I speculate
johnelmore said:
"Lock Down" or make a run for it?
Conventional advice is to "lock down" when faced with an active shooter. Basically you buy time and hope for the police to arrive in time.
What follows is my speculation, not advice.
When I was a child, we had fire drills at school. One of the things we practiced was to stay together and assemble in designated areas away from the building (usually the parking lot). This got us out of harm's way, sure, but it also allowed for a head count.
I notice a lot of effort during and after recent events has to do with identifying who is and who is not 1) a shooter, 2) missing and 3) dead/wounded.
People who are not moving around are easier to count. The conventional
instruction for innocents in the area to stay put until an official arrives to escort them out of harm's way is not for tactics of the individual people, but for the administration of the crime scene. (This is my speculation).
If law enforcement arrives on scene and can count on innocents to stay still, anyone moving is self-identified as a suspect. This may not be entirely true, but it does decrease the odds of an innocent being shot or detained unnecessarily and makes it easier to sort out who to the good guys from the bad.
I recall a scene from the movie, "The Great Escape". The NAZIs, searching for escaped Allied prisoners were on a crowded train platform. They ordered everyone to lay down flat. The uninvolved complied. The one guy who remained upright and running was our escaped allied prisoner, who was immediately shot.
It does help law enforcement if every law-abiding person stays put, complies with orders and complies with instructions.
Sheltering in place may or may not be advantageous to the individual(s) doing the sheltering. But it does give an advantage to the rescuers coming on scene. The additional risk to the individuals may balance out against the aggregate advantage to the general population by making it easier for first responders to control the situation.
I am not selling anything. Just re-posing the question voiced by the original poster, but from the point of view of first responders.
Lost Sheep