My flip answer would be, “well I’d probably rely less on groin strikes.”

Let me break it down a little:

1. Young men cause most of the violent crime in the world. It’s less likely, though certainly not impossible that you’ll ever wind up defending yourself against a women.

That being said, women are capable of horrible violence (remember Lizzie Borden, and Bonnie of Bonnie & Clyde ?). I have also talked to students and friends who work in corrections who have given me anecdotal evidence of young women being extremely violent.

So, the situation can come up.

1. What are the consequences of doing nothing? In any self defense situation you have a few choices, Get away (the best if you can do it), respond with force, or do nothing (which includes calling for help and waiting for it to arrive). If somebody is really trying to hurt you, and you choose the do nothing route, they are going to hurt you. This would include a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

Those of us in the martial arts know how little force is required to injure someone. The whole “men are stronger than women,” thing is a dangerous stereotype.

No you wouldn’t punch a toddler who was trying to hurt you, but you might use an appropriate level of force (picking them up and putting them on time-out). It’s important to understand that force includes a whole range of options – not just beating the snot out of someone.

1. So what should you do? Fortunately there is a reliable set of guidelines for dealing with a threat. It applies whether you are facing an Army tank, a toddler, or a coked-up woman with knife:

If you can not safely escape from a dangerous situation, you use force. You use an appropriate level of force – generally the least amount of force necessary. And you stop using force the instant that you can safely escape or the threat is neutralized.

That last part is actually the hardest. Knowing when to stop when you may be in an adrenalized state, and only using minimal force takes training and preparation. Continuing to use force after a threat is neutralized crosses the legal and ethical boundaries from self-defense to assault

I was raised in the 70s and 80s in a fairly conservative and old-fashioned household. I wasn’t allowed to say “darn it” in the wrong tone of voice.  I was taught never to hit girls. As sexist as the double-standard might seem to be, I see where the question comes from.

I find it useful to look at things this way. I am a husband and a father. My family relies on my financial, physical, and emotional support. A threat to harm me, ultimately is a threat to my family. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man, woman, or wombat.

In most locations, the legality of the use of force for self defense is partially judged based on how reasonable the amount of force is used. Judges and juries are people, and as flawed and misinformed as anybody else. Avoiding violence is always your best option. When it’s not, use just what you need.

To make a bold statement: style doesn’t matter. Style is the particular expression of certain physical teachings, sometimes combined with history. I am not talking about style.

What is a Self Defense System?

For me, a self defense system includes the philosophical underpinning of your training. The training methodology itself. A set of knowledge and skills, strategies and tactics. This is so much more than style.

Sure, a lot of people go to martial arts classes, learn a bunch of cool techniques, and never give a thought to strategy and tactics. This places them at a huge disadvantage when it comes to self defense.

So if we wanted to move toward a more perfect system of self defense, what would that look like? Here are my thoughts.

Mission Centric

A good system of self defense should consider the mission. The mission includes the goal, environment, likely opponents, and constraints.

I have long said that police officers, military, and civilians should not conduct the bulk of their training the same way. As a civilian, it is not your job to arrest or kill an opponent. You are not often required to run towards danger. A good portion of your strategy should involve escaping dangerous situations.

I know that’s not macho, but it just may save your life or keep you out of jail.

Also, consider environmental factors. You are unlikely to defend yourself while standing on a matted floor of a gym, after warming up for 45 minutes.

Keep your opponents in mind. Are you likely to be in conflict with a suicide bomber, a rapist, an armed home invader, a skilled enemy combatant?

Scalable and Legally Defensible

There are any number of teachers out there selling – the most lethal system of hand to hand combat ever invented. Great. Most of that is puffery, but what if they are right?

What if some homeless guy grabs you and tries to take your wallet? What then if you chop him in the wind pipe killing him? I hope you enjoy long showers with big hairy guys named Bubba – you are going to prison for manslaughter.

Memorize this statement – Not all self defense situations require nor justify the use of deadly force. It is important to learn  how to scale your force. Yes, deadly force should be an option when there is no other way. Trust me when I say it is an absolute last resort. Consult your local laws on use of force.

Works Under a Range of Physical Conditions

If only some mugger tried to attack me on my best day, when I was well rested and 22 years old… If your method of self defense requires a high level of athleticism, it’s going to fail when you’re sick, tired, injured, or old. Remember that your coordination under stress is very different then when you’re having a good time at the dojo.

