Armed attackers have turned the most routine of social institutions into mass murder sites, from churches, temples and grade schools to supermarkets, hospitals and small-town parades. What if your restaurant is the next place chosen by an active shooter?
The possibility has prompted the California Restaurant Association (CRA) to commission a nine-minute instructional video aimed at keeping restaurants’ staffs and guests alive. Available without a charge, the slideshow-type presentation details the strategy recommended by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to enhance potential victims’ chances of surviving.
The tutorial is intended to provide a foundation for more formal active-shooter response training for a restaurant’s staff.
It reviews what Homeland Security has identified as the three essential survival responses: Evacuate if you can, hide if you can’t, and attack the attacker if those options aren’t feasible and your life is in danger.
The video also flags behaviors that could be signs an employee is considering an attack.
“With the number of active shooter incidents rising, no public place can think of itself as immune,” CRA CEO Jot Condie said in a statement. “We hope to never hear about it, but if this can happen at school or church, it can certainly happen at a restaurant.”
During the first half of 2022, authorities contended with more than 300 mass shootings in the U.S., or more than 10 per week, according to the website Gun Violence Archive.
The active-shooter defense video is part of the CRA’s Learning Management System, a collection of online instructional presentations that are intended to help California operators rehire and train employees who are new to the industry. The components, including the active-shooter tutorial, were developed by a company called Train 321.
The new video is available here.
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