FBI ‘Active Shooter’ Report Supports ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ Claims

It’s curious the Bureau made an editorial decision to emphasize an investigation it’s being so tight-lipped about.

A recently released report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation credits armed citizens with saving lives. “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017” was released  in April, and provides hard evidence that gun-grabbers who ridicule the efficacy of keeping and bearing arms are demonstrably agenda-driven liars.

“The FBI has designated 50 shootings in 2016 and 2017 as active shooter incidents,” the report summarizes. “Twenty incidents occurred in 2016, while 30 incidents occurred in 2017.

“The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” the report continues. “Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of one or more firearms. The active aspect of the definition inherently implies that both law enforcement personnel and citizens have the potential to affect the outcome of the event based upon their responses to the situation. “

And how have citizens “affected the outcome”?

“Eight shooters were stopped by citizens,” the report documents, up from six credited in a 2014/2015 report:

“In four incidents, citizens possessing valid firearms permits successfully stopped the shooter. In two incidents, citizens exchanged gunfire with the shooter. In two incidents, the citizens held the shooter at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived. In one incident, a citizen possessing a valid firearms permit exchanged gunfire with the shooter, causing the shooter to flee to another scene and continue shooting. In one incident, a citizen possessing a valid firearms permit was wounded before he could fire at the shooter.”

That’s a pretty good record, especially considering how the doctrinaire gun-grabbers scoff at the idea, say it never happens, and claim “untrained” people would either end up getting killed or killing innocents themselves.

It also belies charges that gun owners are violent and bloodthirsty, just looking for an excuse to kill someone. The reported incidents reflect appropriate actions and judgment, and while it’s true that one citizen was wounded, no one has ever claimed having a gun makes someone invincible – what it can do (and based on results does) is offer a better chance than being defenseless and helpless.

What the report does not do is specify which locations where armed citizens did not help stop a shooter were so-called “gun-free zones.” We can make educated guesses about some of the incidents, such as school shootings, but as presented it’s difficult to extrapolate on lives that could have been saved had an armed presence been encouraged rather than forbidden by ignorance and/or law.

As things stand, there’s no reason to doubt the potential for more saves, and it’s up to anyone who disputes that to produce proof that the FBI is wrong when it acknowledges:

“Armed and unarmed citizens engaged the shooter in 10 incidents. They safely and successfully ended the shootings in eight of those incidents. Their selfless actions likely saved many lives.”

There is, however, one major flaw in the report that defenders of gun owner rights should be sensitive to. Jeff Knox, director of The Firearms Coalition advocates that using the term “active shooter” to describe scumbag murderers is wrong and ought to be reclaimed by the real – and peaceable – active shooters.

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President trump recommends school staff who conceal carry firearms on campus should get a bonus

 

WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — In a bold move President Donald Trump recently recommended that schools become hardened and not softened, and that staffers who conceal carry firearms on campus should be worthy of a bonus.

The president made clear that most school shootings would be deterred if the attackers knew schools were no longer gun free-zones.

“I think a concealed permit for having teachers, and letting people know that there are people in the building with guns you won’t have, in my opinion, you wont have these shootings because these people are a cowards,” the POTUS explained. “They are not going to walk into a school if maybe twenty-percent of the teachers had guns.”

“The people that do carry — we give them a bonus,” the President recommended.

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

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Stoneman Douglas football coach ‘died a hero’ protecting students during shooting

BY JORDAN MCPHERSON, MANNY NAVARRO AND LINDA ROBERTSON   2-15-2018

In the midst of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday that left 17 people dead and at least 15 injured, a football coach will be remembered for his heroism in a time of chaos.

Aaron Feis, 37, an assistant football coach and security guard at the high school, died Wednesday night after being critically injured after jumping in front of shooter Nikolas Cruz to protect students.

“All my kids thought the world of him,” Douglas head football coach Willis May said. “All the graduates that played for us and even the students, man. They’d go on and on about how good he was to them and how he always had a smile for everybody. It’s sad.”

The school announced the news on its Twitter account early Thursday morning.

“He died a hero and he will forever be in our hearts and memories,” the post reads.

Athletic director Chris Hixon also died in the shooting, May said.

“I was close to him,” May said. “When he likes you and trusts you, you become friends. We were to that point where we were being able to trust each other. We had each other’s back. He’s a good person. He’s good to people.”

