Active Shooter Workshop – A Neighborly Blog

The [redacted] has an active shooter workshop available that I believe to be unique in that it fills in the details of the “fight” step with a more concrete workshop. Although it is certainly true that the best weapon against a person armed with a gun is a gun, we are not at all interested in trying to convince you to arm people with guns in preparation for an attack for a couple of reasons. First off, despite how things may seem, an attack by an unhinged person with a firearm is still a very low probability event for most places, and even less likely in a place where everyone is anti-gun; most mass shootings are performed by a man associated with the place where the shooting happens. Second, things are the way they are in the US because people keep compromising their ethics for selfish reasons; we’d hate to push you into doing that same thing. A third reason is that proper firearm training takes a lot of time and is a huge commitment (even though many Americans treat it as trivial); we’d rather get you something practical that you can use today.

Our active shooter workshop is not a replacement for other types of trainings, and our club can only serve the Boone County, Missouri area. It only addresses strategies for fighting back against an intruder armed with a firearm, and not any of the steps that might precede that moment — all of which are more important to learn than how to fight back. Members of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship for Reconciliation have participated in this workshop and have told us that they found it very helpful; I don’t think there’s any group that personifies a philosophy of non-violence more than the FoR.

I’m bringing this up today for a couple of reasons. There was the recent attack on a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas; the rabbi there threw a chair at the hostage-taker’s weapon, and then he and the remaining hostages fled the building. While that might have been a reasonable strategy at the moment, and it was certainly courageous, I think it is likely that the hostage-taker had given up hope in that moment and allowed them to flee. We’re also approaching the next low-point in community transmission of COVID-19, and since this is a rather up-close and personal workshop, the next opportunity for this workshop might be happening soon. (We’ll certainly take as many measures as we can to reduce the chance of COVID-19 transmission and work out those details with you.)

You can email us at [redacted] but if you’re in our area, you probably know who we are or know someone who does, so just reach out to whichever member you know.