Katherine Schweit, an F.B.I. special agent who retired in 2017 after 20 years, created and ran the agency’s active shooter program after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. She just wrote an editorial in The New York Times analyzing the failure of the Uvalde police to the shooter last week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/uvalde-school-sho…
After Sandy Hook the federal government adopted the run, hide, fight model, which instructs students and teachers to run first if they can, then hide if they must and, finally, fight to survive.
This is practical advice for METARs and their families of all ages. Any of us could be in an active shooter situation at any time.
The first point is to RUN. A survival book I read said that it’s much more difficult for a shooter to hit someone who is running in an erratic, broken line instead of a straight line. Unless you are caught like a fish in a barrel with no way out (windows?) you should run instead of staying in place.
Even before that, if you see a guy with a gun approaching your location (church, synagogue, store, etc.) drop whatever you are doing and LEAVE immediately in the OPPOSITE direction. No, I don’t care if the guy is just an innocent gun nut who likes to carry around an AR-15 for fun. Better safe than sorry.
If you can’t run, hide. Lock and barricade your hiding place, if possible. Some of the shooters have shot through closed doors. Put overturned tables in front of the door to catch the bullets.
Fight if you must. You don’t have to fight right away. Bide your time and attack if you see an opening, like the Texas rabbi who threw a chair at a gunman in a hostage situation at his synagogue.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/rabbi-held-hostage-gunman-leads-pr…
Hopefully, none of us will ever need this information.
But you never know.
Wendy