Under stress, gross motor skills are going to be your best friends.

You could always ask that home invader to come back after you’ve gotten over the flu.

Covers More Than Just Physical Techniques

I would love to see more instructors teach avoidance strategies. This would include verbal de-escalation, awareness, and reading body language for pre-violence indicators.

I am really proud of one of my students who works in corrections. He has been able to use some of the stuff I taught him to recognize when inmates were about to become violent – and isolate them, possibly avoiding injuries. He’s also been able to use body language and verbal skills alone to diffuse a lot of stuff.

A lot of “fights” are avoidable.

Despite the initial horror, and sense of loss, I can’t help but feel touched by the heroic and generous actions by people everywhere.

First, immediately after the explosions, I saw video of first responders, bystanders in people in military uniforms runny towards the site of the explosion. They literally tore barriers down with their bare hands, with no concern for their own safety, to help those who were injured.

Next, I read that many runners, still on the course diverted themselves to local hospitals to donate blood. This morning, the Red Cross is reporting throngs of people lining up to give blood. People all along the Marathon route opening their homes and offered help to runners.

Many of us not there, but there in spirit, shared updates and information through social media.

It’s easy to get scared by events like this. It’s easy to look down on humanity by acts of cowardice. But it’s really important to remember how we came together, how people from all walks of life acted as heroes. How acts like this represent such a tiny fraction of human behavior.

And, while it is human behavior to do so, I ask for your restraint in making assumptions about what happened. Remember Richard Jewel whose life was ruined when he was falsely accused of the Olympic Park bombing years ago? Let’s try to use some restraint in using this national tragedy to score political “gotchas”.

If you need to divert your time and attention to something, how about doing something positive? Here’s a list:

1. Feeling anxious, angry, or sad? Move. Get some training in. Release some endorphins.
2. Want to “do something”? Go donate some blood, time, or money to the Red Cross.
3. Feeling isolated? Reach out to friends for family and let them know how grateful you are for them.

Ultimately you have choices in how you handle things like these. Like all things, the choices you make can make things better or worse.

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Against a professional fighter’s speed, accuracy and field-tested willpower, I don’t believe any self-defense expert, regardless of style, would have a prayer.

While I have the greatest respect for Joe Louis, this quote represents another myth that’s common in martial arts circles. The myth is that doing well in sport fighting makes one invincible “on the street”. It’s one I particularly dislike, and I take it apart below.

So there is some truth to Joe’s quote above. Sport fighting builds amazing characteristics, including pain resistance, speed, timing, accuracy, physical conditioning and skill. All of those things certainly can help someone in a self defense situation. I personally belief that any martial arts training is better than none when it comes to self defense.

But let’s examine why this quote perpetuates a myth:

1. This quote is based on an unrealistic fantasy situation
In a toe to toe, face to face, one on one sport fight with given rules between a sport trained fighter and a “self defense expert” clearly the sport trained fighter is most likely to prevail. How often does this actually happen?

Many years ago (when I was a mere yellow belt), a champion collegiate wrestler from the UK came down to the dojo I was training in and started running his mouth about how everything we did was crap. We tried to ignore him, and he challenged me to wrestle him. Since I’m not stupid I declined saying, “I’m not going to wrestle you.” Deciding he wasn’t going to take no for an answer he attacked me and tried to take me down. I put him in a choke that I’m guessing is illegal in wrestling and put a crush on his trachea. He dropped like a ton of bricks, when I put my entire bodyweight on the back of his head, he started slapping the floor with all four limbs like a fish out of water. I eventually let him up and he went away – never to return.

I’m not saying this to brag, but to point out that this sport fighter would have crushed me if I agreed to his rules. When he assaulted me, he wasn’t used to what I did and didn’t have a good response to it – other than to hope I wouldn’t kill him.

The sport fighting scenario is not common, in my experience, in self defense.

2. Sport fighting is not self defense, period.

If there’s one thing that bears repeating, its this – sport fighting is related to self defense in the same way NASCAR is related to driving a getaway car in a shootout. There’s an overlap in skill, to be sure, but they aren’t the same thing.

Sport fighting involves, usually, one on one agreed-upon combat. It’s expected in advance. There are rules and safety measures. There are normally no weapons. People are only rarely hurt, and very rarely killed. There’s good lighting, doctors, and safety equipment. There is a known environment with perhaps matted floors. None of those things apply to real self defense.