Feis was a 1999 graduate of Douglas and was devoted to his alma mater.

May said he was with Feis’ family members when they got the news that Feis had died from his injuries. He said Feis is survived by his wife, Melissa, and a young daughter.

May said football players told him that Feis had shielded students and pushed them out of the way of Cruz, who police say entered his former high school around dismissal time Wednesday and began shooting people with an AR-15 rifle.

Read more at Miami Herald

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Brandon Smith: How To Stop All Future Mass Shootings

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

In my last article "A Tactical Analysis Of The Las Vegas Mass Shooting Incident," I outlined the precarious nature of the mainstream narrative and why the Vegas event in particular requires serious independent investigation into the possibility that Stephen Paddock did not plan or execute the event alone, or, he did not plan or execute the event at all, and someone else with far more tactical knowledge and shooting experience committed the murders outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Given that the FBI and Vegas sheriff"s timeline seems to change every few days and that Mandalay surveillance footage is locked up tight, I think it is safe to say that someone more professional, and not muzzled by bureaucracy, needs be involved.

Setting aside the inconsistencies in the official narrative, questioning the motives behind this particular attack does not really bring us any closer to a practical solution. Of course, if you are one of those people that obsessively embraces the "crisis actor" theory, then you likely think that nothing much needs to be solved because "no one actually died." I am not very interested in this impractical theory reminiscent of "The Truman Show", nor the people that promote it. It reminds me of the 9/11 hologram plane theory — remember, the theory designed to discredit the more legitimate 9/11 truth movement which included hundreds of scientists, architects and engineers with real arguments and evidence? Yeah, those establishment disinformation tactics did not go away; they are still being used today to undermine honest and rational investigations of other potential false flag events.

Ask "fake event" theorists for ANY concrete evidence that a single death was theatrical and that thousands of concertgoers and their families are part of the conspiracy, and these guys will demand that YOU show them the dead bodies and prove that the event "wasn"t faked."  In other words, you must prove a negative, which is of course impossible.

Tell them you happen to know people with friends and family who were harmed in the event and they"ll call you a liar or a government "agent." Show them numerous photos of dead bodies and they"ll claim the bodies are actors. Show them first hand accounts of people on the ground — hey, all those people must be actors, too. Ask them for proof again and they"ll try to pawn the burden of proof off on you; proof that they will then again deny when it is presented. It is a pointless circle of idiocy that makes alternative research look ridiculous.

If the establishment is seeking to stage a false flag, why go through the trouble of an elaborate, costly and harder-to-contain Kabuki play with numerous actors that might not keep quiet when they could simply shoot some real people with real bullets and be done with it?

Moving on...

This article will be focusing on the very real shooting (and attacks like it) which did in fact occur. Perhaps not the way that the mainstream media and the FBI claim, but still taking place all the same. How do we prevent such attacks in the future? What about Gladio-type false flag events (the Vegas event has numerous Gladio markers)? Can those be stopped, or is this an impossible task?

As far as false flag attacks are concerned, the long-term solution would be to nullify the people who fund and plan these scenarios. Until the day this is accomplished, though, we need some short-term protections.

I believe it is indeed possible to stop future mass shooting events, and to be sure, the solution does NOTinvolve further gun control measures or confiscation. Why? Because gun control does nothing to prevent mass shootings.

Just take a look at the Paris attacks perpetrated by ISIS. France has strict gun laws in line with what gun control advocates in the U.S. would like to see implemented. Even off-duty police officers in France were not allowed to carry their sidearms until after the Paris attacks in 2015.

French gun laws did nothing to stop ISIS terrorists from killing over 130 people in a single night using weapons already highly restricted in the country. All they accomplished was disarming innocent citizens and making them easy targets.

The nation of India also has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, yet this did nothing to prevent the Mumbai attacks in 2008 in which 164 people were killed.

Norway had extremely tough gun laws in 2011, but these were easily circumvented by Anders Breivik who murdered 69 members of a Workers Youth Camp on the island of Utoya.

