Disengagement. This is a complicated way of saying “running away” (or used preemptively, “don’t be there.”) Obviously this perfectly sound advice and I am in complete agreement that this a very good idea for staying out of both danger and legal trouble. It is not the ultimate trump card that some make it out to be simply because there are situations where you cannot run away from, either for practical reasons (no available path of escape) or moral reasons (running would mean you leaving your child or spouse to face the danger alone.) In terms of self defense as a private citizen we are always working towards disengagement, but we must recognize that there might need to be intervening steps between the beginning of the confrontation and our finally being able to disengage.

Deescalation. Deescalation is the process of being (or at least appearing to be) reasonable and or conciliatory, in the hopes of diffusing a potentially dangerous situation. This is what is known as “talking your way out” of fighting. Most people have some basic idea of how this works, and the better and more practiced at it you are the more applicable it becomes. I consider deescalation to be a core self defense skill and should get at least as much thought and attention as learning to shoot or fight. Unfortunately many situations cannot be deescalated through reason, compromise, or dialogue. This is where pacifism fails: some people are ideologically bent upon causing you harm and they are not going to be dissuaded by discussion.

Verbal Commands. A verbal command is a stated demand for compliance. This generally implies that there will be consequences for non-compliance and those consequences include the application of a higher level of force than verbal commands. I think this is where a lot of generic self defense curriculum goes awry, because if there isn’t a credible ability to use force after issuing verbal commands it simply amounts to a bluff. Should a subject comply with the commands then that might create an opportunity for using deescalation and/or disengagement.

Application of Violence. Hopefully, there was an opportunity in a developing situation to apply the previously mentioned steps and something (or some combination) was effective. Other times a situation can require the immediate application of violence because of the nature of the threat and the circumstances. Ideally the amount of violence will be the minimum that is sufficient to stop the attack. In the wider self defense community the martial arts purists seem to think that they can fight their way out of every situation (except for those that believe an armed assailant is instant death) and the firearms purists who believe that any physical altercation is justification for gunfire. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. As a general guideline, you will have an easier time (legally speaking) if you can stop an attack using something less than lethal force – even if you are not required by law to do so.

… It scared me to no end. It also pissed me off. If you all four hadn’t had guns, we would’ve had a completely different situation. Instead, you got all six of us tied up while you stole what you deemed worth jacking. What also pisses me off is that you were all black. Why the fuck would you feed the stereotype? I couldn’t see more than your eyes and a little bit around them, so I found myself racial-profiling out of fear. I stopped doing that, because I’m stronger and better than that…
…I work hard as an attractive woman to be intelligent and interesting, because I don’t like perpetuating negative stereotypes. I wish you would work just as hard to rid the world of the stereotype that black men should be feared because they’ll put a gun to your head and steal…

I cannot read this article without wondering if the author would have been happier if her home invaders were more racially diverse. Now for the gun rights portion of the post. When we talk about “normalization” or similar sentiments regarding gun rights, this is part of the audience we are trying to convince. These are people who worry about ethnically stereotyping the home invaders that victimized them. I don’t think they get reached by shock therapy (or even lobotomy.)

The idea that people would have some kind of practical (or tactical) answer to a home-invasion robbery (regardless of race) is totally alien to those of the authors ilk.

I live in a state where you are allowed to carry your concealed firearm into restaurants that serve alcohol and you are allowed to drink. You are prohibited from carrying a firearm into any areas of the restaurant (such as the bar) that are off limits to people under 21. Strangely this doesn’t seem to generate any sort of “wild-west” behavior. The nightclub shootings seem to center around areas of high gang and drug activity (to include “underage” dance clubs.)

A couple of quick thoughts:
The police don’t normally get as much training as the show says they do. Typically, basic law enforcement training is 720 class hours. This includes all of the law, driving, procedures, and firearms training. In my state the firearms portion of this is about 40 hours. I don’t know that they teach some zen-like control of heart rate.

Active Shooters don’t tend to be trained firearms instructors. While some active shooters have gone to the range and practiced with their guns, none of the recent ones that I know of were trained shooters.

Armed students wouldn’t always sit in the same seat in the classroom. From the video it appears that the defensive shooter was always seated in the same spot in the classroom.

There is no guarantee that there is only one defensive shooter. In the general population of my state roughly one person in twenty has a concealed weapons permit. I can’t speak to what is a normal class size, but I don’t recall many courses where we only had roughly eighteen or twenty students.

Some people in the classroom might have more training than law enforcement. There are a lot of students and teachers in colleges right now that have recent combat experience. For many of these people the active shooter scenario wouldn’t even be the second gunfight they were ever in.

