Surviving shooting spreesDHS offers advice on how to survive shooting sprees

For people who get caught in a shooting spree, such as the one in Aurora, Colorado,  DHS offers a survival plan.

The seminars, online courses, posters, a booklet and a pocket card, the department is educating mall owners, office managers, and the public on how to lessen the likelihood of becoming a casualty.

Bloomberg  reports that the pointers include yelling at or subduing the shooter in some situations. The online course consists of quizzes and assignments such as telling how to respond during a gunfire assault. The booklet and online course indicate that “attitudes have evolved into a tacit, realistic acceptance that violence in our workplaces, schools and public places has become a part of our lives,” Joseph LaSorsa, a former Secret Service agent who’s a Swansboro, North Carolina-based security consultant and private investigator, told Bloomber.

The booklet includes guidance similar to what is used by university and business security forces across the country.

DHS guidance, first compiled in a 2008 booklet aimed at retailers and mall operators, has proved popular, so it is being used by companies throughout the private sector, said Peter Boogaard, a department spokesman.

Since the “Active Shooter Program” began four years ago, 125,000 people in the government and private sector have been trained in the seminars, online course, booklets and other guides it offers, according to Boogaard. notes that boiled down to the essentials, the advice is to evacuate or hide, and if those options aren’t available, disrupt the attack by distracting the shooter or taking him out.