Master Brown was asked about safety in an active shooter situation today.
If the person with the gun wants something from you, give it to them, it’s not worth your life, no
matter what it is. Alive is alive, dead is nothing.
If however, their intent is to kill you, better to die trying to do something rather than stand there. I’m
not discounting verbal de-escalation, I worked in a psychiatric hospital as a therapist for years and
consider myself good at it, but if the shooter is so far gone they’ve already taken this step, then you
have got to …
1. Run *see below
2. Hide, preferably behind something bullet proof, but any cover is better than no cover
3. Fight, and know how to do it well!
* When running for cover, lateral movement is the key and which direction you go may very well matter. Many
people don’t think of these things, but as a swordsman, we work in a world where survival is
measured in millimeters.
As humans, we track a target better if our main arm is moving across our body (holding gun right
handed, tracking and moving the arm towards a target that is moving to our left). This uses our chest
muscles where we have fine motor control. The other way uses our shoulders and back muscles and
have less control so the tracking is off by a bit. It’s like a forward swing in tennis has much better
control than a backhand. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but every millimeter counts.
So what this means is, if you, heaven forbid, find yourself in this situation and the shooter is aiming
at you, run lateral (not directly away from him) to your left if he is right handed. This increases your
odds of not getting hit.
We will be offering another active shooter class soon. Date TBA.