In self defense you have unknown opponents. Their skill and number vary (I have seen 5 guys nearly stomp another man to death). Weapons may be involved. It happens when you don’t expect it. The terrain could be anything, the environment could be anything. It’s involuntary, and you don’t get to quit if you are sick or injured. There’s no trainer, officials, referee or doctor standing by.

The goals are also very different. In self defense, you can win by running away, but “winning and losing” may be literally life or death.

Here’s an interesting video that shows a group of UFC fighters who went to Quantico to experience the Marine Corps Martial Arts program. At the end, they suit up and go up against two armed opponents. Basically none of them do well in this situation.

And not to take anything away from these guys. They are some of the best trained combative athletes in the world. What this shows is that people have a hard time training for situations that are really foreign to them. Undoubtedly they did better than most people would have in the same situation, but not as well as those who train for this situation.

Royce Gracie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember somebody asked my jujutsu teacher once what he would do against Royce Gracie. I think his answer shocked the asker. His answer was, “I would take my knife out and stick it in him. The reason is that I don’t fight for sport, I fight to protect myself and my family. The only reason I would be in a fight with Royce Gracie would be that he was attacking me or my family. Royce seems like a really nice guy, so I don’t think that’s really likely.”

So, some nice person replies with one of my least favorite lies about self defense, “people who get a little bit of training get overconfident and go out and get themselves into trouble.” Excuse my French, but that’s horseshit.

I am not saying that NEVER happens. I believe that any behavior that humans are capable of has happened. Fake bravado specifically caused by self-defense training is rare. The effect of such junk logic can be to dissuade people from getting training they need.

Let me break it down for you:

1. Good training does not turn people into danger-seeking daredevils.
There are people who get their jollies this way. People with that personality trait have that long before they seek out self defense training. I find that adrenaline junkies are more likely to seek out sport combat systems where they can compete full contact. Self defense training isn’t the cause of this.

Even most sport fighters, with a couple of rare exceptions, don’t go vigilante.

2. Good martial arts training teaches humility.
Heck, even some bad martial arts training teaches humility. Sure there are some big egos out there, but I think they brought that baggage with them.

Here’s the thing – overconfidence is not real confidence. It is a lack of confidence pretending to be tough as a defense mechanism.

Multiple psychological studies show numerous psychosocial benefits to studying a martial art – particularly among kids. Martial arts study has been shown to decrease risky behavior among children. So somehow, we are to believe that training in self defense or a martial art would have the opposite effect on adults. I really doubt it.

3. I have not known it to happen once in my years of training
I have been training personally for over 30 years. I have personally taught thousands of people, and met tens of thousands of people. I have never heard a single story from one person about them becoming overconfident from training, and engaging in risky behavior that got them hurt.

Again, I’m sure it has happened. If you’re reading this and saying to yourself, “no way, I knew this one guy…” then congratulations. That doesn’t change what a rarity this is.

4. It implies that learning self defense is harmful
I think everybody should train in self defense. Like everything, there are variations in the quality of instruction. For the most part, some training is better than no training. You do what you can.

Other than sustaining a sports injury during training, I’ve never once heard of self defense training harming someone. And statistically, martial arts are safer than yoga, cross country running, or basketball.

You don’t need 20 years of training to be successful at self defense. A good teacher will help you with awareness, de-escalation, and escape. Real self defense is simple to learn. I separate that from continual martial arts training which can provide a lifetime of benefits, but is difficult to master. A good instructor is going to teach you to run away from danger when possible, and use physical force as a last resort.

I hope this is helpful, and I hope that you get that same feeling of disbelief I do the next time you encounter the overconfidence myth.

Even worse, the man was 61 and had previously suffered two strokes.

Thank goodness he was OK.

Now, I wasn’t there so I’m not going to guess at what happened. The poli ce are already apologizing and launching an investigation.

But this gives me an opportunity to discuss the idea of “hoplophobia”.

Hoplophobia is not a medically recognized phobia, but a word coined by a gun instructor. It comes from the Greek word “hoplon” meaning arms.

It’s meant to describe an irrational fear of arms rather than an intelligent apprehension of a person who is armed.

