Produced in partnership with Wal-Mart and Texas State University, the video is designed to teach employees how to deal with an active shooter situation and will be used to train over 1.5 million employees in the near future. It’s nice that they chose to go with a shotgun instead of an AR-15 or other scary looking rifle for the shooter’s gun, but what’s even nicer is the overall message of the video. There’s the typical “turn off the light and be very quiet and maybe he will go away” approach featured, but the most effective method portrayed in the video…
is when a group of employees confront the shooter, tackle and subdue him. The burly man who marshalls the troops to conduct this heroic act prefaces it with the phrase, “we have a right to defend ourselves.” Which, to be honest, might have been more easily done if they had stopped in the sporting goods section before confronting the attacker.
It’s fairly refreshing to see a large company like Wal-Mart acknowledging that their employees actually do have a right to defend their own lives, rather than treating them like children and requiring them to sit quietly in the corner until the adults (police) arrive. I wish my day job had that much respect for us employees, but alas there’s a big fat 30.06 sign out front.
Can’t watch streaming videos at the moment. Is WalMart suddenly recognizing that, in order to defend themselves against an armed attacker, WalMart employees have a right to, and should, be armed?
(I’m guessing: not.)
Of course not.
The training video is a dramatization of a spree killer “hunting” for victims in a large store similar to the layout of a Wal-Mart. It portrays people running away and barricading themselves in rooms. The final scene of the dramatization shows two employees without any weapons — other than their bare hands — tackling the spree killer. The video then goes on to state that we have a right to defend ourselves. However, they do not mention anything about being armed.
At any rate even that is an improvement.
So, a corporation is admitting that its employees have the right of self-defense against an armed attacker, but through corporate policy denies those same employees the means to effect such defense?
Yeah, that will end well.
They said to use scissors and coffee pots etc. The irony of course that they are acknowledging that other, every day items can be used as deadly weapons all while still denying their employees the use of the most effective self defense weapons.
Chip, I wonder if that will be helpful in a case where an employee is disarmed by his employer and killed in the job by an active shooter. Like you said they acknowledged the right to self defense but are denying the best tool for the job.
TheBear, they are also advocating improper use of household items. Too bad they didn’t say to use wasp spray.
I’m not sure if this is true everywhere, but I’ve seen shoppers open carrying in the Walmart stores in Albuquerque, and there are no signs suggesting armed people are unwelcome. Also, our Walmarts all sell rifles and shotguns. While they may avoid liability by not suggesting employees raid the Sporting Goods dept in the event of an active shooter situation, I’m sure someone in that dept would arm themselves from inventory in such a situation…
April Fools?
Someone says it every time, but Texas gun law designations are too ironic to be coincidence.
Nobody ever claimed, here, that the 30.06 designation was coincidental.
assuming the video is real while I do not like that they do not recognize the right to armed self defense I do appreciate that they tell you not to fight fair and to be aggressive.
Stop in the sporting goods section first, indeed.
It should be noted that not all Wally Worlds sell firearms. I’ve never seen a gun for sale in any of their Illinois stores, though they do sell ammunition.
Does good ole’ Sam let his “associates” carry on the job, or do the helpless employees need to pray that one of their concealed carrying customers saves them?
They have weapons for sale in several locations in my south central madigistan (the state formally known as Illinois) area. Usually just rifles and shotguns tho.
Walmart out by NIU sells long guns though they apologize for being out of 22lr ammo.
I also stopped by one by aurora illinois once and they sell longs as well.
well, I’d rather have a 12 gauge than my EDC so….even if I was carrying I”d probably hope to stop by the gun counter first!
My local Walmart does not sell guns, but does sell ammo. It’s not against the law for them to sell in my state, it’s just a choice they made when they built the store. Other Walmarts in nearby communities do sell guns.
Regardless of what corporate says, I bet the guys who WORK in the firearms area know just which gun and ammo they can get into action the quickest. And being sorry you had to use a 12-guage in an active shooter scenario inside a Walmart is nuts. That is EXACTLY what I’d want.
last I heard from people who still work for wally world, it is still just the customers who can be armed
Thankfully Wal-Marts here in Texas don’t post up 30.06 signs, nor do any other businesses I frequent, because of course, if they did, I wouldn’t be a patron.
In Colorado they don’t all sell guns, but the majority of them sell ammo. Even .22LR on rare occasions.
same here in NC
my local one sells shotguns/rifles and ammo
the next 3 closest sell ammo, but not guns
tho .22LR is still a bit of a ghost, I have seen .25 ACP and .32 ACP for your pocket/mouse guns
30.06 signs? That means they sell 30-06 for my garand, right? Lol.
“The right to defend ourselves”
I’ve had a problem with this statement lately. As the late, great Carlin once pointed out, a right isn’t a right if someone can take them away. And rights do most certainly get taken away. At an ever-increasing pace.
