Active Shooter Drills Draw Complaints/Lawsuit

It wouldn't take anything as dramatic as an act of self defense... Someone could get severely injured just by running down a flight of stairs and tripping. I would think that a jury would be pretty sympathetic to an injured person under these circumstances.

I read the original WSJ article... very good and typical of that paper. I get 90% of my news from the WSJ. I pretty much ignore anything available online for "free".
 
Thanks DNS. I get tripped up by the phrase "reasonably believes...immediately necessary" - the concept of reasonableness is pretty slippery sometimes.

I know some well-educated professional people who tell me they are certain, based on where they live, where the go, who they know and so on, that they will never be victimized - and it it utterly "unreasonable" to carry a pistol just in case. If it happens that I'm the one who swung the fire extinguisher, I don't want those people judging the reasonableness of my response.
 
Active shooter drills without telling everyone involved it is a drill is really stupid.

How, oh HOW does someone so dumb that they would call an unannounced shooter drill without telling everyone it is a drill get promoted in an organization to the point where they could call for an unannounced drill?

It has to be somebody a little higher up that calls for these drills...I mean a first year teacher or rookie cop isn't doing this on their own.
 
My guess is the person in charge is very anti-gun.... they think they know the solution but in reality they are clueless.
 
I think the term "active shooter" is stupid to begin with. What is an inactive shooter? How about "shooter" and dead criminal.

Yes, having drills without people knowing about it would be very stupid and would result in someone getting injured where I work.
 
I think the term "active shooter" is stupid to begin with. What is an inactive shooter? How about "shooter" and dead criminal.
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If you'd been through the class, you'd know the difference between a hostage situation and an "active shooter", who is wandering around killing people, as in Columbine. A hostage situation, you can wait for backup, SWAT, negotiators, whatever. An active shooter you go in with what you've got, whether one or two, or a dozen officers. No time to wait. Clear?
 
Active shooters vs. hostage takers is important do to motivational issues.

The latter might want to make a statement or be some schmuck who didn't make it out of a failed robbery. These two have different strategies and tactics that are needed from the active killer.

Some incidents were based on the hostage taker - contain and negotiate. Didn't work for the killers. In some sieges - the surrounding law used the play book for hostage takers and didn't understand the motivations and it went terribly wrong.
 
BobCat45 said:
WRT post #13:
Spats, in your opinion, could such a claim of self defense hold up in court?
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First, my caveats: (#1) I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. I'm not licensed in your jurisdiction, so what follows is simply commentary, not legal advice. (#2) I've only skimmed the article.

Now that I have that out of the way, yes, such a claim could hold up. In describing SD in legal terms, most jurisdictions have some variant of "reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or grave bodily injury" in their statutory language. The term "reasonable" often means that it can be left to a jury to determine if the SD Shooter's belief, that he was in imminent danger of death or grave bodily injury, was "reasonable," meaning something like "an ordinary, reasonable person, having the information possessed by the SD Shooter, could come to the same conclusion." So it might have to go to the jury to make that decision, but under the right facts, yes, a jury could find it reasonable.
 
IIRC correctly, there WAS a case where a man defended his home from what he believed to be a home invasion, that turned out to be a SWAT raid on the wrong address, and a police officer was killed by the home owner....years and thousands of dollars later the home owner was supposedly cleared as being self defense. Think the police will EVER show up to HIS house if he calls 911 for any reason?
 
My guess is the person in charge is very anti-gun.... they think they know the solution but in reality they are clueless.
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Whether is the people in charge may be anti-gun isn't relevant or in evidence in any way in the situations where the drills have been sprung on unsuspecting people.

Yes, they are clueless {about possible pitfalls and ramifications}, but there are plenty of pro-gun people who are clueless as well. Don't ever forget that, but if you do, there is Youtube to remind you.
 
IIRC correctly, there WAS a case where a man defended his home from what he believed to be a home invasion, that turned out to be a SWAT raid on the wrong address, and a police officer was killed by the home owner....years and thousands of dollars later the home owner was supposedly cleared as being self defense. Think the police will EVER show up to HIS house if he calls 911 for any reason?
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Are you talking about Corey Maye? (who spent years on death row) Or somebody else in a similar situation?
 
Are we still talking about Active Shooter drills and training? If so, I've been involved in countless training scenarios. Not once, were uninformed players involved. Everyone involved knew exactly what was going on, in order to avoid any kind of misunderstanding or injuries.

And yes, there's a HUGE difference between a hostage situation and an active shooter situation. I'm a certified Hostage Negotiator, and have been for years. No way that you should mistake one for the other. Whole different set of dynamics involved, as well as time frames, obviously.

Back to my first paragraph. If someone was not informed of an active shooter training situation, someone made a big mistake. To even make such a basic mistake, speaks volumes of the organization hosting it.
 
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I took two axes out of my truck and stashed them under my desk at work for an active shooter response, as opposed to stashing myself under the desk.

I would not want to be the dimwitted numbnuts who came near my area shooting blanks at co-workers.
 
zxcvbob, I don't think it was that guy, wasn't convicted of anything. Dang, wish I could remember the details, can't think of enough to even Google it right. My bad, sorry.
 
And yes, there's a HUGE difference between a hostage situation and an active shooter situation.
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Yes, but they are not necessarily exclusive. Sometimes that HUGE difference is just a matter of timing. For example, Tacoma Mall, Concordia University, Mesa School, Laura Dann's rampage went from an active shooter situation to a hostage situation. The Amish School Shooting went from a hostage situation to an active shooter situation, shooting 10 victims before the police could do anything to stop him.

So while the two situations may be different types, they are not necessarily exclusive and one can change into the other.
 
Yes, having drills without people knowing about it would be very stupid
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That about sums it up for me as well. I'll add:

1. Just because its labeled "training" doesn't mean it's NOT kidnapping....under the law.

2. If you can force someone to volunteer for a secret training exercise, what else can you force someone to volunteer for? Unlawful quartering? Military Service? Sex?
 
When my nephew (a ridiculously big dude) was in high school they interrupted a pep rally when the police came in full force, wrestled him to the floor of the gym, told him he was under arrest for dealing and hauled him off to jail. In front of the whole student body. He was bailed out that night.

The next day they had an assembly to tell the students it was all made up and was staged for the shock effect. Apparently pretty effective from all reports.

The people that knew were the Supt and Principal and two Vice Principals and the head of Security. His (widowed) Mom knew but they didn't tell his sister in the same school. To her credit she defended him completely.

The 6 arresting officers had unloaded weapons but did have pepper spray. The Lt and 2 Sgts had loaded weapons but stayed out of the way.
 
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