one of the topics that we have seen come up a lot on our youtube channel especially
whenever we're talking about rifles or ar pistol platforms or things like that seems to be people
throwing out the comment that responding to a shooting is going to definitely get you killed by
law enforcement or another bystander and i think that this is a topic that either we fall into two
camps and i want to get phil's input so we just did another video with phil where we talked about
creating a solid training plan and this in my mind kind of couples that it kind of piggybacks off
that a little bit i think in my personal opinion you kind of fall into one of two camps either we
way overthink this and it's creating this mental roadblock where we're just being unrealistic about
what could happen or we're not thinking about it enough and i think that this is a topic that
people should be considering because again i haven't been there done that i haven't responded
to a mass shooting i've never in at this point in my life drawn a firearm to defend my life
so i can't talk to you guys about this is exactly what i did in this scenario
so just a disclaimer here we're navigating this concept and just having a short conversation to
give you guys some stuff to think about this isn't us saying do these steps and replicate this thing
i want to be very careful there because i don't think that it would be responsible to tell people
responding and defending your life is free of all risks i think that one of the things that
i've decided in my life is the decision you have to make for yours is at what point am i
willing to risk myself to defend another person and that could be myself that could be my family
but at what point am i willing to cross that threshold and say this is important enough that
i know that there might be consequences with my safety being mistaken for a shooter being engaged
upon by another responsible citizen you can just imagine the chaos of an event like that so phil
one of the things that i wanted to do here is just give people some intel i mean you have a
background of dealing with some hectic calls and things like that and understanding how
information falls apart but i want to take people that are all the way over here saying
oh you respond with a pistol you respond with a rifle you will be shot and i want to take the
people over here that are saying nothing will happen to me and i'd like to figure out that
middle and say is there something that we can do as citizens because i again think that our
communities are safer by having people that can flip a switch and deal with a situation
versus having to wait five six minutes for law enforcement to respond we're not necessarily
telling people exactly when to respond or whatever but do you have some input or experience that
could potentially help people yeah i think that all of the above really to what you're asking
and the biggest problem is that there's such a lack of information in situations like this
on all sides it's chaotic you use the word chaos and it's true so being involved in incidents
like this where you're dispatched to a shooting dispatch to whether it's a mass shooting or just a
a singular act of violence the information that comes out the information that's pushed
to law enforcement is very rarely reliable it's often conflicting it's confusing and
all of that information that gets presented to cops as they respond to these types of calls
it's very difficult for you to control that information you don't know what they're being told
which is why you see such a broad spectrum and the opinions of how to handle this from
if you intervene you're a dead man because the responding officers are going to come they're
going to gun you down no questions asked they're going to shoot on site and there are examples
where that has happened and there are examples where the information those officers received
that was actually the correct tactical decision for them it ultimately ended up being wrong but
at the time given their information that they had that was the right play for them
and then there are times where they are actually given good information
and you see instances where they can respond more correctly quicker so there's a big spread in there
and you can't control that so what i tell people this is really a mindset thing like you talked
about deciding what i'm going to do before i get into this helps me be better equipped for
when it occurs and to me this is a mindset game it's thinking about these actions beforehand
and then applying them in an actual incident and the biggest thing is i need to remove myself as
any perception of a threat and the most common way that i'm viewed as a threat is possession of a
weapon so if that's a pistol if that's a rifle no matter what it is there's simple things i can do
like re-holstering yeah putting the rifle on the ground having that gun not in my hand we make a
lot of mistakes we've been pre-conditioned by so much of our lives in hollywood and on tv
that we get involved in this shooting and like the hero you know the cowboy and white's going
to stand over and get over the villain i mean we're going to deliver the bruce willis one-liner
that i just smoked this dude yeah it's just realistic it's unrealistic and that coupled
with the fact that a lot of people get into this this is a super chaotic this is a super
emotionally and physiologically charged event our brains just kind of over process and and what do i
do now i just shot this dude like what now and there's that pause and the timing of when that
occurs but it becomes a situation where i want to get as a low threatening posture and by removing
that weapon from the equation that's honestly the biggest thing if i can't remove myself from
