A newly resurfaced FBI video purportedly training Americans to give themselves their best chance of surviving a deadly mass shooting is drawing scorn across the US and abroad.
In the video, released in 2020 by the US’s top law enforcement agency, actors portraying everyday Americans explain to viewers ways in which they could at least survive – or, preferably, even stop – a mass shooting once the bullets start flying.
“If European countries want to deter brain drain to the US they should just play this FBI video to their soon-to-be graduates,” the European tech investor Michael Jackson said on his LinkedIn profile, which has more than 134,000 followers.
Jackson, who shared a link to the video, added that the well-documented gun problem in the US – where rates of mass gun violence are much higher than they are in Europe and in many other parts of the world – was hurting its standing with tourists and its companies’ prospects of hiring talented employees from overseas.
Another typical reaction to the video was on Twitter from an Oklahoma scholarship foundation leader who wrote: “America is broken. Instead of addressing the cause of the carnage, we’re talking about how to survive a massacre like it’s a damn tornado.”
The video begins with a scene of a bustling bar filled with people. A fight breaks out and then the sudden eruption of gunshots sends the crowd into a panic, with people rushing to find an exit or a hiding spot.
A waitress spots a neon red exit sign and proceeds to explain to viewers techniques to avoid getting shot.
“Running makes you harder to hit and improves your chances of survival,” she says as she runs down a stairway with a group of people.
When she makes it downstairs and out the door, she is confronted by police pointing a gun at her. Still out of breath and distressed, the waitress reminds the camera to always keep “empty hands up” and “follow their instructions” when faced with law enforcement.
Another woman hiding under a table then says to find another room and barricade the door if it’s not possible to escape. She ushers every person around her into a nearby closet and reminds viewers to turn their phones off.
She then says to find anything that could be wielded as if it were a weapon – a fire extinguisher or a flower vase would do – and prepare to attack if the shooter breaks down the door.
“Lock and barricade the door,” she instructs viewers as the gunshots can be heard firing in the background.
It doesn’t address what to do if the attacker has a high-powered rifle and can fire through the door and walls enclosing the room.
Someone is later shown not having a tourniquet but still properly applying pressure to a woman with a bleeding gunshot wound.
Toward the end of the video, a man is shown trapped behind the bar with all exits blocked. He tells his audience: “I gotta stay hidden. But I’m no victim. I’m ready for this.”
He lays out an elaborate plan that ends with him seizing the shooter’s gun, which occasionally happens but can cost people their lives if attempted unsuccessfully.
The video ends with a narrator offering a word of encouragement – “you can survive a mass shooting if you’re prepared” – and directs viewers to the website fbi.gov/survive.
The video resurfaced recently as the US is on pace this year to set the record for the highest number of mass killings in recent memory, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
The online reference site’s data recently showed the country in 2023 was likely to see 60 mass killings, which involve four or more victims who are slain.
There were 31 mass killings in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.
As of Monday morning, there had been at least 224 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are injured or killed.
Congress has been unable to meaningfully restrict access to guns despite the accelerated pace of mass shootings in the US this year.
Actually stopping a mass shooter as a civilian is exceptionally rare, according to Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. Less than 3% of more than 430 active attacks in the US ended with a civilian firing back from 2000 to 2021.
A bystander who confronted and disarmed an attacker during a mass shooting that left five people dead and 17 others wounded at a Colorado LGBTQ+ club last year was a US army veteran who had previously gone to war. Richard Fierro had served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