As I noted in my previous article, the Vegas attack was initiated using more complex sniper-like tactics as evidenced in the choice of the shooter"s perch as well as in the calculations for bullet drop from an elevated position. I believe this was done quite deliberately; most mass shooters tend to be poorly trained and attack a crowd haphazardly at point blank range in order to achieve maximum casualties in the shortest amount of time.  However, in Vegas, and Nevada in general, the likelihood of running into a person with a conceal carry weapon is rather high. Paddock (or whoever) might not have lasted more than a minute before being confronted with multiple defenders armed with their own sidearms.

The Vegas shooter was smart to avoid a point blank, ground level confrontation. But how do we make future shooters think twice about longer range attacks at crowded events?

The federal government and DHS will probably call for stricter security measures in locations in which many people congregate. I would not be surprised to see demands for TSA-style security in streets in major tourist areas and at concerts, sporting events, etc. Body scanners and luggage scanners in major hotels? Count on it, eventually. Hardcore anti-gun ordinances within major cities, much like the gun measures in places like Washington D.C.? Do not be shocked.

As mentioned above, none of this will really stop a determined mass shooter or terrorist (and certainly not a false flag), but without an alternative solution, frightened people have a tendency to go along with the deluded notion that more government means more security.

Vegas is not a stranger to crisis, but it seems to have forgotten how to prevent it. Many Americans are unaware that back in 1992 during the Rodney King riots, Las Vegas had to deal with its own major civil unrest with millions of dollars in damage and multiple deaths. This was barely reported because of Vegas"s habit of burying stories that might stain the tourist destination"s fun-loving image. But, it did take place.

West Las Vegas erupted in violence in the wake of the Rodney King trial, including snipers shooting at police officers and bystanders, but the Vegas Strip went largely untouched. This was perhaps because hotel and casino private security at that time had a reputation for being rather well armed and vicious. Many hotels had their own rooftop shooters ready and waiting. Given, Vegas was still highly "mobbed up" in the 1990s, but one must admit that their security was not to be trifled with.

No major federal measures were needed and intrusive security was minimal. Can this effect be achieved again (without the mob)?  Yes.

If mass shooters, terrorists and "others" seek to attack highly populous events using advanced tactics, then the organizers of these events should be employing private security groups with applicable tactical training and experience. There are thousands of well-trained veterans and civilians out there with the skills necessary to stop an active shooter, and they are not being employed where they are most capable. A team of two people trained in counter-sniping positioned near the concert at the Mandalay Bay could have cut down the shooter within a couple minutes rather than 10 minutes (or more), saving dozens of lives.

To be clear, I am not talking about poorly organized volunteer security made up of people not vetted, led by other men of questionable competence. I am not talking about guys who claim they have training but are never asked to prove it before they show up for the "gig." And I am not talking about security groups composed of individuals who barely know each other and have never worked together, as we have seen in scenarios like the Berkeley riots.

What I am talking about is the employment of quiet, vetted and tested professionals hired out for specific events in which large crowds will be present.

The Feds are not needed and, in most cases, not wanted. Private security firms WITHOUT federal affiliations could handle the protection of major venues without constitutional violations by simply placing people at events with the proper training. The mere presence of these people may even act as a deterrent for future attacks.

Security should also be organized and managed independently from the venues which they are tasked to protect.  As we have seen recently with the very odd behavior of MGM security employee, Jesus Campos; including his disappearance right before he was expected to give his accounting of events at the Mandalay and his sudden reappearance on the Ellen Show to give a farce of an interview devoid of hard facts or timeline confirmations, rent-a-cops owned by the venue are more vulnerable to manipulations and possible "coaching" after a crisis event occurs.

Excitement seekers and the public at large should avoid events that refuse to pay for truly independent and tactically skilled security, and instead choose typical rent-a-cops, retired cops and moonlighting cops that need extra cash. It is clear in light of the Vegas attack that these people do not have the ability to obstruct any attacker using more advanced combat strategies.  Nor are they likely to be honest about what really happened after the fact.

On top of this, more training and more responsibly armed Americans continue to be the best methods towards defusing and deterring active shooters. The point is, if the American public does not pursue alternative solutions and take tactical realities into account, then the only other option will be government interference on a scale that will promote totalitarianism in the name of safety. It is time for the American people to grow up, stop waiting for Big Brother to protect them and start taking their security into their own hands.

