How and Why Active Shooter Training Is Failing in America

Picture this: You're standing before news cameras outside a school where shots were just fired. The first question hits like a punch: "When did your officers last train for this scenario?" Your answer will either justify your response or haunt your career.

Twenty-five years after Columbine changed everything, we're still seeing preventable failures. Parkland. Uvalde. ABB in St. Louis. The pattern is clear, and it's not about officer courage—it's about training that doesn't match the reality officers face when seconds matter most.

At 0311 Tactical, we've responded to real active shooter events and trained thousands of officers. Here's what we've learned about why traditional training fails and how to fix it.

The Three Critical Gaps in Current Training

1. Frequency: Once-a-Year Training Creates False Confidence

How often does your agency conduct active threat training? Once annually? Every two years?

Here's the reality: No critical skill maintains proficiency with yearly practice. Yet when budgets get tight, this life-saving training gets cut while mandatory classroom sessions somehow find funding.  Active Shooter training has fallen into the category of other “check the box” training.  Training that agencies feel they “have to do” just so they can say they did.  It is also manpower intensive training, takes much planning, and is not easy to put on.   

The solution is simpler than you think:

• Partner with neighboring agencies for joint training

• Utilize detectives and specialized units to cover patrol during training days to address manpower issues

• Schedule quarterly micro-sessions instead of annual marathons

• Use simulation technology to supplement live training

• Invite the media, turn it into a PR event

• Integrated training with Fire and EMS, share the burden of cost, resources and logistics

When reporters ask about your training frequency after an incident, "last month" sounds very different than "two years ago."  Find a way.

2. Depth: Most Active Shooter Training Simply Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Most active shooter training follows the same script: Move down the hallway. Enter the room. See the bad guy. Shoot bad guy. End scenario.

Most scenarios are constructed to be very black and white.  There is rarely a gray area requiring officers to actually evaluate and make decisions.  Officers are most often just reacting to a very cut and dry situation presented to them.  A clearly defined bad guy in one corner of the room, maybe a few victims in the other corner.  There isn’t much to process, only one stimulant to react to.  That’s not reality.  At 0311 Tactical, we very much believe in the concept of “We don’t run towards gunfire, we think towards gunfire”.  And that premise is built into every scenario we construct.

Many departments also fall into “conveyer belt” training.  They just want to push as many officers through the training on schedule, as quickly and efficiently as they can.  Little attention is paid to whether the tactics and concepts are actually being absorbed by the students.  “We just need to get them through these cookie cutter scenarios so we can get the next group in here.”  The instructors get burned out, resulting in a lower quality level of teaching, because many times they are better than the curriculum they are being handed to teach.  This usually leaves little time to get into the micro concepts of active shooter response.  Usually, just the basic, check the box bullet points get addressed.  

Furthermore, many agencies are not tailoring the training to fit their specific individual needs.   Large urban police departments of several thousand officers should not be training the same way small rural departments of 20 officers do.

Real events are messier. Multiple suspects. Civilians in the line of fire. Malfunctioning equipment. Communication breakdowns. Officers making split-second decisions with incomplete information.

Our methodology addresses what others miss:

• Acceptable Risk Shooting: When do you take the shot with civilians nearby?

• Post-Assault Crisis Management: The hard part starts after the threat is down

• Multi-Agency Coordination: Fire, EMS, and law enforcement working together under pressure

• Stop the Killing—->Stop the Dying: When is this transition appropriate?

Traditional training stops when the shooter goes down. Real-world response is just beginning.

3. Instructors: Theory vs. Experience

Here's an uncomfortable truth: Most active shooter instructors have never responded to an actual event. They're teaching recycled PowerPoint slides from other instructors who also haven't done it.

Experience matters. The sights, sounds, and variables of a real event create challenges no classroom can replicate. Officers freeze not because they lack courage, but because their training didn't prepare them for what they're actually experiencing.

What Real-World Response Taught Us

During our team's response to multiple real-world incidents, we encountered variables never covered in traditional training:

• Conflicting witness reports creating decision paralysis

• Technology failures when they mattered most

• The psychological impact of civilian casualties on officer decision-making

• Post-incident scene management lasting hours, not minutes

• How victims can inhibit your response

Some traditional tactics worked perfectly. Others needed immediate adaptation. The difference between success and failure often came down to officers who could think through problems, not just execute procedures.

Building Training That Works

Effective active shooter preparation requires three elements most programs miss:

Realistic Complexity: Scenarios with gray areas, time pressure, and incomplete information

Post-Incident Focus: Managing the scene after neutralizing the threat—where most failures actually occur

Instructor Credibility: Learning from people who've made these decisions when lives depended on them

Your Next Steps

Every day you delay upgrading your training is another day your officers are unprepared for the unthinkable. But here's the good news: this problem is completely solvable.

The question isn't whether your community will face an active threat—it's whether your officers will be ready when it happens.

Ready to bridge the gap between training and reality?

Contact 0311 Tactical to schedule a consultation. We'll assess your current program and show you exactly how to prepare your officers for what they'll actually face, not what looks good in a PowerPoint.

Because when reporters start asking questions, you want to be the Chief or Sheriff who got it right.