No, not you.  I’m talking to Jeff Sanders writing for PJM.

I have just completed the ALICE training course on dealing with an active shooter situation. If your business has not gone through this, you need to get them on board. Immediately. This is simply some of the best training I have ever been through. And it does not involve using firearms at all.

We have all heard about the tragedies at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Virginia Tech where an active shooter massacred people. Sadly, this sort of thing is probably not going away any time soon. How should people caught in this situation respond? Not everyone is going to carry a gun. (I am a concealed carry weapons instructor and strongly support the 2nd Amendment. But let’s face it, many people simply are not going to carry, and many should NOT carry a firearm.)

Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat. There is training, however, that uses our natural God-given abilities that even children can use, and it’s in the ALICE training seminars.

“ALICE” is the acronym for a series of responses: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. You do not need to do all of these responses, or in the order spelled out in the acronym. You do whatever your situation demands at the moment.

Oh good Lord!  I’m so tired of hearing this claptrap I don’t know what to do except call it out for the bullshit it is.  It’s effective bullshit for the masses, just witness the comments at the linked article, or the link that sent me there to begin with.  Let me explain what this is all about.  Security contractors know that the progressive heads of corporations won’t allow their employees to carry firearms for self defense, but those same employees also know that run, hide and fight is ridiculous and sets them up to be sheep led to the slaughter on the altar of those progressive dreams of utopia.  What to do?

Enter, “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.”  It sounds so much better, right?  Except there is no difference since employees are unarmed and helpless.  The money quote is this: “Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat.”

That’s a lie and the writer knows it, as does every security contractor who purveys this bullshit (or if he actually believes it he has poor judgment).  We’ve seen otherwise, from the young lady who had a gun to her head, reached down, unholstered her firearm, and shot the assailant.  Or consider the elderly folk who have acted in self defense, most of them essentially untrained.  I’m not advocating getting no training.  What I am advocating is that it’s possible to defend your life without the supposedly super Ninja warrior stress control training that infantry goes through.

And the notion that the police are trained to that standard is absurd.  Most police never discharge their weapons in self defense.  Neither, for that matter, do Soldiers and Marines who aren’t infantry.  That is a myth.  The bottom line is that if you are left unarmed by your employer, you are left as sheep to be slaughtered on the altar of the progressive utopian dream.

And every security contractor who teaches corporate security knows it.  Every … single … one.