I don’t have a right to defend myself. I have a RESPONSIBILITY to defend myself. My family needs me to come home safely each night from work, from walking the dog, from going to Wal-Mart. Carrying a firearm isn’t something I can do, or even should do. It’s something we all NEED to do. Each of us have a duty to the families we’ve made to ensure that we continue to provide for them. And I can’t do that if every business or workplace finds it acceptable to limit my ability to exercise my RESPONSIBILITY to protect myself in the event of an attack. If a gun is the simplest, most effective form of self-defense for an individual, then there are no grounds for restrictions on carry based on location. /rant over
on point\ good for Wal-Mart for pandering to the crowd frequenting their ammo department.
the knowledge that Wal-Mart is making what amounts to a fundamental change regarding shooting situations could make people like me view them more favorably. Empower the employee to play an active role in their safety.
…just not with the best tool for the job if you’re unlucky enough to be employed here.
Thanks Walmart.
If walmart has endorsed this video couldn’t it lead to a challenge to corporate policy. We have a right to defend ourselves isn’t prefaced with as long as it complies with corporate policies. Employees could argue this video contradicts any ban on carrying at work?
Great – now I can’t wear cargo pants to Walmart any more 🙁
Some of the suggestions on how to barricade yourself in an active shooter situation are clever. In Montana the biggest danger shoppers would face might be getting caught in the crossfire between the shooter and a half-dozen patrons, and any Wal-Mart employees with enough sense (and the opportunity) to arm themselves at the sporting goods department. Ditto for Texas and Florida.
I was thinking something similar last night at the Ted Cruz rally. He’s been so heavily demonized by the MSM, that I’m more than half expecting some psycho to choose him as a target. I only saw one bodyguard, whom I think was private, not Secret Service, but there was an HPD presence. In standing room only conditions, like that, I’d expect there would be many innocents wounded in the crossfire, regardless by whose rounds.
OK, big problem with that video. The LEOs actually went IN the store. Everytime I see an active shooter event on TV, the LEOs have their AR15s in their hands, cowering behind their cars, ala Virginia Tech. Must have seen at leaast 15 or 20 cowering behind their cruisers.
Wait, now, wasn’t that a Walmart where the cops murdered a black guy for examining a BB gun?
It’s ok, it was a BB gun so they didn’t have to hide behind their cruisers when they shot him…
That shooting was okay because the guy had the BB gun pointed at bags of dog food. Think of the canines!
Go watch the video. If you’re going to stand in corner of the toy section, with no kids with, holding what appears to be a real firearm, scaring people until then the police arrive. Then you have serious mental problems,
If you then proceed to taunt the police, commit criminal acts in defying lawful orders, and act aggressively with your presumed firearm, then you deserve what you get.
I’m sick to F’n death of every fool out there doing whatever F’d up thing he wants, risking other people’s lives in the process, then whining and crying when we don’t all coddle them. Let some of these jackwagons suffer the readily foreseeable consequences. Screw him. His worthless butt won’t be missed.
I’ve watched it several times. I suspect you haven’t, or at least not “for comprehension” as they used to say in English class. Your description is rather at odds with what can be seen in the video.
You disgust me. A dude gets perforated by wanna be operators sliding around the store in bike shorts while holding a bb gun at his side one handed by the foregrip and you cheer it.
And lost in all of that situation is that the real person culpable is the guy who SWATted John Crawford, by making a false report to 911 about a man with a gun. Police were merely responding to the information they were given.
The caller is known, but as far as I know, has yet to be charged for his criminal liability in John Crawford’s death.
Here’s a tip to Walmart employees who may be confronted by an “active shooter” — grab some cheap Chinese-made crap from a shelf and hit the bad guy with it. When said cheap Chinese-made crap breaks, you will know exactly how your customers feel every freakin’ day.
What is Walmarts corporate policy on customers right to carry per state laws?
I notice Costco has stopped trying to hide their store-is-a- gun-free-zone rules.
http://www.2acheck.com/boycott-costco/
Really? I have never looked, have carried every single time I have been in a Costco, and do not intend to change.
Lessons learned from the opening scenario: 1) You are your own first responder. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. And 2) the “No Guns” signs (seen as the LEOs enter the building) do no good, and probably do harm.
Interesting. Wonder if the vid’s producers are aware of the irony.
I expect I shouldn’t be this way, but these things are starting to really annoy me. We live in the USA, where ordinary folks have the right to own firearms for, among other things, self-defense. We don’t live in the great socialist utopias of the world, where the ordinary people are defenseless serfs by law and by custom. But our corporate pooh-bahs, our government pooh-bahs, and our cultural pooh-bahs are doing all they can to turn us into helpless sheep, just waiting to be sheared by someone else, whether inside or outside of the law. At least some of this crap is being reversed in some places, amazingly enough. I guess I should give the producers some credit for even broaching the subject of self-defense at all. But it’s still damned annoying.