How To Survive An Active Shooter (Yes, It Is Possible)

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jeremy Bowcock

As long as the laws of physics make it possible for guns to exist and the evil in people’s hearts causes them to kill others, we have the risk of mass shootings. This isn’t a new phenomenon and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon. This means that you and I need to prepare ourselves, so that we don’t become victims of the next mass shooting.

Avoid Target Zones

The best way to avoid becoming a target is to avoid places that attract mass shooters. While this is not always possible, there’s really no reason to expose ourselves unnecessarily. There are two common traits that these shooters always look for when selecting their targets. We need to be aware of them and try to avoid them.

The first is that they need a crowd. The psychosis that drives these killers causes them to seek fame or perhaps infamy through their actions. As of this writing, the most famous is the Las Vegas shooter, strictly based upon the number of victims he killed and wounded. The event he selected was based on the number of potential victims, giving him a “fish in the barrel” sort of target.

The second thing they need is time to do the deed. For this reason, mass killers prefer gun-free zones. That way, they have time to rack up a body count, before anyone can stop them. I guarantee you: No shooter is going to try to commit their crime inside the NRA convention, simply because there are too many armed citizens who could stop them.

In the case of the Las Vegas killer, he managed to plan his way around the need for a gun-free zone by killing from a distance. His vantage point prevented him from picking out specific targets, but ensured that he would have plenty of time before the police could attempt to stop him.

Always Carry

The trite saying about not bringing a knife to a gun fight is true. If all you’ve got is a knife, or your bare hands, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. While carrying a gun may not totally eliminate that disadvantage, especially in the case of a terrorist act, at least you have a chance.

One of the problems we face today is that mass shooters may not be armed with pistols and may not be killing at close range. Terrorists prefer semi-automatic or automatic rifles. In either case, having a pistol probably wouldn’t be enough, as the killer would be shooting at a distance. But in any case where the shooter is at pistol distance, you could be the one to save many lives.

Train Yourself to Use a Gun Effectively

Don’t carry, unless you are going to get yourself trained and spend time on the shooting range, practicing. Carrying a gun is a responsibility; you are responsible for every bullet that leaves the muzzle of your gun. The last thing you want to do is to hit some innocent bystander in an effort to stop a killer. Constant training and practice is your only way to mitigate against that.

Discretion is Still the Best Part of Valor

If you’re anything like me, you see carrying a firearm not only as self-protection, but as protecting society at large. That’s a great and noble thought. But it doesn’t mean that you are responsible to give your live in trade for others. Your first responsibility is to save your own life and that of your loved ones.

Learn The Tricks Of The Word’s Top Survivalists!

From a practical point of view, you can’t do anything to save someone else’s life, unless you can preserve your own first. A dead hero is still dead, and probably didn’t save any lives. Save yourself, then look to see whether you can save others.

In the case of the Vegas shooter, the only way that anyone with a concealed carry license could have saved lives is to get out of the situation first, saving their own life. Once they did that, they could then storm the hotel, finding the shooter and confronting him. While covering someone else with your body to protect them is brave, you can only save one person that way.

Know Your Escape Routes

Wherever you go, you should have multiple plans for dealing with active shooters. Part of that is knowing all the available escape routes, not just the most obvious one. That exit might be blocked before you can get to it, either by the shooter, or by the crowd trying to escape.

In Las Vegas, there was a former Marine who went over the fence to escape. He then found a pickup truck with the keys in it, and borrowed it to start running people to the hospital. All in all, he saved about 30 people who were wounded in the attack. Had he not seen that fence as a possible escape route, he could have ended up being nothing more than a statistic.

Distance is Your Friend

If you can’t get out, then get some distance. The farther you are from the shooter, the harder a target you become. That alone can increase your chances of survival. Historically, most of these shooters have not been people with extensive firearms experience and training. So they can’t count on hitting targets that aren’t close. Ultimately, they waste a lot of shots which miss entirely.

On the other hand, you should make distance shooting part of your regular practice. It is considerably harder, especially with a pistol. So take the time to become at least somewhat proficient at engaging targets at 50 or 75 feet. That will give you a tactical advantage over the killer.

Keep Your Eyes Open for Good Cover

Just as you look around a new area, seeking out escape routes, you should also seek out good cover, or if you can’t find cover, at least concealment. This is much harder than it might seem, as pretty much all pistol and rifle round will go through walls, furniture and even appliances easily. Nevertheless, there are some things that will function as cover (such as brick walls and cement planters), especially if you are in an outdoor venue.