the situation which is my first step and we can talk about that getting myself completely away
understanding i don't have to stay right there that's not my job i don't have to arrest them
you know the phrase in the military and law enforcement is you catch them you clean them
meaning if i'm involved in the shooting i'm responsible to as a cop i'm responsible to
arrest control and render aid i have to do that as a private citizen if i use force against
again a singular source of violence or a mass shooter or something like that
i have no obligation legally morally ethically i have no obligation to stay there i can remove
myself to a place of complete safety take out any chance that i'm a secondary victim of that event
and i think that's what a lot of people get really stuck on and now granted i think most
of the comments that we get on our youtube channel and and it's really any time we're talking about
a rifle you guys have seen our videos and we're saying in my opinion this is me speaking for me
i like that the ar-15 has proliferated the masses i think it's awesome that people want to go get a
modern fighting rifle and learn how to use it the reality is most of us won't use it in a defensive
situation people think we're talking about fear and being paranoid the reality is we live in a
pretty safe time now we did see what happens in cities during chaos during societal meltdown and
ironically out of some of those situations we also saw instances where people defended
themselves with rifles right or wrong and walked right to police and didn't get shot
and so i think that there is there's a reality here that in my mind i've accepted
if say i'm in a shopping mall or something and even if i just respond with a concealed
pistol i've accepted the fact that in the moment of me drawing that pistol
someone may see that and may say holy cow that dude's about to shoot somebody and i understand
and i've accepted that as a person who i feel called to be better trained to be able to do that
that is a risk that i'm accepting but it's also where i've played these scenarios in my mind
and again i don't know how far that goes with the actual application i've never had to defend myself
in a shooting but i do think that this is a topic that some of the people that
have raised the question are genuinely curious maybe a new gun owner saying
you know these are some things that that i see and i'm concerned about
yeah yeah the most common way that a lot of people train this or mentally think about it is
if i simply follow the commands of responding law enforcement i'll be okay the unfortunate
truth is that's not always going to be the case i mean police officers are receiving a variety of
information on the way into these calls they may be receiving information like you said another
person sees you draw that gun and you're you're lawfully and righteously shooting someone in
defense of self or defense of others that person over on the other side of the mall doesn't know
that they see a dude and pair of blue jeans and a gray t-shirt draw and shoot another human being
and that's exactly what they're going to tell 9-1-1 so now that dispatch gets out of you know
white male with a beard gray t-shirt blue jeans armed with a handgun so if the responding officer
gets there and sees a white male with a beard gray t-shirt and blue jeans holding a gun holding
your chances of having a problem skyrocket so there's just no need for that there's there's
simple steps that you can take you can remove yourself from the situation and if you can't
remove yourself from the situation remove the weapon from the situation so take that out of
visibility and there's never a case i tell people when people say well what if or if the bad guys
still rolling around what are we still crawling what if he's still active well if he's still
active and you've intervened right if you still are defending others your job isn't finished and
these events happen quickly the chance of you being listen there's there's this isn't a zero
risk game right so could it i don't want to i don't want to mince that either and pretend like
this is it could happen and this has happened it could happen that another armed citizen
or responding police officer arrives simultaneous to you taking action and mistake of intent occurs
that can happen but more common is that initial fight is over in a couple of seconds
you don't need to stay in the area you don't need to watch them and hold them and cover them
and if you feel like you do that threat's still active and valid and you need to treat it as such
you can typically remove yourself you have time to put the gun back in the holster if you're carrying
concealed you have time to put the gun on the ground take a step away from it if you pulled
your rifle i can take that rifle off my sling set it on the ground take one step away if that dude's
jason voorhees and he back up and he's ready to fight again so he lays down he magically
reanimates you know like like that idiot chipman said right the zombies this dude's a real zombie
and i gotta shoot him in the head now right it's one step pick the gun up yeah and i'm going to
potentially you know like i like to think about the bag gun video that we just recently did where
we talked about a couple different ways that we keep rifles and backpacks in our vehicles
and we have access to them that caused a lot of these kind of comments and that's where i also
think a lot of people forget that there may be a scenario where that rifle's a primary oftentimes
for us our pistols are primaries but i still have a concealed pistol too so if i had to put that
rifle back in a backpack zip that backpack up make it disappeared i still have access to an immediate
pistol or a rifle or something like that yeah just taking the weapon like i said remove removal of
