Active shooters aren’t a novel problem in the United States. The immediate aftermath of mass shootings sends minds reeling for solutions. Like any complex dilemma, any easy or pat answer you hear is unlikely to tell the entire story or be a panacea — but this article isn’t about criminal and ideological shooters in general or legislative and law enforcement responses, but about responding to one that’s near you in particular. And how to best survive and solve deadly force encounters.
As a defender rather than a victimizer, the time and place of the initiation of violence isn’t up to you. The other guy virtually always gets the first vote. If there’s a shooting nearby, regardless of the motivation of the shooter, the common advice you’ll hear is to not involve yourself — that you’ll “just make things worse.” There are two problems with that: sometimes you have to get involved,