If you are forced to engage in a gun battle with a bad guy, it’s always best to do so from cover. Once again, a dead hero is still dead and probably doesn’t save any lives. Practice shooting from cover, even in awkward positions, so that when the time comes, you can do so.

Unless You’re Under Cover, Keep Moving

Moving targets are much harder to hit. While active shooters rarely pick out specific targets, they can and do pick “attractive looking targets.” What makes them attractive looking is that they are easy to hit. If you start running, especially running across the shooter’s field of view or at an angle to it, you make yourself an unattractive target, even if you do attract their attention. Should they take a shot at you, chances are, they’ll miss.

But don’t just run uncontrollably. You should always have a destination. Specifically, your destination should be an exit, a place of cover, or to move yourself closer to the shooter, so that you have a better chance of hitting them with your next shot. Although I will have to say, that last option is a risky one.

Don’t Wait, Attack

Whatever you do, don’t wait. As soon as you realize something is happening, you need to be moving. If you are close to the shooter, don’t try to escape, attack. Your chances of survival will be much better attacking them, even if it’s with nothing but a spoon, than it will be running. The more time you give them, the more people they can kill and the greater the chance that they will kill you.

You can greatly decrease your reaction time by maintaining what is known as “condition yellow.” This means keeping yourself aware of what’s going on around you and what people are doing. You should always be looking for suspicious people who are doing things that could lead up to crime or violence. That way, when they act, you won’t be caught off-guard.

This doesn’t mean that you should walk around fearful or pointing an accusing finger at others, simply that you should look to see what is happening. If someone seems suspicious to you for some reason, keep an eye on them, while continuing to scan the area around you. Then, if they do something, you’ll see it, right from the beginning.

Fear is Your Enemy

While I’ve never been in one of these situations, I am sure of one thing; fear is going to come. The problem is, fear will try and force you to act in inappropriate ways. For that reason, you want to try to avoid it as much as possible. What you can’t avoid, you need to learn to control.

This is why the military spends so much time in training. The better trained soldiers are, the better they are able to combat fear, because they know what to do. It is the lack of knowing, which creates the greatest fear. So train, train, train, preparing yourself for an event that I hope you’ll never encounter.

What advice would you add? Share it in the section below:

Eyewitness Confessional: There Was An Active Shooter Targeting The Bellagio Hotel During The Las Vegas Massacre

In yet another astonishing eyewitness report that contradicts the official story surrounding the worst mass shooting in American history, a married couple who were celebrating their 10th anniversary in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting have come forward to reveal that there was an active shooter inside the Bellagio Hotel around the same time that supposed lone gunman Stephen Paddock was found dead.

During the confessional, a Canadian man by the name of Jeff detailed the fact that he and his wife were in the Bellagio Resort and Casino around 11:20pm on the night of the shooting when panic broke out in the hotels lobby.

Jeff begins the interview by making clear his belief that there were multiple active shooters targeting different places in Las Vegas on the night of the attack.

“First of all, I think what needs to be said is that, from my perspective, there were multiple events that occurred around Las Vegas, up and down the Strip that night. It wasn’t just centralized around the Mandalay Hotel,” the witness claimed.

The eyewitness then goes on to directly say that he and his wife were involved in an active shooter situation at a different hotel that authorities have so far done everything in their power to cover-up.

“My wife and I were in Las Vegas celebrating our 10th anniversary and on October 1st we were involved in an incident with an active shooter at the Bellagio. There is no mistake in my mind about it,” he continued.

Jeff then describes a scene in which he and his wife were walking through the main lobby when screams and gunfire erupted. Keep in mind, this is all information that the police and the FBI has hidden from the American people.

“All of a sudden there was just a crescendo of screams that started behind us in the lobby,” he claimed. “Then I heard somebody yell ‘there’s a shooter! There’s a shooter!’ And then I heard like five or six pops, like unmistakable gunfire, unmistakably.”

“That was about 11:20 when we heard the shots and the screams… at that point you could hear and see the screams and see hundreds of people coming towards us.”