self and in situations where i cannot alright removal of the weapon or the visibility of that
weapon is going to greatly enhance your safety both from other armed citizens and from responding
law enforcement could you still get shot sure is it likely now where if that responding officer
comes in and gives you commands even if you don't understand the commands or you're contradictory
to what those commands are given you're in a much safer position and again if i remove myself
we talk about removing and communicating so if i remove myself from that immediate scene
and i communicate through 9-1-1 and i'm not here to give legal advice that's for attorneys
for for talented men and women there to give you legal advice but if i remove myself from the scene
if i make contact in 9-1-1 and i remove myself to a place of safety
my preferred area that i tell people to go is start moving towards a hospital
so i'm going to go to a hospital i'm going to go to seek treatment even if i'm uninjured i don't
have to be shot stabbed wounded in any way i'm heading to a hospital i'm an alternate to that
would be i'm heading to the police department what i don't want to do uh you know it's not a joke
it's kind of sick but i don't want to ted kennedy i don't want to get in the shooting go home wake
up the next morning and then call and be like hey by the way uh i shot a guy last night yeah that's
a bad idea but if i remove myself and communicate immediately i take away that mistaken identity and
i add layers to my safety and i add buffers of time and distance between the threat and myself
yeah guys this is a topic that i don't think that one video is going to necessarily give you all
the info that you need and on top of that every state is different based on the laws that you
can and can't how you can and can't respond to situations i should say it's very very complex
but what i personally believe is that this is a conversation you need to have with yourself
and you need to be diving into and asking these questions and formulating some sort of a plan
so that in the event that you do respond you have something to fall back on and you're not just
winging this i i do think that there's validity in the comments that people have been giving
or sending to us i should say asking us about hey does this make you a target but i definitely think
that there's an area here in the middle that we can recognize that as citizens we do have a right
to defend our life nobody can take that right away from us and say you can't defend your life
because of this risk but then we have to treat this seriously and kind of navigate this topic
so the last question that i wanted to just kind of throw at you real quick before we wrap
up knowing that there's risks to responding in a life or death situation do you think that those
risks justify some people not taking action at all or saying okay well i know i might get shot
so i'm just not even gonna carry a gun i'm not gonna do anything how does how do you kind of
navigate that cause i know there's some people on the fence saying i don't wanna get shot by a
i don't want to be mistaken as a bad guy so i'm not going to carry a gun yeah i think there's a
lot of theoretical talk there to me that's all about personal choice that's that's a that's an
individual personal discussion or an individual personal decision that only you can make and you
can make that decision beforehand in a mindset in a what if in a mental rehearsal kind of manner
what you're going to do there's a lot of people maybe a little bit lesser example to this
is there's a lot of people that'll say if i pull up on a car accident you know for years
since we've been kids the rule of thumb is oh don't touch them don't touch them and i won't
intercede and i won't do that and there are hard hearts that say well you know i'm not getting sued
i'm not going to do this i'm going to do that it's a lot different when you're standing there
looking at someone who's bleeding to death and you have the understanding the tools and the means
to help them it's a lot different seeing it and having it happen in person so it's okay to think
about this beforehand it's an individual decision but also be flexible enough with yourself mentally
and emotionally and understand you may choose a different course of action given the stimulus
you have yeah for sure so guys i hope this was at least a little bit helpful to you and this
is a topic honestly i plan to dive into in the future as well i mean we will see examples of this
there's plenty of examples on both sides of the fence people that stopped mass shootings with
even rifles openly engaged shooters stopped them and they interacted with police and didn't die and
then there's the situations where it went south really bad and i think that maybe eventually we
can kind of dive into some of those scenarios and dissect them a little bit but at the same time i
just want to encourage all of you guys to make a decision for yourself if you decide that you are
a concealed carrier take it seriously and that's what we are about here at ta targets is don't just
be somebody who takes a gun puts it in their safe says i'm good to go i want to see you guys getting
out getting trained having mental exercises we're thinking about this stuff and not just throwing
the dice and saying i think i might just do this one thing when the time you know women when it
counts the most be thinking about these situations you can always talk to attorneys there's plenty
of firearms attorneys out there putting out good information you can look up statistics
do some studying and then also tap into other resources guys leave us a comment in the comment
section phil i appreciate you jumping into another video with us catch you guys in the next one you