Tag: activeshooter

Posted on by

Is Armor right for you?

Armor is not a topic most people talk about. Many people tend to think of body and vehicle armor as only necessary for police, armed security, and the military. And while those professions take advantage most frequently from armor solutions, they are not the only ones who could benefit from it. Considering the frequency that the media covers shootings, I wanted to take some time to dispel some myths and help those on the fence about armor.

First off, Body Armor is legal to purchase and own in the U.S. for most people, except for felons and a few other state specific limitations. All states allow you to purchase body armor, however some require to be face to face in a brick and mortar store and not over the internet. There are also some state specific laws regarding when you can wear the armor, like certain states prohibit wearing armor in a school unless it is part of your assigned duties. The bigger issue comes from intent. If you are wearing armor for your own protection during everyday activities, you are generally allowed to do so. However, if you wear armor during the commission of a crime it elevates the degree of severity of the crime and can carry additional charges and penalties. I would encourage you to check your specific state for any restrictions.

Another myth out there is calling something bullet-proof. This is a misnomer in most cases, the same as saying a suppressor is a silencer. Armor is generally tested or certified to be bullet-resistant up to a standard of protection level. Meaning that particular type of armor is capable of withstanding impacts from several calibers within their level. For instance a level 3a will be able to stop a .357 and .44 magnum, it is also capable of stopping 9mm and .38 special. Now, it will stop those rounds from penetrating that armor up to a point. At a certain number of rounds, or specially designed ammo, the armor will fail. But up to that point, the armor is bullet resistant and can help protect your life.

Now that a couple myths are out of the way, lets talk about the different type of body armor. There is soft or hard ballistic armor. The soft is going to be more flexible, more concealable, and generally weigh less. The hard armor can be composites, ceramic, or steel. These can vary in weight from 2lbs to 20lbs per plate depending on your protection level and any other enhancements. The hard armor is going to offer a higher level of protection than soft and can usually take substantially more damage before failure than soft armor. But the soft armor is less conspicuous and often more comfortable for long durations.

Many people will look at armor and think of the police/military plate carrier style that can often be large and bulky. However, there are a ton of options today, from covert soft armor that is worn under your normal clothing, bullet resistant back packs, back packs that can convert into an armored vest, and many many more. Your specific needs will dictate what kind of armor you would need. If you are looking for something to wear that doesn’t draw attention, the soft covert armor or backpacks are best. If you are looking for more protection and modularity, then plate carriers may be the best option. They also make armor specific for children, teens, and armor designed to specifically fit women as well.

There are a lot of options in levels of protection and materials used in armor, but they can all offer more protection than your standard cotton T-shirt. The media loves to tell you about shootings, but won’t ever give you any help to protect yourself. The proper training and armor can help bridge the gap between the fear some news outlets portray and the safety in uncertain times that we all need. Armor is not meant to be scary, but to give you an additional layer of protection. Other skills like situational awareness, conflict avoidance, and self defense all tie together to help keep you and your loved ones safe. Contact us today to talk about our armor and training solutions to give you the peace of mind we all deserve.


Armor Systems
Posted on by

Basic Situational Awareness

Today I want to take a few minutes to talk about basic situational awareness. Situational awareness has a lot of different meanings and interpretations depending on what situation you are in and what you need to be aware of. A law enforcement professional will have a different situational awareness need than personal security. They both may be looking for similar red flags, but they will react differently to them. When we talk about an everyday person who wouldn’t expect to encounter the hostility or scenarios of most armed professionals, we need to look at situational awareness in 2 pieces, environment and events. This is my interpretation from experience of what people should know, it’s not what you will learn when you go to a class focused on tactical situational awareness. This is more usable for everyone and can be taught at any level.

The environment is exactly what it sounds like, it is the location you are in and the surrounding areas. When we talk about situational awareness of your environment, we are really talking about the conditions you see, conditions you can anticipate, and how you will respond. For instance, when you enter a restaurant, do you recognize how many emergency exits there are? It seems simple but in the event of a fire, care driving through the front door, or an active shooter, how will you escape? Taking time to catalog exits as you enter an unfamiliar area is a basic building block of situational awareness. A great routine to get yourself into when going to a restaurant is to immediately excuse yourself to the restroom once your seated. This gives you an easy way to survey the area and identify less visible exits like one towards the back of a building, or the ones typically found in the kitchen. On the way back to your seat you can get another glimpse of the area from another angle which can show you the direction of possible attackers.

