Was listening to a reporter and a few interviewees pontificate on NPR today concerning the open carrying of firearms now being allowed in Texas, and how some law enforcement official somewhere (may not have even been from Texas) has come out encouraging civilians who carry firearms - concealed or openly - to engage an active shooter if they were in a position to do so when faced with that scenario. One of the interviewees pointed out how this could result in the situation being much more complicated to unravel for LEO's arriving on the scene, and how it could put those same concealed/open-carriers' lives at risk from taking incoming fire from LEO's thinking they were the active shooter themselves.

This got me thinking about what I understand (limited, admittedly) to be the most common discrimination criteria exercised by LEO in room- and building-clearing CQB situations; namely, that the hands (and their contents) are used as a quick way to indicate the nature of the person they belong to - innocent or threat.

1) Do, in fact, the contents of one's hands automatically decide his fate when facing LEO in an active-shooter situation? Or, is there a much more complex set of criteria that are applied to assist an arriving officer in sorting out friend from foe in an active shooter scenario?

It has always struck me as more than a little philosophically inconsistent to have LEO determine the outcome of a "shoot/no-shoot" decision based on whether or not the potential assailant simply possesses a weapon, in a country such as the US, where citizens are lawfully justified in defending their own lives (and the lives of others) with deadly weapons. Being that, as far as I've read, the pedigree of the techniques used in high-speed CQB scenarios is of a military lineage, it would seem that these would be generally ill-suited for direct application in an area where the people are permitted to arm themselves; not all of the techniques, of course, but specifically the one highlighted that is dependent upon simple possession (if that is in fact ever used as one of the criteria for determining shoot/no-shoot).

In general, I'd like to see more discussion of exactly how a civilian (or, under what circumstances) might safely involve themselves in the defense of their own self and others from an active-shooter type of attack (by using their firearm). If an armed citizen were to respond to any sort of scenario in which deadly force were justified, the very large onus would rightly be upon them to ensure that they are correctly perceiving the situation and targeting the proper individual before they acted with deadly force. It seems like a similar set of criterion that such a civilian would use to assess and act in that situation would be useful - and, rightly, ought to be applied - by law enforcement to ensure that he doesn't shoot an innocent.

Agree/disagree?

The scenario I've heard over and over is that you're very likely to be engaged by arriving LEO in an active shooter situation if you have a firearm (the assumption is that it's visible by law enforcement - otherwise, I wouldn't think you'd be likely to be perceived as a threat). What will be said to that is that if they are "perceived" by LEO to be a threat, then they'll be engaged, correct? However, can't a non-LEO civilian be held liable for the damage they cause if they do not correctly perceive a situation and wrongly kill an innocent? That being said, "dead" is "dead", and no one, even if in the right, wants to end up being killed by the responding officers, so the nature of this post and the questions in it are more supposed to be centered on 1) if there is or should be better criteria for LEO to evaluate a situation on (specifically, in an active shooter event) which would provide more protection for non-LEO civilians to defend themselves with firearms.

The 'gotcha' to all this is that if the criteria for determining shoot/no-shoot for LEO is made more complex, then that puts their lives more at risk. But I think it's potentially one of those 'there's no free lunch' types of issues - if in providing a 'safer' space for non-LEO to more effectively exercise their lawful right to protect their own lives and the lives of others in the immediate vicinity of an active-shooter event, and this makes it more risky for responding LEO's, then 'it is what it is', as they say. I.e., that's the price of allowing people to protect themselves using deadly force.

Of course, I respect the daily sacrifice that LEO and their families make on behalf of the communities they work in, and the intent isn't to increase the risk incurred during that activity. I'm simply asking if there's a way that the same amount and type of risk shouldered by non-LEO in using deadly force in an active shooter situation could/should be assumed by responding LEO, if it's not already (i.e., if the criterion that makes engaging an active shooter by a non-LEO such a risky proposition should be shared by both LEO and non-LEO, so as to prevent a non-LEO from being wrongly killed, or to try and make that outcome much less likely).

***I used the term "civilian" in a few places to contrast with "LEO", but tried to correct myself towards the end to saying "non-LEO" vs. "LEO", as LEO's are civilians. Sorry for the confusion.