I’m not going to go into a political discussion on weapons control laws, other than to say that most laws with regard to self defense are not made based on logic, research, or fact.

I remember a friend who emigrated to the US from Ireland. She was at a bar in Boston when a uniformed police officer walked in. She saw his gun and had a real honest-to-goodness panic attack.

This was the first time she had ever seen a gun in person and she was overwhelmed with fear. The problem with such irrational fears is that they lead to poor decision making. For example, it is a terrible idea ever to get into
a vehicle with an abductor and go with him to a second crime scene. What do you think my Irish friend would have done if a criminal had pointed a gun at her and told her to get in his car?

Would she be able to respond in a way which would keep her safe?

I doubt it.

Paraphrasing from Lester Levenson: “Fears only Lie, they tell you that what you are going to get from letting them go is in fact what you already got from holding on to them.

The prevailing justification for clinging to irrational fear is that “it keeps you safe.”

Fear is a poor alternative to effective decision making. It serves the purpose of preparing your body to react to a threat with fight, flight, or freeze, but it tends to shunt your higher cognitive processes.

How do we combat fear?

There are a number of ways, including education, safe exposure to a stimulus, and physiological control.

Even if you hate guns and want them banned from the planet for eternity, go out and take a gun safety course and fire a hundred or so rounds downrange.

At least then you can make decisions regarding firearms from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.

My teacher, Peter Freedman sensei, asks, “how can you learn to defend against a weapon if you don’t know how somebody is going to use it on you?”

Despite whatever laws are in effect in your area, criminals will continue to use guns and knives and machetes because, by definition, criminals break laws.

The real danger from any weapon comes from the person whose hands it is in. A 4 year-old with a loaded gun – very dangerous, a trained police officer – much less so.

This is why ascribing human motivation or actions to objects is foolish.

I bristle when I read headlines like, “Man Killed By Gunfire” because it places the responsibility for a persons death on “gunfire” and not the person who fired the gun where it belongs. The same goes for things like, “Person Wounded In Knife Attack.” The knife did not attack that person, a person with a knife did.

This goes beyond semantics into a culture that promotes hoplophobia. The emphasis is on the weapon and not the actor. Again, it’s my opinion that this leads to poor decision making.

Get training, get knowledge, take everything the media says with a grain of salt.

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I am not a lawyer (and certainly offer no legal advice here), but I do me best to study my local laws with regard to self-defense. Why? Because I am a very good looking man, and have no desire to fight off prison rape for the rest of my life.

Seriously.
So it’s really important to deal with self defense from a legal perspective. Certainly many people have crossed the line from self-defense to assault, or murder unintentially and have paid a lifetime of consequences.

It’s important to understand that, in most places, self-defense is legally an affirmative defense. This basically means that you aren’t claiming you did the deed, but that there was justification or an excuse for what you did.

Here’s Wikipedia’s entry:

In an affirmative defense, the defendant affirms that the condition is occurring or has occurred but offers a defense that bars, or prevents, the plaintiff’s claim. An affirmative defense is known, alternatively, as a justification, or an excuse, defense. Consequently, affirmative defenses limit or excuse a defendant’s criminal liability.

A clear illustration of an affirmative defense is self defense. In its simplest form, a criminal defendant may be exonerated if he can demonstrate that he had an honest and reasonable belief that another’s use of force was unlawful and that the defendant’s conduct was necessary to protect himself.

In most jurisdictions there will be two components, justification, and reasonableness.

Justification means that there was a legally valid reason to use force against the other person. Reasonableness, in this case, refers to the amount of force. The laws on both vary widely, and that’s why you need to look at and learn the law where you are.

In many places the law defines the degree of force as deadly and non-deadly. It’s important to note that deadly force doesn’t just mean that you kill someone. Where I live, it means that the amount of force used could be expected to cause death or serious injury. Serious injury is further defined in the statutes. So, if I fired a gun at somebody but missed, that would still be deadly force.

Not all situations that justify self-defense would justify deadly force. For example, somebody assaults me with non-deadly force (we’ll say a punch), I probably do not have the right to gun them down.

It’s important also to recognize when the law says you must stop using force. If you knock an opponent down and he becomes submissive, your “followup techniques” may cross the line to assault.  Generally, once a threat or an attack is neutralized, or you can get away safely, you must stop using force immediately.