Another aspect of environment is how you move through an area or position yourself. In the idea of a restaurant or any public place you will always hear people say never sit with your back to a door. That’s a great practice, but unrealistic. I would say position yourself with the best vantage point to give yourself options. You may find you have your back to a door, but that door is to the kitchen where there is a lesser likelihood to be attacked from the kitchen than the front door or patios. As you move through areas you should be looking at not only exits and vantage points, but bottlenecks. Areas that people could pile up making escape less viable. Humans are creatures of habit so they will typically exit using the same door they came in, even when there are several options. Identify your best route and exit to avoid crowds.

Once you have defined your route, identified your exits, and picked a position that best gives you line of sight to possible incidents, you can relax a little. Now you can focus on identifying potential threats. I’m not suggesting you are looking at every person in the room and doing a risk assessment on them. I am talking about determine how you would recognize the first signs of trouble. It could be smelling something burning and smoke from the kitchen, it could be someone near the bar getting louder and belligerent, or the sound of the first round fired from a gun. That is the difficult one because our brains are trained to identify the safety of a situation based on experience, and most of us will not have heard what a gunshot sounds like in a confined area, without hearing protection. Our brains will try and calm us by making us thing initially it was a shattered glass from the rowdy guy at the bar, or fireworks nearby, or a car backfiring. Our brain will lie to us to prevent us from panicking. Most people will freeze at first because their brain lied to them and they are arguing internally between what their brain is telling them is safe and what their eyes are seeing as danger. These precious seconds are where you need to decide…Run, Hide, Fortify, or Fight.

I can’t make the decision to act for you. You need to have the situational awareness to be looking for these threats, your exits, and how you would respond. The more often you practice your situational awareness, defining exits, bottlenecks, and planning your actions the easier it gets. You will learn to do it instinctively, which is what you want. When shit hits the fan, you want your actions to be muscle memory, you don’t want to waste time thinking of what to do next. Training is key, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”, Archilochus.

Posted on by

Responding to mass CASUALTY events

Safety Reloaded is committed to the continued education and training of everyone, from a single person to large companies. With this in mind, we have partnered with several other groups to offer a variety of classes for all levels of experience. The Stop the Bleed course is designed to train civilians on how to respond in the event of a mass casualty. We push this course the most because of its life saving message.

The average emergency response time across the United States is currently 8 minutes and can be as high as 15-30 minutes in more rural areas. A lot can happen in 8 minutes, it can take as little as 5 minutes to bleed to death. The class provides the basics of bleeding control and first aid. We’ve partnered with the Department of Defense, Fist Care Providers, National Stop the Bleed Day, and iThrive to make this course available for as many people as possible.

Today, we wanted to discuss some key take-always from the class that could help you and your family in the future. While we hope you learn from this post, this is an overview of what is covered in the Stop the Bleed course. We highly recommend taking some kind of first aid class from a reputable group as it could save you or your loved ones life. We also suggest reading about Good Samaritan laws and the types of consent surrounding giving first aid, this won’t be reviewed today.

The first big thing to think of before providing first aid is protecting yourself.  This comes down to a couple things. First, you must ask, is it safe to give first aid? If you are rendering first aid after a mass casualty event, active shooter, or even a car accident, you need to make sure that you won’t add to the list of injured. Take a look at the scene for anything that could hurt you or put you in danger. If you attempt to give care and become injured yourself, you are now adding to the body count and making the first responder’s job harder.  

The second thing to think about for keeping yourself safe, is wearing gloves and other protective gear to keep yourself from coming in contact with someone else’s blood. Protecting yourself from Blood-borne Pathogens is crucial! Blood-borne Pathogens are infectious microorganisms in the blood and other potentially infectious materials (saliva, etc.) that can cause diseases. These are things like HIV, Hepatitis, Malaria, and others.  Many times people can have one of those and not even know it for years. The best method to protect yourself is nitrile gloves. If you have glasses, an apron, or a face shield, we highly recommend them as well.  Keeping other people’s blood off of you and out of any of your own cuts will greatly reduce the likelihood of getting a disease.  

