This whole concept is just bizarre to me as a Brit. I get the US is a different country with its own culture around firearm ownership but how on earth did widespread "active shooter training" become a thing and society went along with it?
At least the author recognises this in the first sentence, but it still blows my mind.
I think because it is a tangible thing one can do. Regardless of opinions on constitutionality of firearms ownership, nobody wants to see attacks and shoots. But what can be done? Changing the laws is not likely because of both disagreement and gridlock, though political activity is one avenue one can take with hope for longer term impact. Policing or mental health policy and programs in the in the local communities also might have some impact, but again most individuals won't be able to make an impact (not that they couldn't but won't in practice without a high degree of engagement).
But hosting a class? That is something everyone organization has full autonomy to successfully accomplish. It is within the organizational and budgetary resources of small companies, big ones, churches, schools, local community centers, etc.
Think about the duck and cover training for surviving a nuclear blast. You might not be able to do much as the average individual to avoid nuclear confrontation, but you can mitigate it on the margin with some tangible steps.
It's insane, especially since the kind of serial shooter thing (not an attack targeted at a specific person, not an argument in a parking lot that turns deadly but then stops there, none of that) it's meant to defend against is rare—as rare as one might hope? No, of course not. Rare enough that widespread training against it is unjustifiable? Yes.
I'd not have expected it beforehand, but it turns out that even fairly mild & common versions of the training (not the extreme sorts that occasionally make the news) can leave adults literally shaking. It's really hard on some people. Yet we subject a huge percentage of our children to it. The risk does not justify that.
I'm American. What I can say is that pretty much all firearms based murder is rare in the US. Across any demographic in the US, there is a much less than 0.1% chance that you will be murdered by a firearm in the US in any given year. Far more likely to die in a car accident,a nd you have a much larger chance of dying in a household accident. Don't even get me started on heart disease or cancer.
Our problem here in the US is that we overreact to dealing with that <0.1% chance. We make people jump through hoops to get a firearm to even go hunting. We flood our neighborhoods with police who raid homes using grenades and armored personnel carriers. (Usually killing innocents in the process, because, you know, we throw grenades in the windows of some baby's nursery.) And, we have active shooter drills for our children, probably traumatizing some of them for the rest of their lives. The list goes on and on actually.
In America, we pretty much overreact to everything. Which is why you probably hear so many crazy stories about the US. When faced with what we perceive to be a threat, no matter how remote the reality of the threat, we are unable to moderate our responses. In fact, you could argue that we are trained from an early age, via things like active shooter training, NOT to think too deeply about our responses.
Agreed on the overreaction thing. When I explain America to non-Americans, I tell them that most of our weirdest behaviors and practices make sense if you assume everyone's main concern at all times is never to ever be, personally, blamed for or responsible for anything—external costs of bringing about that state of things, be damned.
Passing any sort of gun control is impossible for political reasons. Republican legislators and judges block gun control whenever they can. It's about one third moneymaking for manufacturers and two thirds culture war at this point. The hardline opposition mainly dates to the Obama administration, when the Republican legislative strategy became blocking anything that Obama wanted to do.
Many Republicans will tell you that there is an absolutely vital constitutional right to own, carry, and stockpile all kinds of firearms. Some of them believe it. But this doctrine was only popularized in the 1970s and still does not have majority support today [1].
When you tell people universal background checks a.) effectively require a registry for enforcement, and b.) don't work at all [0], their opinions tend to change. The not-working part is a feature of every "common sense" gun control measure, especially if we're talking about specific mass shootings.
If we actually want to curb gun-related deaths, start with the war on drugs and reforming urban culture — but that's hard and risky for politicians, so instead they choose to go after legal owners.
I went to school when Irish bombers will blowing up my home town and killing kids. I remember having a fire drill once at school which might have doubled as a bomb-threat drill.
Far more danger from the car drivers outside the front gates.
Comments
This whole concept is just bizarre to me as a Brit. I get the US is a different country with its own culture around firearm ownership but how on earth did widespread "active shooter training" become a thing and society went along with it?
At least the author recognises this in the first sentence, but it still blows my mind.
