FBI Official: Active Shooter Numbers ‘On the Rise’ and Americans Need to ‘Prepare’ Themselves

Lawrence BonkNov 7th, 2017, 2:22 pm
 

The country continues to reel from Sunday’s horrific mass shooting, in which a gunman killed 26 Texas parishioners and injured dozens more. The brutal attack, in which the shooter is reported to have shot multiple crying babies, has been politicized to hell and back, on both sides of the aisle. Common sense gun control. Ban bump stocks. Good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. It’s just the price of freedom. The real cause is mental illness. We’ve heard it all.

There is one point that cannot be argued, however. These spree killings are on the rise. The number of “active shooter” incidents have skyrocketed in the past two decades. America in the year 2000 was plagued by just one shooter that deliberately sought out populated areas. 2015? 20 shooters. That’s one horrifying episode every 18 days. 2017 is set to be the deadliest year in our history, with 114 confirmed deaths so far. Las Vegas was just over a month ago.

So, yeah. This is who we are now. Every few weeks someone gets ahold of some guns and kills a bunch of people. That’s just the way of things.

You know who else agrees that active shooting incidents have become part of our national identity? The FBI.

Christopher Combs, the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, took part in a Texas press conference today and told reporters that the numbers of active shooters are “on the rise.”

Combs also acknowledged that this isn’t going to change anytime soon, and he suggested that every American needs to prepare themselves for the eventuality that they may become involved in one of these massacres.

“I think everybody, no matter where you are, needs to think about this,” he said. “If you’re in a school, if you go to college, if you’re at the movies, we should all be thinking about ‘what are we gonna do if a crisis breaks out right here?'”

The FBI special agent went on to sadly propose that all Americans should learn to protect themselves, to train to become one of those good guys with a gun.

“There are a lot of programs out there. The FBI supports programs. We teach law enforcement. There’s private community programs out there,” he said.

“I think we ought to think very hard about this and make sure that we are prepared.”

Additionally, ATF officials noted at the same press conference that the shooter’s rifle appears to be a semiautomatic but has yet to be test-fired.

Past as prologue, we’ll continue this discussion in approximately three weeks. See you guys then, if you make it.

[Image via screengrab]

—

Follow Lawrence Bonk (@sidescrollers) on Twitter

Tags: