Colleges confront shootings with survival training
August 26th, 2008 . by TexasFredColleges confront shootings with survival training
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Hundreds of colleges across the nation have purchased a training program that teaches professors and students not to take campus threats lying down but to fight back with any “improvised weapon,” from a backpack to a laptop computer.
The program - which includes a video showing a gunman opening fire in a packed classroom - urges them to be ready to respond to a shooter by taking advantage of the inherent strength in numbers.
It reflects a new response at colleges and universities where grisly memories of the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University are still fresh.
“Look at your environment through the lens of survival,” said Domenick Brouillette, who administered the course at Metropolitan Community College, which serves more than 20,000 students. “Survivors prepare themselves both mentally and emotionally to do what it takes. It might involve life-threatening risk. You may do something you never thought you were capable of doing.”
Full Story Here:
Colleges confront shootings with survival training
Maybe I should have considered a job in the field of motivational speaking and survival training.
I addressed the victim mentality that was so overpowering and present at the Virginia Tech tragedy, Virginia Tech - The Real Tragedy, I wrote the most serious article I have ever written and every word was heart felt, for the victims and their families.
Showing students violent images of school shootings could trigger post-traumatic stress or other reactions that resident advisers, graduate assistants and similarly untrained workers would be unequipped to handle, Coleman said.
And the techniques shown in instructional videos such as “Shots Fired” could provide inspiration for troubled students considering their own acts of violence, Coleman suggested.
C’mon, lets get REAL here. Kids today have seen hundreds of murders and executions in their young lifetimes. You can thank the wonderful world of television and the very graphic video games industry, and it’s world wide market for that.
The kids of today are fairly calloused in regards to death, they have seen far too much of it, in a fake medium. And these training videos are exactly that, a fake medium, one where every victim gets up and walks off when it’s over, and the kids know it. It’s when our young people see it for real, the 1st time they see a friend with his guts hanging out, or his brains all over the wall, or legs and arms blown off, it’s then, and only then, that reality, and true terror set in.
A fine example is the very large number of our troops that are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering PTSD. They are well trained, they have been through all the films, all the realistic training scenarios and every other mode of education our military can use to prepare them for the horrors of battle. And we still have troops returning that have all but lost their minds. Or worse, troops that, after all of that training, simply froze, failed to react to the immediate threat, and died because of that failure.
Those things are happening on a regular basis, with well armed and well trained troops. A short course in improvised weaponry and survival training may very well help some students survive a classroom attack, I am not knocking it, in any way, but this is not something that can or should be done in a brief, one hour, 3 times a week for 2 weeks and it’s over type thing.
Survival IS a matter of training, but it is as much an instinct as anything, and that instinct is not bred into ALL people. It’s up to the parents of our kids to begin that survival training from the moment their kids are old enough to comprehend.
The really sad part is, there are so many young parents today that are products OF the *oh well* mindset that has become so prevalent in the American way of thinking. And until that mindset is overcome, there will always be victims that do absolutely nothing to defend themselves.
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This wouldn’t be needed if they allowed student and professors to carry guns. Then when some nutcase tries to shoot up the school, he’d have dozens of guns shooting him down first.
I can’t disagree with that, not one word, not in any way…
Teachers having Guns, I may be for that.
Students having Guns?
Does that mean all or any student could carry a gun. Our school system across this country is filled with Gang-Bangers, drug dealers and just plain bad kids. I would not want my children attending a school that could become the OK Corral at any moment. If you have good kids and bad kids carrying guns, that’s what’s going to happen.
I don’t know what the answer is.
It means well trained, and of LEGAL age, 21, then and ONLY then… We’re talking COLLEGE age, not the 1st grade… Sheesh..
Ret. Lt. Col. David Grossman’s “On Killing” — one of THE best books around.
http://www.killology.com/
BZ
Ranando,
Funny, my Dad thinks that way as well. Anyway, I work with a few ex-LEO’s, and they all agree with the notion, that the large majority of people carrying are actually a lot more civil in confrontations and avoid getting into a situation that would lead to requiring the weapon.
Fred, (BZ and others) would your experience agree???
Tom
I can’t knock the idea of such training, if several young men would have had the mindset to rush the asshole at VT, there would have been fewer casualties. the only such selfless act I recall hearing about that day was about an elderly Jewish professor who well remembered the terror of Nazi Germany. society will not stand if the people will not fight to maintain it. making do with what you have handy to defend yourself and others shows a real lack of foresight, only a fool brings a knife to a gunfight. the best Idea to me would be to examine Israel’s methods, they have lived with terrorism on a daily basis for 60 years, each and every citizen gets their training, and their weapons, right out of high school, such preparedness has saved countless lives there.
There was a time in this nation wherein people were expected to be self reliant, instead of now, ever dependent on mother government to save them from the rigors and toils of life.
I am all for instructing and teaching the youth of America how to be survivalists and defenders of kith and kin once again. The problem lies in that we have generally allowed our society to teach our children that violence of any kind is evil and is not allowable, no matter the reason behind it. Many have given up on the ways of proper child rearing that would ensure mature and responsible adults, capable of taking on any obstacle in front of them, ranging from fighting the tyranny of evil men to paying their bills on time.
Am I the only one who has noticed all the *$%# warning labels on most anything anymore? This comes from a sub-society of people who weren’t expected to think and therefore could hurt themselves with just about anything. Why is that?
How do we undo the last 30-40 years of teaching our youth that it’s okay to bow down in compliance to evil, that they should no longer subject themselves to such acts of ninny cowardice?
How do we instill the mindset of individual freedom, of liberty, of self reliance, the hatred of evil and love of country, once again? Because those things are paramount to being a nation of defenders again, instead of a growing sea of servants and sheep.
Perhaps through propagating the defensive mindset through our college youth, we can begin to plant these seeds of what is good and just once again. From there, we can only hope that the chain of defenselessness will be broken, that these newly instructed youth will pass the message on to their children, and to their children’s children, that sometimes good men and women fight and die not because they are evil, but because they are the defenders of what is good and just. Perhaps they will realize that some resort to violence, not in order to rule over other men, but to prevent the whole of the People from being ruled.
Sign me up, I’ll bring my own ammo.
TGN
I think the training is an outstanding idea. You are right on TF, kids today have been exposed to a wide variety of violence through video games, TV and movies. If this training could stop one lunatic then it would be well forth it. I do believe kids today are very lazy, but it is not their faults as we have allowed them to grow up in a soft world of internet, games and cell phones. Young people are basically the same as when I was young, they just need good guidance to help them out. Nothing wrong with some good training !!
We have sheltered our kids for the past two generations until they do not know how to respond to danger… short of falling to the ground and assuming the fetal position! It should not be necessary for schools, any schools, to “train” young men and women how to protect themselves, and those around him or her. It should come as, well, instinct… honed by parental training. . And the instinct for self-preservation IS there… but we have buried it under load upon load of limp-wristed “Conflict Resolution” mumbo jumbo. You can’t have it both ways. Either a human being is ready to do whatever is necessary to protect himself, and his associates and loved ones, or he will be putting his life on the line every time he ventures into public…period
As someone who would never own a gun himself (but believes that my gun beliefs should not be imposed on others) :
I would rather have someone TRAINED to know how and WHEN to use their wepon for protection, then be a nut job going off half-cocked
(no pun intended, but it DOES fit).
texasgunnut expressed my thoughts quite eloquently.
The largest obstacle (but it can be overcome) is the namby-pamby “You’re OK, I’m OK” mindset that has been drilled into heads of impressionable young people since the mid 60s.
Once you get past the fact that the ones giving the training are fighting their own ingrained responses, then the program has a fighting chance.
Longstreet is also correct, in that the individual either has it in him or not. That goes back to our earliest ancestors - either they fought, or they didn’t. Now, we don’t face the daily dangers that hone the instinct of fight or flight to the edge needed for true life-or-death situations, and society is losing members because of it.
The really sad part is that a training of this type is even necessary.
Now, for my evil twin’s thoughts:
These people keep coming in here and messing with the natural order of things. Mandating seatbelts, saving lives of idiots. Mandating all-red time at intersections, saving lives of idiots. Warning labels on the most mundane of items with the most obvious warning (Caution! Fresh brewed coffee is hot!), saving lives of idiots. With more and more idiots living beyond their intended or probable lifespans, they are breeding - you guessed it! - more and more idiots.
Speaking of Gangbangers in schools. I’ve never heard of a nut-job going into an inner city school and shooting it up. When these sickos decide to shoot up a school, McDonalds, shopping center, park, etc, it’s always filled with suburbanites.
Choice of weapon: laptop vs gun. I choose gun every time.
Right Truth has a good point, and I never thought to ask - what’s the reload cycle time for a laptop?
Fred you are right, about all of it .
When our young people see death is real, see their friends killed right before their eyes, then and only then do they realize that it is over for that person.
That is hard for the mind to grasp my any age.
When a young soldier see’s his buddy blown up in a vehicle, by IED’s, then has to put his buddys body in a bag…the horror of it all…
Or when the enemy is killed and then the you soldier has load rhe mangled body on the hood, like a deer…then the horror sets in…then PTSD sets in.
PTSD sets in for students who survive situations such as virgiania Tech too.
Yes they all need intensive training…
IF I had kids in COLLEGE, and I knew that some teachers carried firearms. I Would tell my kids they better behave.
I think this is a good start, but I honestly believe the “Survival class” is a way to make mom and dad feel better more than it is about actual skills and training.
IF this training goes on long enough to develop the mind, and body then it will be a valuable class.
I also think that class should be screened very carefully, it should not be OPENED it should be selective.
After VT, I thought “What student group would most exhibit the professionalism, maturity, and ability to handle a firearm” and which group would be able to best use them in defense of those not able? I thought the ROTC…
Just a thought.