There are all kinds of legal concepts that apply to self-defense such as duty to retreat, and castle doctrine. These things are different everywhere, it’s up to you to learn them

The other important idea to keep in mind with affirmative defenses is that they shift some of the burden of proof onto the defendant. Since the defendant is not arguing tat he didn’t do what he is accused of, he must then prove that he was justified.

I hope this gives you something to think about an encourages you to learn the law as best you can. Talk to a lawyer, talk to a police officer. Get some information, adjust your training.

On November 5th and 12th, I will be teaching my first public seminar in Maine. A Women’s Self Defense class.

I did dozens when I lived in Boston, and I keep them fun, empowering, and educational.

The course is two consecutive Mondays from 6-8pm, attendees will learn valuable self defense skills that will help them stay safe for the rest of their lives.

For more information, and to register now, go to the registration page at:
Women’s Self Defense Class – Westbrook / Portland Maine.

Attendees can learn:

Monday, November 5th (part 1)

• How to avoid and evade violent predtors in the first place
• Learn a realistic framework for self defense that offers safety and legal protection (no legal advice is offered or implied)
• What criminals are looking for, and what they avoid
• The safest responses to any kind of attack
• Self defense moves that really work, even on a larger attacker – learn to hit harder than you have ever imagined
• How to escape and counter the most common criminal attacks so you can get away safely

Monday, November 12th (part 2)

• Learn more advanced techniques tips and tactics
• Deal with armed attackers
• Use (almost) anything you can hold in yoru hands as a weapon
• Learn what to do if your knocked or thrown to the ground
• Learn to keep your skills up so you don’t forget what you’ve learned

Once again, to register go to: Women’s Self Defense Class – Westbrook / Portland Maine.

In the following video, I take a look at tactical pens. I demonstrate, using the Uzi branded tactical pen, why I don’t like them for self defense.

Here’s the video:

Later on, I’ll be doing a whole video series on using pens as improvised weapons.

James Holmes (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

The anti-gun folks and the pro-gun folks will both use events like this to stump for their respective positions. People will look for simple answers and reasons why this occurred. Everything from the media to politics, to mental illness will be blamed. Poorly thought-out solutions will be proposed.

One thing that happens when extreme emotion (particularly fear and horror) is involved, is that we actually stop thinking with the human part of our brain. Our own survival mechanism kicks in and we shift into what Marc “The Animal” MacYoung cals our “monkey mind”. We physically get less cerebral. This is not a great place to make decisions from.

I want take a minute for us all to slip easily back into our human minds to evaluate a few key items. I want to use data and logic (rather than pseudo logic) to decide how to more clearly evaluate this tragic event and it’s outcome. Don’t think for a moment that I am unaffected emotionally by this event. I feel very deeply for all of those involved.

Spree Killings Are Rare, But We Don’t Think So

Fortunately, spree killings and mass murder events, like terrorism are extremely rare events. Most people will never be directly impacted by such events. Notice I say directly impacted, since we are all impacted by the news and the resulting decisions people make in the wake killings like this one.

There is a cognitive effect called the availability heuristic that comes into effect. The availability heuristic says that we estimate the frequency of events happening, based on how well we can remember them. Since spree killings and act of terrorism are very dramatic, we more easily remember them, and tend to overestimate how often they happen.

Many many more people are killed each year by medical negligence in the US than by any kind of violence, but we don’t hear a peep about it. A mother like Casey Anthony is accused of killing her daughter and it’s on the news every day. We are emotional creatures and are not really good at evaluating the actual impact of things when emotions run high.

Violence is Getting Rarer

Violent crime in the US has been on the decline for years despite the bad economy and record numbers of new gun owners. According to The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by author Steven Pinker, we are living in the least violent time in human history.

Why does it seem sometimes like we live in a world full of violence? Because we live in a world with 24 hour access to news on TV, the radio, and the Internet. All of these channels are competing for your eyeballs. Sensationalism sells, and they are going to always show you the most dramatic story they can. We’re inundated with stories of violence, even though statistically they are actually getting less and less.

Mass murder rates in the US have actually remained steady in the US since the mid 1970s.

We Will Never Stop Mass Murder or Spree Killers

According to police, James Holmes planned this crime for at least months. He had weapons, thousands of rounds of ammo, tactical gear. His tactics were unfortunately well though – creating a fatal funnel in the movie theater while distracting with gas canisters. Most tellingly though, he had rigged an  elaborate WMD booby-trap in his apartment the likes of which the police had never seen. The IED he built is said to be powerful enough to bring down his apartment building and several nearby buildings.