Now that you’ve made sure the scene is safe and that you’ve protected yourself, we are ready to administer first aid. We won’t go over triage in this post, but I would tell you that if someone is screaming, that means they are conscious and breathing. You should check those who are unconscious first since they can’t tell you the extent or severity of their injuries. You find someone breathing but unconscious, first thing to do is a head to toe check looking for any significant bleeding or trauma, like an amputation or clearly deformed bone. Amputations of major body parts, ignoring fingers and toes, need a tourniquet even if they aren’t bleeding at the time. It will start bleeding and it will bleed a lot! 

There is a stigma surrounding tourniquets over the years that have led people to believe they are dangerous to use and will cause more damage than good. That’s grossly inaccurate. Most tourniquets can be left on for 2 hours without any long term damage. When properly applied, a tourniquet will compress the veins and arteries to stop blood flow to the wound and buy you time to get the injured person medical attention. Tourniquets are specifically designed for life threatening blood loss not for nicks and scratches. A few important things to know about tourniquets are that they should be high and tight above the injury. Don’t put them on elbows or knees, go higher if the injury is near those joints. If you apply a tourniquet and the flow of bright red blood doesn’t stop, tighten it more or add a second one above the first. Mark the time you apply the tourniquet so the ambulance or hospital knows.

This post scratches the surface of what is covered in bleeding control classes. You really need to take one to get the full hands on benefit of learning this material. The first responders and hospitals can be initially overwhelmed by the number of those injured during mass casualty events. Training covered in the Stop the Bleed can alleviate some pressure off them and can save someone from bleeding out before first responders arrive. When an event occurs, its the lay responders that can do most of the initial work.

The importance of knowing how to respond to incidents like active shooters and how to give proper first aid is critical when seconds count and help could be minutes away. Taking a class designed around controlling bleeding can save lives. There are dozens of these classes and most are designed for people 7 years and older to understand. Safety Reloaded offers Stop the Bleed, Control the Bleed, and Red Cross First Aid classes for families, churches, and businesses. Contact us to schedule your training!


Contact us
Posted on by

Recognizing potential violence

I’ve seen several stories lately in the news of random attacks on unexpecting victims.  The one I just read today, was about a deranged homeless man walking up a driveway and body-slamming a young boy onto his head.  As of the writing of this post, the boy is still in critical condition.  

This kind of attack highlights how infrequently we discuss the possibility of being attacked or how to recognize the signs beforehand.  These unprovoked attacks are generally horrific and traumatic for the recipient.  I want to explain some of early signs that you can look for before a physical assault.  In this post, I’m ignoring shootings and sexual assault and focusing on the blitz attack. A blitz attack is a sudden, overwhelming attack that can be vicious, focusing mainly use of the hands or a knife.  

Before I go on, I am not the end-all expert, and I don’t intend this to be a complete list of possible behaviors. These behaviors are specific to physical assaults.  Each person is different some will exhibit all of these and some may not.  The intent of me sharing these early warning signs is to educate you on identifying a possibile attack.  How you respond will be directly related to your training and awareness at the time. 

One of the first things I notice is the physical position of the individual.  To me, this means two things: their position in relevance to you and their position relative to other threats or escape routes.  Often someone who is planning to attack you will get inside your comfort zone, closing the gap they must overcome to physically hurt you.  The closer someone gets to you, the less room you have to respond to an attack and the fewer options you have to retreat.  Aggressors can also try to isolate you from friends or escape routes to ensure that they have a dominant position.  They may also position themselves closer to an exit to ensure a rapid escape after a blitz attack. The physical responses of a person are the next best indicators of intent. These are often subconscious, which can help give away their intentions. Things like changes in breathing, hands concealed or searching in a bag.   I specifically focus on their eyes, shoulders, and hands.  

Eyes can be tricky but very telling if you can learn to read them. Aside from the physiological response of pupil dilation before the confrontation, you will have someone who will usually stare through you.  Instead of being attentive and glancing from you to an object that you are talking about or to prevent uncomfortably long eye-contact, the person may almost be looking through you.  This distant stare is often associated with someone who isn’t paying attention because they are thinking about their next move, which may be against you. 

Their shoulders will mimic their stance. Most individuals will stand with their feet and shoulders square to the person they are talking to.  However, when someone is contemplating violence, they may stand with their feet slightly staggered to maintain balance during their initial attack.  So too the shoulders will angle with one closer to you and the other slightly farther away.  This is most common with someone who is going to sucker-punch or blitz attack. 

