Even your duty pistol has many inherent advantages over the usual handguns preferred by active shooters. Double-stack magazines allow you to carry enough ammunition to stay in the fight long enough to prevail. As a professional, you have probably also taken the time and effort to customize your pistol to meet your needs. Accessories like adjustable grips, night sights, laser sights, and tactical lights increase your confidence and will help you put accurate fire on a target under stress.

You are also probably better with your chosen weapon platform than the average active shooter. This not only includes accuracy with multiple shots under stress, but also reloads, transitions, and malfunction drills.

Another advantage that you can bring to a fight with an active shooter is the ability to make hits at greater distances than generally practiced on shooting ranges. Look at some of the hallways, gymnasiums, cafeterias, and parking garages in your patrol area. What is the range from one end to the other? To end an active shooter incident, you may have to make a shot with a pistol at more than 75 feet or with a rifle at more than 150 feet. So practice shooting at these distances.

Your body armor may also make the difference in a confrontation with an active shooter. And hopefully the bad guy won’t have armor, although in recent incidents, active shooters have worn both ballistic vests and helmets. If you encounter an armored shooter, you will have to change your approach to targeting. Shoot where he doesn’t have protection. One really strong target is the hip. Hardly anyone thinks to protect it; it’s a substantial target, almost as big as center mass; and hip and pelvic wounds are extremely painful and capable of incapacitating a threat.

Finally, the biggest advantage you have over the bad guy is that you can call for backup and other cops are on the way to help you. No one is coming to help him. Yes, there could be more than one shooter, but the cavalry is coming to help you. Backup will be arriving on scene, and it will consist of trained, highly motivated officers who are ready, willing, and able to help you. You may have gone after the shooter alone, but you won’t be alone for long.

The Cost of Waiting

One question that all officers have to answer for themselves is how long will they wait for backup before engaging an active shooter.

I believe the answer to this question is: However long it takes me to get my rifle and my go-bag out of my trunk.

During an active shooter incident, you are dealing with a very brutal equation: Ti
me taken by first responders equals casualties. One of the largest body counts from an active shooting incident so far is the Virginia Tech University incident of 2007. Depending on which after-action report you read, the attacker shot an average of eight people and killed two every minute. We have to get in quickly and end the killing.

Friendly Fire

One of the most important questions I have been asked by a student during active shooter training is about the potential for blue-on-blue casualties. If first responders are going into the same building at different intervals, and even different entry points, don’t we have to be worried about “friendly fire?”

Yes, friendly fire or crossfire situations are always a concern. This should be addressed in training, through both force-on-force and tactics training.

As officers, it is a given that we are responsible for every bullet that comes out of our guns. That means that we must be sure of our target, but also what’s beyond it. You can’t just open up on the first person who has a gun; you have to make sure that he or she is not a cop before pulling the trigger.

Related Photo Gallery: Active Shooter Drill at Cambridge Health Alliance

Knowing your target is just one aspect of having the right mindset to end an active shooter attack. You have to think like a hunter and drive toward the threat.

You also have to keep in mind that the active shooter is a hunter, too, and he is driving toward his prey. Active shooters are relentless in the pursuit of victims, and they usually don’t stop until taken down by bystanders or confronted by police, which usually results in them surrendering or committing suicide.

When you think about responding to an active shooter incident, consider what you would want responding officers to do if such an incident were to happen where your children go to school or where your spouse works. Would you want that officer to wait for backup or go in after the threat?

And ask yourself what are you willing to do on your own, outside of the training provided by your agency, to ready yourself to prevail during such an incident? It’s rare that any of us receives the amount of training from our agency that we want or need. Budget considerations and departmental priorities limit training, so it’s up to each of us to train on our own time and on our own dime.

Related Articles:

• Columbine 10 Years Later: The State of School Safety Today
• Sandy Hook Elementary School Mass Shooting Details
• K-12 Schools Must Make Security Changes Now

J.D. Lightfoot has served as a police officer in the Midwest for more than 10 years. He has worked as an active shooter/deadly force instructor for his department since 2008.

Note: The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety magazine.

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