It is simply nonsense to think that barring access to legally purchasing guns would have stopped or prevented a super-smart killer who was dedicated to creating mass casualties.

We can see other cases of mass murder such as the Oklahoma city bombings, knife attacks in Japan (where the attacker in Osaka first ran a truck into a crowd and then began stabbing everyone).

The fact is that people bent on killing will find a way. Really smart people bent on mass murder will find a way. It’s not a comforting fact, but it is reality.

According to the James Allen Fox, Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University, and probably the leading expert on mass murder in the use – neither gun control, nor increasing the number of armed citizens is likely to have any effect on spree killers.

While not comfortable for us to believe there is an easy solution, we should derive some comfort from knowing it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever become a victim of a mass murderer.

Wasn’t James Holmes crazy? Can’t we lock crazy people up?

The days of locking up mentally ill people are over. Some people who are truly seen as dangerous are locked up, but this is pretty rare.

Most people who suffer from mental illness are neither dangerous nor violent. In fact in a study in North Carolina, people with mental disabilities were shown to be almost three times as likely to be victims of violence than the general population. This is a sad statement about our society.

I honestly believe that, in the coming months, James Holmes will be shown to be suffering from mental illness. This doesn’t seem like a politically or otherwise motivated crime to me. It may be that he was undiagnosed like so many with mental illness.

We still live in a “somewhat” free society. Even if we wanted to or could, we can’t round up people we think are acting strangely and screen them for violent tendencies. And even if we could, we probably couldn’t do anything about it if they didn’t want treatment. We live in a country where, in general, we don’t lock people up before they commit crimes.

If we got rid of all the guns nobody could shoot anybody

Yes, this is true. If you could get rid of ALL guns. But you can’t.

Even in the UK, where the Olympic shooting team has to leave the country to practice, there is still gun crime. Even in Japan (which has shunned guns legally and culturally for centuries) there is still gun crime.

I don’t want to go too far down the rat-hole of gun control other than to say this. There is no statistical correlation between legal firearms ownership and violent crime (other than a negative one). The UK (which has banned almost all private firearms) has a per capita violent crime rate many times hire than Switzerland – where every family keeps automatic weapons, even grenades in their house. Phoenix, which has loose carry laws, has half the rate of violent crime as Chicago, which has the strictest gun laws in the country. In Chicago, this summer, violent crime is up 31% over last year and shootings are up 6%.

The US evolved as a gun culture. There are an estimated 200 million legally owned firearms in the United States. Even if a total ban went into effect tomorrow, it would be phsyically impossible to confiscate all the guns in the country.

So the only realistic solution is partial gun control. This already exists in many states (and I’m not sure about Colorado). So, what would you do:

Require a background check to buy a firearm – I personally think this is a great idea, but Holmes had no criminal record and perhaps no mental health record.
Ban certain types of weapons and high capacity magazines – once again, this assumes a guy who builds a powerful explosive and incendiary device in his apartment with a sophisticated triggering system couldn’t find other ways to get, make, or modify these things. Or this assumes he wouldn’t go with another killing method altogether.
Limit the number of firearms someone can purchase in a given period of time – Once again, I don’t believe this would do anything to deter a mas killer who planned an attack for months in advance

I personally believe that no regulation of any kind (firearm or not) is going to ever stop someone who is dedicated and smart and wants to kill people. From fertilizer bombs like Oklahoma city, to the pipe-bombs in Columbine, or the truck and knife in Osaka Japan – killers will find a way.

A billion hypotheticals

As a martial artist and self defense instructor is natural to wonder what I’d do if I were in such a situation. The truth is, nobody really knows until it happens. I had many of the same thoughts and feelings right after 911.

There is some general advice that self defense instructors can give about surviving a shooting:

1. Run for cover and keep going putting cover behind you

2. Stay Low

3. Put as much distance as quickly as possible between you and the shooter.

However, not all of these things apply in every situation. Be aware, evaluate quickly, be ready to move.

Regardless of your political leanings, or personal feelings about firearms or anything else, now isn’t the time for politics. Now is the time to let our fear settle as much as we can and come together as a country to support the long road ahead for the victims and their families.