Open hands are usually a sign of peace or calmness.  If you see someone clenching their fists, this could be a sign of aggression.  Other aggressive tendencies may be shoving their hands far into their pockets, not just resting them. Their elbows will almost fully lock trying to push their hands further down.  A third thing to watch for is hands that go behind the body and the chest comes out and rocks forward.  This could be another precursor to them preparing to balance for an outgoing blow. 

The blitz attack is one that is usually the most vicious, happening in the blink of an eye.  These attacks are often so quick and violent that bystanders don’t even realize the severity of the situation for several seconds or minutes.  During this moment of confusion, the aggressor will casually walk away and melt into the crowd and disappear.  These are the attacks that are the most scary and can have little time or buildup to the attack. 

There are many different techniques, behaviors, and postures you can look for to identify possible aggression.  There is no overarching sign that will make everything instantly clear that someone is about to cause you or your family harm, which is why you should always be aware of your surroundings.  Talk to your children about ways to recognize when someone is acting erratic or what they should do if they are being approached by someone they don’t know.  I caution you to practice vigilance. Never let someone inside your personal bubble, know your escape routes, and train to respond instinctively to threats.  Without awareness and training, the precious half a second it takes for you to see the attack, recognize it, and respond may be too slow.

Posted on by

First Firearm Choice

A lot of people ask me on input on their first firearms.  I am always incredibly uncomfortable answering this question for a variety of reasons.  Your first firearm is a very personal choice and needs to be based on your own needs, not mine.  My needs have been shaped by years carrying a gun for work and personal protection.  Below are my thoughts on what you should consider when buying your first firearm, or frankly any firearm.

First and foremost, what is the intent of the firearm? Is this a home protection only handgun? Plinking, competition, or every day personal protection?  The intent of the firearm will really shape a lot of your choices.  For instance, if I am going to get a gun for home protection only, meaning I won’t be trying to conceal carry it, then I would want a gun that fully fits my hand and has the most amount of ammo that I feel comfortable with.  There is no reason to get a sub-compact because many times you won’t be able to get a full grip on the pistol. 

Second is cost.  I will always caution people not to buy a firearm that is over $1,000 for your first purchase.  There are a huge range of great options for a lot less and if it’s your first one, you may not know if this is the right gun for you.  You may find later that a backstrap safety doesn’t feel good to you, or that the slide release is just a hair out of reach.  I would also caution against the cheapest options! Many times, the cheapest guns are that way for a reason.  Either because of reliability, cumbersome controls, or difficult maintenance.  Pick a cost you are comfortable with and know that you may not love the very first pistol you buy.

Next is features.  Do you want a manual safety, de-cocker, or options for replaceable sights, etc.? These can narrow down your search dramatically to help make the first choice less daunting.  Many people will tell you that you MUST have a safety, or ALWAYS buy a gun that you can change the trigger in, or NEVER whatever-other-sage-wisdom-they-have.  Ignore them.  What MUST ALWAYS matter to you is what you feel comfortable with.  If you won’t feel comfortable with a pistol that doesn’t have a safety, that’s what matters.  One feature that most people don’t think about and may be important to you is the availability of aftermarket parts. Some people love to customize the look and feel of their firearm.

Finally, and I’ve mentioned it a couple times now, is your comfort.  If you aren’t comfortable with the gun, you won’t use it. Plain and simple.  Hold the gun, rent one and test it out, talk to friends and read reviews, but be comfortable in your choice.  I love revolvers and they feel good in my hands.  Many new shooters find revolvers strange and awkward… and that’s ok! You need to be ok with the gun because you are the one that is going to own it.  No one else knows how it feels in your hands or how it feels when you fire the gun.   I caution you to take a safety course. You need to know how your newly purchased gun operates and how to do so safely.

Some of us were issued our first firearm and didn’t have the option early on, but for those of you who can make that choice of your first firearm, don’t make that purchase lightly.  I’ve bought a lot of pistols over the years and I still remember fondly the first pistol I purchased.  Remember to make sure it feels good in your hand, meets your needs, and has features that you want on it.  And again, I can’t stress enough the importance of taking a safety course. You can never have too much safety or training.