Many people ask me about event safety, so here are some things I do. It doesn’t matter if I’m looking for a story, pre-planning, or threat assessment.

Social media is a love-hate relationship.

I check Twitter or Instagram first because the groups causing problems use social media to post what they are doing like it’s a trophy they won.

I search for cities and events on Twitter (Chicago, Times Square, etc.). Then, some basic generic terms: Protester, riot, crowd, police, activist.

Next search for specific terms depending on world events: Palestine, airport, and interstate are examples. When you use Twitter sort posts by “latest” and “top” so you can see the most up-to-date Tweets.

I prefer videos and photos because “protestors” share everything they do but question all of it because there is always misleading information.

There are many articles on crowd safety. However, here are a few highlights others can build on:

• I prefer being near the crowd’s perimeter since you’re less likely to get stuck.
• Dress down and blend in. Wear comfortable shoes that you can run in.
• Sometimes, it’s best to hold tight and let everyone else scatter. There’s nothing wrong with ducking into a building to get off the street.
• I download venue layouts and maps before leaving home because cell sites may be overwhelmed, and I frequently carry a small external battery pack.
• In case your group gets separated, have a spot to meet. Consider a backup location because the first one might be inaccessible.
• I leave about 30 minutes before the event is over to beat the rush and prefer Uber or Lyft instead of driving.
• There isn’t enough time to cover all the scenarios, so the main point is to always be thinking outside the box.

If you carry, do it responsibly, and don’t be drinking. I carry an Enigma AIWB because it gives me more control over my firearm, especially in a crowded environment.

Remember to pay attention to what’s happening around you and say something if you see something. It’s better to be safe than sorry. You can choose to be part of the solution or possibly be a victim.

Enjoy yourself, and don’t worry about the sky falling. It is what it is, so go have fun.

Tactical Firearms Training

If you’re a “tactical” shooter and you train in a tactical way, then the drills you go through on the range need some realistic tactical context incorporated into them.

If you’re a “competition shooter,” then you don’t. Unfortunately, instructors regularly teach competition shooting techniques as tactically sound, which they are not.

I sometimes wonder if the reason for that is because too many firearms instructors are competition shooters. Maybe not enough firearms instructors are instructing from an experienced-based background, i.e., they don’t know how to add that tactical context because they’ve never experienced it in real life. They are not always teaching others to do the right thing in real life, which should worry everyone.

Adding tactical context to your firearms training changes everything about that training. You quickly realize there are things you cannot do and some that don’t work.

Moving backward or up range with a firearm pointing downrange is not an operationally sound drill in a million years. It is a safety drill designed for the range ONLY. It provides no operational training value because you would never do it in real life.

You can be super-fast on the draw and run up and down a range all damn day. Still, unless you’re adding the appropriate tactical context that compliments the specific purpose or situation that you’re training for (armed robbery, carjacking, close-range engagements, close protection contact drills), then your training will never be realistic for the purpose you’re training for in the first place.

Mag dump pouches and Oakley gloves, hanging from a belt kit, flapping around like two squirrels fighting in a hessian sack, does not a gunfighter make.

Some people call this “moving” backward, but moving can suggest turning and “extracting,” which is something else we teach in our “Street Extraction” course.

To create space? Yeah, ok, but you can do that by stepping left or right, right?

To create distance? Only if the threat is standing still, and we should all know by now that threats do NOT stand still, because if we’re saying that threats DO stand still (and not closing the distance on you), then why are we walking backward in the first place?

These are all questions I pose to students in most of our Street Scene System of Training (SSST) courses.

If something doesn’t make sense, why do it? If something isn’t giving you a tactical advantage, why do it?

4 categories of movement while shooting

Before I get into the weeds of this, I want to confirm the four ways that one-on-one engagements occur:

1. Static Defender vs. Static Threat
2. Static Defender vs. Moving Threat
3. Moving Defender vs. Static Threat
4. Moving Defender vs. Moving Threat

Out of those 4 categories, the vast majority of firearms users only train in Cat 1 and Cat 3 when they visit the range. My personal opinion on why that is because (a) it’s easy and (b) they wanna hit the threat (target).

However, in terms of street engagements, that’s not how these situations go down. The truth is that Cat 4 is the most likely and most probable situation that you will have to deal with when faced with an armed threat.

The “go-to” and trending drill seems to be walking backward while engaging a static threat, and I cannot, for the life of me, think why?

Let me paint a simple picture (helped by Figure 1 below):

In this case, the threat could be a threat standing in the street, or a seated threat, who has been pulled over in their vehicle by law enforcement.

The threat (either seated or standing) opens fire, and you, the Defender, return fire and start to walk “backward,” probably quite vigorously, yes?

The problem with walking backward while shooting

So, what are the problems with this?

1. You’re still in the damn kill zone.
2. You cannot see behind you as you walk backward in a street.

Don’t get me wrong, if you ever come under contact on a football field, the desert, or the moon, then yeah, you could probably walk backward for miles without tripping over anything or bumping into something or someone.

But you CAN’T do that in the street – you just can’t, so why are so many people still training this way? It has absolutely no tactical advantage for you, and it only serves the interests of the “static” threat.

Get Off The X

Would it not be better to step left or right to escape the kill zone (off the X)? Much in the same way, you should get AWAY from your vehicle if you’re getting brassed up, but “away” doesn’t mean backward, in a straight line, because you’re still in the kill zone. It means out to the left or right. (Every infantryman knows this).

For those who haven’t heard the term “brassed up” before, it simply means to be under direct and sustained fire, more regularly used when in a vehicle or behind a piece of cover – it’s like God’s way of telling you to move.

Why move laterally while shooting

The advantages of stepping left or right are:

1. You immediately get out of the Kill Zone. That’s gotta be a good thing, right?
2. You have still managed to create space but have created “tactical” rather than “distanced” space. We often refer to this as a reactionary gap.
3. Being closer to a “static” threat isn’t necessarily a bad thing if we consider that the further back you walk, the greater distance you will be firing at. For example, you might miss and hit someone other than the threat.
4. You won’t trip over something, fall over, or bump into something/someone because you’re not blindly walking backward; instead, you are moving left or right.

Walking backward while engaging a static threat is an easy drill to set up on a range. Still, it doesn’t reflect the reality of how these things happen in the street; therefore, it is not a functional drill. It serves no tactical purpose because walking backward while engaging a static threat will probably cause you more problems than it will solve.

If you don’t believe me, try blindly walking backward from your fridge in your own kitchen and see what you trip over first: kid, dog, bag, mop bucket, grandma…

Now imagine doing the same on a busy street…doesn’t make sense now, does it?

By Neilly Davis

Neilly is the Training Director at Go Noisy USA LLC. Based in Florida.