Surviving a Violent Encounter

A lot of people think that carrying a gun or attempting to resist a violent attack in any way increases the chances that they will be seriously injured or killed in an encounter. FBI statistics show that just the opposite is true! So it is in your best interest to resist an attack.

Your chances of being involved in a violent encounter are fairly small. Of the approximately 300 million people that live in the United States, about 2 million will be victims of a violent attack each year. The aggravated assault rate is about four per 1,000 in population per year. The murder rate is about six per 100,000 in population per year. The chances of you being involved vary by location, time of year, and several other factors.

While your chances of being involved in a violent encounter are fairly low, the consequences of being involved are much more serious so it makes sense to take precautions. Obtaining a concealed carry license and carrying a handgun on a regular basis are just a couple of the precautions you can take.

Your best chance of surviving a violent attack is to plan ahead so you will have an idea of what to do. Your best option, of course, is to avoid being anyplace where a violent situation may occur. However, this is not always possible and violence can occur at places where you spend a lot of your time—in your home, were you work, at school, where you shop, or where you attend church. So if you cannot avoid violence, at least you should be prepared for it. For instance, if you hear gunfire or are faced by someone with a gun, you might want to take the following steps:

• If you hear gunshots, do not go to investigate. Instead, move in the opposite direction if you can. If you cannot move, seek cover such as barricading yourself in a locked room or hiding behind an obstacle. If you are armed, prepare to defend yourself. When you are in a safe place, contact the police to inform them of the situation.
• If you see someone brandishing a gun, try not to draw attention to yourself. Move away as quickly as you can and call for help as soon as you can do so without drawing the attention of the person with the gun. The more an assailant has to chase and hunt for the victim, the quicker they are likely to lose interest and move on to someone who will make an easier target for their attack.
• Try to keep a barrier or obstacle of some sort between you and the attacker. Ideally the barrier should keep bullets from penetrating through it to reach you. Try to escape when you can do so. If you are armed, prepare to return fire if you must. If you do return fire, try to avoid shooting in the direction of bystanders.
• If in an open area, seek shelter in a building or with a crowd of people. Shout and make a lot of noise to attract the attention of others that might come to your aid. Run away if you can, but do not run in a straight line if someone is shooting at you.
• If you cannot immediately escape, try to deescalate the situation if you can. Try to get your assailant to talk and keep them talking. While talking to the assailant, do not antagonize them in any way. Try to remain calmand reasonable. In the absence of police, armed citizens are able to de-escalate violent situations almost 2.5 million times each year.
• Unless you are trained to do so, do not attempt to disarm the assailant unless you have no other choice.

In a mass kiling incident, pandemonium will ensue. The options you have for surviving—in descending order of success—include:

1. Get away from the area. If you “freeze”while deciding what to do you will more than likely get shot.
2. Lock/barricade yourself in a room away from the attacker.
3. Find a place to hide. If the only choice you have is to lay flat on the floor, do so—ideally behind some sort of concealment or cover. Active killers tend to look first for vertical targets rather than horizontal ones.
4. Play dead. This will be very difficult because someone around you needs to have already been shot and your state of panic will make it hard to lie perfectly still.
5. Confront the attacker if you have no other choice. If you are unarmed, your only “weapon” will be to try to talk the active killer out of harming you. If you are armed, then you need to aggressively and suddenly attack the active killer, not giving them a chance to put up a defense.

Of course, the goal here is to survive by avoiding getting shot in the first place. When someone gets shot, it hurts! It hurts a lot and their chances of survival decrease as a result. Getting shot multiple times further decreases the chances of survival.

A bullet normally kills in one of three ways:

• Traumatic shock to the central nervous system as a result of being shot in the head, or neck. Such a hit has the lowest survival rate.
• A shot that penetrates and collapses both lungs, resulting in a loss of oxygen to the brain. This will cause the victim to collapse and die unless reasonably quick medical treatment is provided.
• “Hydraulic failure” occurs when damage to internal organs results in massive internal bleeding. (There may be very little evidence of blood loss on the exterior of the body.) This causes blood pressure to drop dramatically and the brain is once again starved of oxygen. This is the most common way a bullet causes death.

Bullet placement is thus key. If someone is shot in the head, they only have about a 5% chance of surviving. On the other hand, individuals that are shot in an extremity (arm or leg)—unless a major bone is hit—may not even notice that they have been hit because of the adrenaline rushing through their body. Individuals who have been shot in the chest often remember being “slammed or punched,” but this does not necessarily stop them.

Unless someone is hit in the central nervous system, there is no reason that getting shot will cause them to immediately collapse. However, most people do. This is more a result the psychological reaction to being shot than it is to the immediate physical damage caused by the bullet. People often collapse because that is what they think they are expected to do. Yet, your chances of surviving often mean that you must resist this and continue to fight and to take the fight to your assailant. Individuals that have been shot but that are able to carry on the fight often remark afterwards that it was their anger and sense of resolve that they felt at the time that enabled them to continue.

Even in those cases where someone is shot during a violent encounter, the chances of them surviving when shot by a handgun is very high—on the order of 80-85%. The quicker a gunshot victim can receive proper medical attention, the greater their chances of recovery.

So the lesson here is that your best chance of survival is to avoid the violent encounter in the first place. If you are unable to do that, then you stand a better chance of surviving if you resist your attacker. Even ifyou become injured, you must have the will to continue the fight until you persevere. Once you do, then you need to quickly seek medical attention.

Gary Evens is an NRA-Certified Instructor and Range Safety Officer.