A recent CentralSquare Technologies study revealed that one in three people surveyed are worried about having an active shooter incident in their community. This feeling is not surprising when you consider mass shootings (events involving the shooting of three or more people) are now a part of everyday life in the U.S. As of Sept 24, 2019, there had been an average of 1.24 mass shootings per day, killing 377 people and injuring another 1,347 victims.
While, statistically speaking, there is a low probability of this happening to you personally, organizations must come to grips with active shooter incidents as a complicated yet foreseeable event. It’s a known-known, so to speak. And this means if you are turning a blind eye or continuing to believe it won’t happen within the boundaries of your organizational control, you could be held responsible for the outcome.
This was shown to be true for the company that owns the Las Vegas hotel where a gunman opened fire from his room onto a country music festival two years ago. The company agreed to pay up to $800 million to settle lawsuits filed by victims. The New York Times reported that the settlement “appears to resolve litigation that had raised novel and significant issues of law, including how culpable large companies and property owners are in mass-casualty attacks.”
If an active shooter incident does arise in an environment where your organization is wholly or even partially responsible for ensuring the safety of others, you need to have done the hard work ahead of time. Organizations must have measures in place to reduce the likelihood of firearm violence, know how to respond if an incident does occur, and have a plan to deal with the aftermath.
We invite you to learn more by downloading a copy of our latest whitepaper, Coming to Grips with the Known-Known of Active Shooter Incidents, we lay out the case for proactively preparing your workplace to mitigate risks and have a response plan at the ready.