Amazingly, as Shepard Ambellas noted, “The man’s claims match up to actual events captured in police audio recordings from the night of the shooting which confirms that between 11:15 and 11:18 p.m. on the night of Oct. 1 there was, in fact, something going on at the Bellagio.”

This testimony also backs up claims by another eyewitness, Rene Downs, who has spent the past few days doing interviews about a shooter inside the Bellagio Hotel.

Slowly but surely we are starting to see the official narrative regarding the Las Vegas Massacre be completely destroyed. At this point it is strikingly obvious that authorities have lied to the American people about the worst mass shooting in our countries history.

One can only speculate as to what the reasons for these lies actually are?

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Author: Alex Thomas
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Date: October 14th, 2017
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How to Survive a Sniper Attack

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

Of a tragic necessity, we’ve all read articles and watched videos about surviving an active shooter terror situation. But an entirely different set of rules apply when it comes to surviving a sniper attack.

The thing with an event like the one in Las Vegas is that a great deal of your survival depends on nothing but luck. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, skills won’t necessarily save you.

The Las Vegas shooting was different than many previous mass shootings because the culprit was not right down there in the thick of things, as in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He was a sniper, 400 yards away from his target of 22,000 people attending a concert.

This situation was different from other mass shootings due to the distance. The standard advice of run, hide, or fight was completely useless. People had no idea where the shots were coming from, which meant they didn’t know where to run. Hiding is not easy in a wide open space that is similar to a giant parking lot without the cars. And finally, you can’t fight an enemy that far away – even if you were a concealed carry holder, your carry firearm won’t shoot far enough, and identifying the threat from that distance while everyone is panicking would be all but impossible.

As well, because of this distance, none of the evasion techniques like running in a zig-zag pattern or getting down were likely to make a huge difference to a person so far away whose apparent goal was only to hurt or kill as many people as possible. He was not aiming at specific people from that distance. He was firing at a general area. Here is a photo of the shooter’s view, from the window of his room to the concert area.

As you can see, the target was a general area, not specific individuals.

Firsthand Stories

This is a report from the Washington Post that quotes people who were there. You’ll see how this information is applicable when you read the tips below.

The typical advice for reacting to an active shooter — ‘run, hide or fight’ — was rendered moot, as many in the packed crowd could not easily run or hide, nor were they able to fight back at someone firing from so far away.”

In video footage, concertgoers can be seen screaming and running for cover — though they did not immediately know from what. “We thought it was fireworks at first or trouble with the speakers,” said Kayla Ritchie, 21. “[Then] everything went dark.”

It wasn’t until [singer Jason] Aldean fled the stage and the lights came on that 21-year-old Taylor Benge said herealized that “about five feet to the left of me, there was a man with a bullet wound to his chin.” “He was just lifeless on the ground,” Benge said.

— “Outside, The Strip, always a blizzard of dazzling lights and honking horns, almost instantly turned into a frenzied hive of pulsing police lights and sirens,”Michael Lyle, Heather Long and Marc Fisher report. “People fled every which way, many taking cellphone video of their run to safety. [Former minor league baseball player Todd Blyleven, who traveled from Dallas for the concert with his wife and friends], helped carry out the lifeless body of a young woman. He saw a police officer who looked like he had taken a bullet in the neck. ‘Young girls and guys, older folks, just people walking out of a country concert with bullet holes,’ Blyleven said.”

— “Aldean was barely five measures into ‘When She Says Baby,’ when the shots started,”Avi Selk and Amy B Wang report. “’Is that gunfire?’ [Singer Jason] Owen remembered thinking[.] The gunfire continued, steady against the beat of the song … Shot after shot, faster and faster. Aldean sprinted off the stage. Owen ran, too. So did other singers, workers and all the thousands of spectators — fleeing and screaming, falling and dying.”

— A fire alarm triggered by gun smoke let first responders zero in on the shooter’s location. SWAT team members then used explosives to get inside, where they found [Paddock] dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “We believe the individual killed himself prior to our entry,” the sheriff said. (Cleve R. Wootson Jr.)

— “I realized people were dying”: Photographer David Becker spoke to The Post’s photo editor MaryAnne Golon about witnessing the attack and capturing some of the most haunting images from the night: “ It had been so dark outside I couldn’t see the details. I just saw a lot of people laying on the ground thinking they were playing possum, but now I could see people covered in blood and I thought, this is real. When I saw the image of the woman lying on the ground covered in blood, that was when the impact of what I was experiencing hit — when I realized people were dying.”