I think because it is a tangible thing one can do. Regardless of opinions on constitutionality of firearms ownership, nobody wants to see attacks and shoots. But what can be done? Changing the laws is not likely because of both disagreement and gridlock, though political activity is one avenue one can take with hope for longer term impact. Policing or mental health policy and programs in the in the local communities also might have some impact, but again most individuals won't be able to make an impact (not that they couldn't but won't in practice without a high degree of engagement).
But hosting a class? That is something everyone organization has full autonomy to successfully accomplish. It is within the organizational and budgetary resources of small companies, big ones, churches, schools, local community centers, etc.
Think about the duck and cover training for surviving a nuclear blast. You might not be able to do much as the average individual to avoid nuclear confrontation, but you can mitigate it on the margin with some tangible steps.
It's insane, especially since the kind of serial shooter thing (not an attack targeted at a specific person, not an argument in a parking lot that turns deadly but then stops there, none of that) it's meant to defend against is rare—as rare as one might hope? No, of course not. Rare enough that widespread training against it is unjustifiable? Yes.
I'd not have expected it beforehand, but it turns out that even fairly mild & common versions of the training (not the extreme sorts that occasionally make the news) can leave adults literally shaking. It's really hard on some people. Yet we subject a huge percentage of our children to it. The risk does not justify that.
I'm American. What I can say is that pretty much all firearms based murder is rare in the US. Across any demographic in the US, there is a much less than 0.1% chance that you will be murdered by a firearm in the US in any given year. Far more likely to die in a car accident,a nd you have a much larger chance of dying in a household accident. Don't even get me started on heart disease or cancer.
Our problem here in the US is that we overreact to dealing with that <0.1% chance. We make people jump through hoops to get a firearm to even go hunting. We flood our neighborhoods with police who raid homes using grenades and armored personnel carriers. (Usually killing innocents in the process, because, you know, we throw grenades in the windows of some baby's nursery.) And, we have active shooter drills for our children, probably traumatizing some of them for the rest of their lives. The list goes on and on actually.
In America, we pretty much overreact to everything. Which is why you probably hear so many crazy stories about the US. When faced with what we perceive to be a threat, no matter how remote the reality of the threat, we are unable to moderate our responses. In fact, you could argue that we are trained from an early age, via things like active shooter training, NOT to think too deeply about our responses.
Agreed on the overreaction thing. When I explain America to non-Americans, I tell them that most of our weirdest behaviors and practices make sense if you assume everyone's main concern at all times is never to ever be, personally, blamed for or responsible for anything—external costs of bringing about that state of things, be damned.
Passing any sort of gun control is impossible for political reasons. Republican legislators and judges block gun control whenever they can. It's about one third moneymaking for manufacturers and two thirds culture war at this point. The hardline opposition mainly dates to the Obama administration, when the Republican legislative strategy became blocking anything that Obama wanted to do.
Many Republicans will tell you that there is an absolutely vital constitutional right to own, carry, and stockpile all kinds of firearms. Some of them believe it. But this doctrine was only popularized in the 1970s and still does not have majority support today [1].
[1] https://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm
When you tell people universal background checks a.) effectively require a registry for enforcement, and b.) don't work at all [0], their opinions tend to change. The not-working part is a feature of every "common sense" gun control measure, especially if we're talking about specific mass shootings.
If we actually want to curb gun-related deaths, start with the war on drugs and reforming urban culture — but that's hard and risky for politicians, so instead they choose to go after legal owners.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10472...!
It's not like we don't have violence in the UK. We don't have active shooters but we have more than a few active stabbers and active bombers.
Let's crunch the numbers:
- In the year ending March 2021 there were 41,000 instances of recorded knife crime in the UK.
- 224 deaths as a result of a stabbing in the same period.
- Since 1970 there have been 3,395 deaths (total) from any form of terrorism in the UK.
Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04...
In the US:
- 19,384 deaths as a result of a shooting. (2020)
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
Sure, we have violence, but it's on a whole different level.
Where did I say it was the same level? I just said the nature of the threat is different.
I went to school when Irish bombers will blowing up my home town and killing kids. I remember having a fire drill once at school which might have doubled as a bomb-threat drill.
Far more danger from the car drivers outside the front gates.