they think is the threat. But you've already stopped the threat.

When the police officers come around the corner and see a person with a gun, what are they probably gonna think? Yap. You're now the threat in their mind. Especially if your guns extended and you're swinging it around the room, or you're pointing it at other people and telling them what to do. This looks like a threat.

Now I've been in law enforcement, either a reserve or full-time for most of the last 20 years. And I've trained extensively with a lot of different agencies, SWAT teams, as well as individual patrol officers in ideas surrounding spree killer response and active shooter response. And as concealed carry has become more common as more and more people are carrying defensive firearms, this is something that inside the law enforcement community we've talked about a lot. What a tragedy, if there's already a spree killing going on if innocent people have already been killed and someone has been able to stop that threat and we come around the corner not knowing what's going on and find a good guy with a gun, who's acting like a bad guy with a gun. You don't wanna be that person.

After you've used your firearm and in fact, even before you've had to shoot your firearm, you wanna make sure that you don't look like the threat. You don't want law enforcement coming around the corner and seeing this. Because this position especially if your finger is on the trigger, doesn't give them much time to think about what to do or give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, this kind of a position, or even this position, or maybe even better, your hand on the gun while it's still in the holster while you're looking for the bad guy or after you've dealt with the bad guy, gives them more time. It would give me more time if I were responding police officer to come around the corner and say, "Sir, stop.

Don't move" Slowly, take your hand off the gun. And if you heard me, and if you did that, you're not gonna get shot. On the other hand, even if I'm out here like this, and an officer yells at me and tells me to stop, and I just simply turn, that could potentially be seen as turning the gun towards them and get me shot. And honestly, if I saw that video, I'd have to say I understand why the police officer did what he did. So you wanna think about how you're gonna handle your gun when you're gonna have your gun out of your holster and what you're gonna do with your gun not only when you're looking for the bad guy but after you may have stopped that immediate threat.

Could there be another threat? Absolutely. Could that threat get back up off the ground? Absolutely. Is it important for you to try to maintain some control and make sure you communicate with people and let them know you're not a bad guy?

Absolutely. But while you're doing all that, remember that you can't see everyone who can see you. And you may not know that the police officers are coming around the corner and you may be in that extended shooting position that makes you look like a threat. So when you don't have to be, when you're not actually shooting, that's when you you pull that gun back into a high compressed ready, you think about the pressing the muzzle, or you thinking about getting that gun into your holster. This is a very easily defendable position.

If someone were to try to take the gun from you if the bad guy were to try to jump back up you could quickly get back into your shooting position, and it's a much safer position behaviorally for everyone in the environment to see than having the gun out at extension. Similarly, you wouldn't wanna necessarily just put the gun down at the ground, behind your back, or point the gun up because there's people down on the ground. Keeping that gun in close, keeping it in a position that looks like a professional ready position that looks like you're not trying to hurt anyone right now but you're ready to defend yourself or having the gun in the holster, those are the best ways to make sure that you're not mistaken for the bad guy when the other good guys show up. And that might also be the other concealed carry holder who's been hiding in the corner, heard some more shots fired and looked out to see another guy with a gun, and he thinks he can stop you as a threat. It's not just the police.

You wanna make sure that you're clearly conveying to everyone, both verbally and with your body language that you don't wanna hurt anybody that's not already trying to kill people. Having a firearm inside of a spree killer event could absolutely save your life. But it definitely complicates things as well. It makes things incredibly important that you're not necessarily thinking about in the average personal defense situation. The average person defense situation is incredibly calm compared to the average active shooter or a spree killer situation.

So you add more responsibility. You add more things that you have to think about. You add more things that you have to train for. And you might even have to add extra discipline and remember that some things you're not capable of solving. If there's a crowded theater, and there's someone 200 yards away on the other side and there's a crowd of 400 people between you and that guy you're probably not gonna pull out your defensive pocket carry pistol or revolver and end that fight.

Don't take shots that you're not capable of taking. Don't put other people in more danger. Don't put yourself in more danger because you brought a firearm out when you weren't actually prepared to use it. Train ahead of time. Know your limitations, know what you can do to make things better with your firearm and always be prepared to surrender to the police when they show up.

Drop the gun, show them your hands, make sure they know you're not a threat. Carrying a firearm is an incredibly big responsibility and bringing a firearm into a spree killing event, multiplies that responsibility even more.