How do you survive a sniper attack?

A sniper attack is very different from any other kind of mass shooting, so the rules for surviving those attacks don’t apply here. This is what I learned when researching a horror scenario like the Las Vegas massacre.

Know what gunfire sounds like.

A lot of people who were interviewed said that when they first heard the shots, they didn’t realize what it was. They thought it was fireworks. There were precious seconds when people were frozen targets while they tried to wrap their brains around what was actually happening. During an event like this, a pause of a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death. The faster you take action the more likely you are to survive.

Always have a plan.

We can’t foresee all eventualities, like this one, for example, but it helps to always have a survival mindset. It has long been a game with my kids (yeah, we’re a strange family) to identify exits and potential weapons if we sit down to eat at a restaurant or go to the movies. Knowing where to go without having to look for it in the heat of the moment will save time that could be spent acting.  After this incident, I’m adding to that the search for places we could take cover in an emergency.

Understand the difference between cover vs. concealment.

Every NRA course I’ve ever taken discusses the difference between cover and concealment, because in many cases when you are forced to use your own firearm, there’s another person who is ready and willing to shoot back. Concealment is enough to hide you but not enough to protect you from bullets. Cover is something sturdy enough to stop a bullet – a concrete structure like a road divider, the engine block of a car, a refrigerator, a steel door, a brick wall.

When watching the video playback of the Las Vegas shooting, many people were seeking concealment behind flimsy barriers, and that is not enough to protect yourself in a situation with a high-powered gun and a shooter spraying an area.

Separate from the crowd.

In a situation like this one, the shooter was trying to take down as many people as possible, so it was most likely he was aiming at the crowd instead of picking off people who moved away from the bulk of the group. One possible strategy would be, then, to get away from the crowd. You and the person/people you are with would be less alluring than a group of a hundred panicked people all huddled together where maximum harm could be achieved.

Don’t get down or play dead.

Lots of people crouched down and got as low as they could. In many situations, this would be the best bet, but not this one. The person was shooting from up high, aiming downward. Being still and crouching down wouldn’t do much to protect you from a person firing from this angle, nor would playing dead. Action is nearly always a better choice than inaction. As well, getting down would make it more likely that you’d be trampled by a panicked crowd of people trying to get away. Clark County Fire Chief Greg Cassell said that some of a “wide range” of injuries included people who were trampled by the panicked crowds.

Listen for reload.

In a situation like this, there will be pauses in the shooting when the person stops to either reload or change firearms. That is your opportunity to make a dash for the exits. Don’t wait too long to make your move, because it only takes an experienced gunman a few seconds to reload a familiar gun and then your chance is gone.

Do you have other suggestions?

I’m not an expert. I don’t have law enforcement experience or military experience. So, I spoke to someone far more experienced in this type of thing than I am. Scott Kelley is a former Counterintelligence Special Agent, US Army Chief Warrant Officer, and combat veteran, as well as the author of Graywolf Survival,  and was kind enough to answer all my questions while I was researching this article. I incorporated many of his suggestions, but any mistakes are purely my own.

What about you? Do you have experience to add that might help people survive a sniper attack? Please comment with your suggestions and if you don’t mind, let us know a little bit about yourself.

Trump Just Did Something For Hero Cops Who Saved Scalise

Donald Trump may not be the media’s favorite President, but even they will tear up when they see the amazing thing he did for the first responder officers that saved the life of Congressman Scalise and the others in the area during that horrible shooting weeks ago.

So what did the President do? Well, he called a meeting with all of the first responders and Scalise’s wife Jeniffer. That’s when he dropped this bombshell on them:

He gave ALL the Heroic first responders the Medal of Valor!

That’s right. The highest honor a civilian officer can receive was given to two Capitol Police Special Agents, David Bailey and Crystal Griner, and three Alexandria Police Department Officers, Nicole Battaglia, Kevin Jobe, and Alexander Jensen.

Trump told a tale of the officers racing through a hail of bullets only to narrowly escape with their lives before heroically taking down the mad man. It may sound grand, but it’s the truth.

Read more at Liberty Writers