In this episode, we will discuss how dangerous getting shot actually is. We will look at shooting survivability, homicides, and mass shootings. This topic has bonus content.

I

recently went to a conference and one of the breakout speakers was a gentleman

by the name of Dave Acosta from a company called youtactial. 

His

class was about the fight part of run hide fight.

He

donates much of his time effectively teaching unarmed school teachers how to

deal with an active shooter.

You

will hear more about what I learned from him in the bonus podcast, but one of

the things he said in his presentation got me thinking

He

said that most people mistakenly think that getting shot means dying or at a

minimum, being completely helpless 

He

said this mistaken impression comes largely from our entertainment but many of

his colleges have been shot multiple times and not only survived, but continued

to fight

This

got me thinking about how dangerous is getting shot really

Let

start with how many people are being killed each year

Based

on what I hear almost daily on the news, you might think that murders are up

dramatically, but an FBI report summarizing murders from 1992 to 2011 says

otherwise https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf

In

2011 the homicide rate was 4.7 homicides per 100,000 people

This

was actually the lowest rate since 1963

In

fact, from 1992 to 2011 the homicide rate dropped 49% from 9.3 to 4.7 per

100,000

Homicides shot with firearm

Of

those homicides, 67% were killed by a firearm, a percentage that has remained

fairly stable

Well,

that was from 2011 which isn’t exactly recent so I dug into the numbers from

2018 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/murder

For

2018 there were 5 murders per 100,000 with some mild fluctuation in the

previous years

So

essentially it has remained the same

Now,

what about mass shootings?

From

2002-2011 95% of homicides involved only a single victim

About

4% involved 2 victims

.6%

involved 3 victims a

0.2%

involved 4 or more victims In 2011 out of 13,750 homicide incidents 25 involved

4 or more victims

For

homicides involving 4+ victims, firearms were involved 91% of the time

Now

let’s talk a little bit about the characteristics of an active shooter

incidents https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view

Note

this is different than a mass shooting

An active shooter is “an individual actively engag...