I've watched quite a few of the videos over the past two days captured with individual cell phones. One thing that stands out to me the most is the complete loss of rational thought once people are panicked. It was undoubtedly a traumatizing event for those present. And I can understand why such panic would happen.
There seems to be 3 types of panic responses.
The first are those who freeze and lose all cognitive ability, they screen random statements like "oh my god" and "whats happening"
The second group of individuals scream orders to others. "Get down" "don't move" "you can't go"
The third group are people who are not saying much, they appear to be moving with a purpose and are seemingly not phased by what other people around them are doing. They're bugging out.
In many of the videos you can hear multiple individuals yelling "everybody get down" "stay on the ground" these individuals fall in to group 2; group 1 readily listens to them. Both groups are oblivious to the fact that they're completely open and exposed. They have no cover or concealment.
In another video a cab driver who is well away from the gunfire is recording from his cab. The gunfire is a considerable distance, over a mile away but he cannot tell the direction in which its coming from. Suddenly a group of very panicked women and a guy jump in his cab and start screaming at him to go. The one woman is screaming about how everyone is dead, thousands of people, the guy is screaming at the cabbie to drive and get the fuck out of there. Its just panicked chaos. What they don't understand in their panic mindset is they have no idea where they are going or where the shooter is located. They're not currently in danger, but they could be moving in to danger.
I completely understand why people panicked, its in extremely traumatizing event. Whats difficult for me is to see such a lack of self preparedness.
Now being prior military or realize I have a unique perspective and have been through training and instances where actions under stress are put to practice. But I had no idea just how unprepared our civilian population was.
Evil is not going away, no matter the laws we pass or what we try to do to prevent it. Deranged individuals will continue to exact evil upon people. This is the world that we live in. Recently a lot of schools universities in businesses have focused on active shooter training. The problem that I see with these is they're all focused on one location such as an office building. And most times the training itself is very policy driven. Such as, you lock this door and you hide here, and here is where you evacuate. While that may help individuals at that location it does not help them in other situations such as this concert. When shit hits the fan we always fall back on our training, it is instinctive. Policy-driven training in a workplace will not apply in their panicked mind. We have a dire need for personal protection training in this country. I'm not saying everyone should get there concealed carry, let's face it, that's not a fit for everyone. What I am saying is people should be trained on evasion, how to seek cover, how to rationally assess a situation, plan a method of escape, and execute that plan. They need to be taught situation awareness, while there's nothing they could have done to predict this shooter, situational awareness prior to the shooting is valuable. Locate exits, assess cover, minimize exposure, and have a plan for egress. We don't live in a Utopia, our personal security is not taken care of by someone else. It is sad that we have to deal with such evil in today's world, it is even more sad to see how ill-prepared we are to deal with it.