The Mid-Missouri John Brown Gun Club 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 MidMoJBGC@protonmail.com 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.
In related news, right-wingers are already trying to turn the events in Colleyville, Texas into some kind of conspiracy.