This originally started out as an e-mail to Bradley J. Steiner. As happens with my e-mails probably far too often, it's come alive and turned into a blog post...
A lot is being read into this clip: much about how the majority of people did nothing, or ran away when they could have responded quickly and likely ended this attack before anyone was killed. At the beginning of the attack, there are probably over a dozen people immediately adjacent to the shooter. That crowd could have beaten the bastard to death within a matter of seconds and it's likely that none of them would have been injured to a life-threatening degree.
However, the video camera has a better angle than any of the observers. It's away and above the action. Roughly 90% of the panicked bystanders likely never saw the shooter initially and were simply moving away from the sound an dalong with the rest of "the herd". Think... if you were standing there and were five or ten people deep, (scratching yourself, picking your nose or reading a newspaper) would you stand there looking for the shooter when you heard the first shots or do your best to GTFO?
I was looking at how restrictive ones options would have been. If I were not close enough at the inception of the shooting, I'd be deciding whether or not I could still manage to rush (or even FIND)the shooter while tripping over the stampeding bodies around me. Once the crowd clears, he's moved to a significant distance and the "hero" gets killed attempting to close that distance unarmed and without any element of surprise or advantage. In fact, the hero has already been shot at least once. The others who attempted to intervene did so in a half-hearted and non-committal fashion. None of them actually make an attempt to attack the attacker but instead close while maintaining just enough distance to allow him to continue putting bullets into them.
So understand that if you're in the target zone... YOU ARE A TARGET and running towards or away from a nearby doesn't do much more than change the impact point from your chest to your back. The officer shot in the first seconds ran away... and he died. If you're ten feet away from the shooter but 75-feet away from cover... RUSH AND KILL THE SHOOTER! Accept that you're going to get shot but not necessarily die. Don't think about dying. In fact your chances of surviving are a hell of a lot better if you do everything within your power to take that worthless SoB with you. The survival ratio for gunshot wounds is actually quite good. Fighting back increases your odds of survival.
Honestly... it's easy to talk about rushing the shooter... but we MUST remember that we're looking to GO FERAL! Summon the ABSOLUTE MOST HATEFUL, BRUTAL, BLOODTHIRSTY RAGE that you can possibly muster... try to multiply that 1,000-fold and GO FOR IT! Can't imagine that? Well, if you're a parent, imagine someone attempting to abduct or harm your child. Hopefully... your response would be something akin to what I'm describing. If not... then please consider giving your children up for adoption. Your unfit to care for the innocent.
Two things that occurred to me after watching this multiple times were 1) initially he's almost TOO CLOSE for someone to draw and use a firearm. Anyone with decent hand-to-hand skills could hit him half-a-dozen times in a vital area before most people can draw, acquire and pull the trigger. Probably better to simply start wailing on the guy, beat him to the ground and kick his skull in. 2) Once the crowd clears he's now almost TOO FAR AWAY to shoot at with a handgun. Your backstop is the crowd at that point and he looks to be in excess of 50-feet away. I suppose some IDPA commando will claim to be able to easily make that shot while hunching, clenching his bowels and fighting tunnel vision. You also have incoming rounds and people running across your field of fire.
You cannot escape the instinctive body responses and you cannot "train them away". You CAN train to recognize, accept and compensate for them somewhat. You'll feel the fight-or-flight, the adrenal dump, the visual and auditory exclusion to a degree whether shooting, running away or towards, or standing still. It's one reason that witnesses can see a violent scene point-blank and not recover critical and obvious details in a conscious state.
If you train to expect this, you're less likely to freeze... which is the one thing that likely WILL get you killed.
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