I remain unconvinced that “disorder” is a cause of crime. It seems to me that the increased police presence and attention to particular high crime areas are probably the main factors in the reduction in calls to the police. If the criminals see an increased police presence in an area I am betting that they change areas rather than permanently stopping the commission of crime. I am all for cleaning up a neighborhood, but I am not expecting that alone to reduce illegal activity.

The Hippies:“…so you’d rather kill some poor bastard down on his luck than part with a few bucks? That’s some good humanity right there. “
So their mugger isn’t a person who has decided to make a career out of taking other peoples property by violence, but a person driven to desperate measures by circumstances.

The Gunfighters:“My mugger’s wallet is a Springfield XD .40 Sub-compact and many hours of training for just such a situation. Make my day.” Life imitates Hollywood, where the hard-bitten gunfighter rids the world of evil-doers to the accolades of the crowd and a hearty pat on the back from local law-enforcement.

The Tough guys:Yeah, I have a body build that makes me look like the kind of guy who beats up muggers for fun. I might put one of these together just so the mugger will feel totally bad ass before I go all ninja on him.
Because the muggers are never bigger, better armed, or working in groups. I once saw a security detail from the US that looked like it was made of football linemen turned bouncers. While that would probably be impressive in a US night club, it didn’t dazzle me to much in country where street kids have AK47’s and two magazines.

The Good Area Guys:I use the “don’t be in places where you’re likely to be mugged” defense.
Because muggers obey some sort of criminal zoning restrictions. At best this is optimizing a statistical trend, but doesn’t really apply to individuals that actually leave their homes occasionally.

There were also some good, thoughtful comments:
The issue isn’t “is their life worth the money in my wallet”, but rather “is their life worth my life”. The act of shooting someone, even in justifiable self defense will undoubtedly cost you more time and money than a stolen wallet.

The article doesn’t explain how the police chief is going to go about accomplishing this, and I am sure the devil is in the details:

“It’s going to take a whole lot of people to help us do that,” said Demings, who pledged to work closely with the public, prosecutors and legislators for stricter gun control.

“It’s not about keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens who have every right to possess them,” she said. “Our initiative will focus on the people who are not supposed to have them.”

The most interesting bit of the article is here:

Data released Wednesday show the male murder victims and suspects share a common background of repeated arrests without imprisonment.

At least 95 percent of the victims and suspects had criminal histories. One-third of the suspects had been arrested at least 20 times. One quarter of the victims had been arrested at least 10 times. And about 40 percent of the suspects and victims had been busted for dealing drugs.

If 95% of the people getting murdered are actually criminals then taking guns away from them has a very good chance of increasing other types of crime. The sample size is pretty small here, but it would be interesting to know how many people killed by firearms (other than suicides) are in fact criminals.

“So we’ve got to look very carefully at what we can do to tackle the problem in the way the problem is manifested, and also what lies behind the problem.”

There is no doubt that there are some big problems in Somalia, but before we figure out just what sort of aid programs the international community is going to set up can’t we just start by sinking pirates?

Talks On Armed Security Teams To Deter Pirates

However, most countries do not allow the arming of merchant vessels which sail under their flags and insurance companies are opposed.

There are several ways around this, but the easiest is to pass a law allowing the arming of merchant ships. I am sure that either a new insurance company will spring up, or the old ones will change their policy (the first company to do so will probably get a lot of business.) Alternately, if the world is unwilling to deploy naval resources to protect this shipping lane any number of private companies would be happy to do so.

I do not see how handing hundreds of millions in ransom is any sort of a solution. How long before the ransom money begins being dispersed to fund other terrorist activities?

So people turn in roughly a 1000 guns and get roughly $1000 in gift cards for each one. Why is this supposed to be a good thing?

Most of the guns collected belonged to people who never used them, deputies say.

“We’re not naive enough to think that criminals will come in and give their guns,” Tellez said. But he said that because many crimes were committed with firearms stolen in home burglaries, getting guns off the street would help decrease violence.

Maybe if the city wasn’t fencing stolen property for greater than market value there wouldn’t be so much demand for stolen firearms. Creating an incentive for criminals to steal guns, use them in crimes, and then dispose of the evidence at a profit is just stupid. Instead of putting another police officer (or two) on the street they are wasting money on programs like this.

Along with the guns, deputies collected 80 pounds of ammunition and two grenades.

Grenades? Doesn’t somebody want to track down the source of those? Isn’t a hand grenade amnesty going a little bit too far?