I don’t really blame Walmart for not promoting the right of their employees wear firearms to protect themselves.
I don’t know if it is their policy to not allow them to wear firearms.
But if they did have the policy to not allow their employees to wear firearms, I wonder what they would
do if one or two of them violated that policy and shot an Active Shooter who was in the process
of KILLING a bunch of their employees AND their customers.
Would they fire that person as certain companies have like Walgreens Pharmacists?
Would they fire them or would the promote them to some Security Position?
This is the first Active Shooter Training video that at least said that employees had the right to defend themselves.
It baffles me that people have to be told they had that right.
But that is because the public has been brainwashed into being cowards.
Unless you are into Gun Training or Martial Arts Training most people wouldn’t even think about it.
Unless you have been taught by being in the Marines or Army or some form of Martial Arts most people will just cower away.
Even if you do carry a gun you still need some vital training to respond.
Having these Active Shooter videos or OK but in order to react in a highly stressful situation you need to prepare not only in a physical but mental way.
That training needs to be Active itself.
At least like a Fire Drill or Tornado Drill.
Act out various scenarios.
Well, there have been plenty of examples, notably Pizza deliveries, of people who needed a gun to protect themselves and then were fired if they had one. I mean, it’s only “fired”, but that still seems pretty unfair, to me. Someday, someone will sue successfully for tens of millions because a retailer prohibited firearms while providing zero protection, resulting on somebody quadriplegic (can’t be dead, nobody on the jury cares about dead) suiing their asses off, and things will change. Not until.
The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University, which produced the video are former military (some are still in the NG/reserves) and law enforcement. Part of the basic premise of their training is that the CHL or off duty military/LEO may be the only ones on site to deal with an active shooter, because waiting for “proper authorities” means more people are going to die. I have done two of their courses and recommend their training to anyone who gets the chance to go. Learning to clear a school with lots of role players (innocents, injured and shooters) is a lot different from traditional MOUT.
Still better than the Active Shooter training we get in the DOD. Shelter-in-place and only open the door when prompted to by “Security Forces”. Awesome, we just distributed to all disgruntled workers how to get those locked doors opened! I hate that I can’t CCW on base, but at least working in a secure environment I have five layers a shooter would have to get through first and an emergency exit 5′ away.
I was on NKIA when one of the AFG pilots went postal and killed 8 US airmen and a contractor. Most were not armed because chain of command considered inside the wire a low threat environment, there was no response for 30 plus minutes because the reaction force on my side of the base had not been tasked with that side of the base. To make matters worse my team had the active shooter training from ALERRT, we heard the shots, but didn’t react because it was in a neighboring compound outside of our AOR. To say that I have regrets is an understatement, we swore it would react to any insider threat in the future no matter what.
It was obvious he was a gunman… who wears Cole Haans to Walmart?
I saw a guy open carrying a honest to God German Luger in my local Walmart today. No one seem to bat an eye.
It’s fairly refreshing to see a large company like Wal-Mart acknowledging that their employees actually do have a right to defend their own lives,
Sooo….why not have the employees stop by the children;s toy section and grab some fully automatic weapons and ammo (next to the Candy Land Games) and have them test drive the guns for customer satisfaction purposes on the perps?
If I worked at Walmart i’d IWB carry no matter what policy was. Though I do appreciate Walmart making the video and showing to all employee’s so if they tried to fire me they created a conflicting statements. Policy book I signed a year ago, then video comes out today. If I was on a jury I would side with the employee’s wrongful termination lawsuit since it the video did say “You have a right to defend yourself to the best of your ability”. If you own a handgun and have a CCW permit defending yourself “to the best of your ability” would mean carrying a concealed handgun.
At my local Walmart, I’d say only 1 out of 4 regular sporting goods employees knows anything about boom sticks and their dietary requirements. The others seem to be slighted electronics department mouth breathers more interested in getting rid of those cabinet keys as soon as the one good guy returns.
Walmart still has a policy against associates carrying on the clock. It’s a firing offense.
Which is why it’s hilarious that they’ve moved to wearing vests. I worked there when that change happened. Told the training coordinator “I love how this covers my belt line. I could hide a bunch of stuff like this.” The shocked look was well worth it; I was on my way out in just a couple weeks.
Academy Sports, as far as I know, doesn’t have a stated policy against associates carrying on the clock. However, they do have a strict shirt-tucked-in dress code, so tuck or pocket carry are the only ways to go if you’re not wearing a jacket 25/8.
Do active shooters (of the murderous criminal variety) have a habit of wearing ear plugs for their sprees?
I’ve never understood how a company can get away with telling you you can’t exercise a basic right.
Comments are closed.