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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I watched this "illegal" video. And not only do I think it should not be illegal, I think watching it should be almost mandatory!

Package it with a safety curriculum, and people should watch it to know what to do. In particular: For the most part, those people in the video who ran, lived, those who tried to drop low, or froze up, died. (There were a couple of exceptions.)

Additionally, one guy tried to attack the shooter and was killed. But it was just one guy, everyone else was too scared. If instead they had all attacked, some would have died, but not as many.

(It sounds like I'm blaming them, I'm not.)

There are a lot of safety lessons in that video, and people should watch it.

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The chances of being in such a situation are so incredibly small, that training to deal with it is a wasted effort compared to a host of other stuff — e.g., learning CPR, taking a course in safely driving in wintery conditions, employing elementary fire safety precautions in the house, etc. Even stimulating people to learn to swim if they haven't already saves way more lives!

If you normalize an attack like this to the point that you start training the general populace for its (statistically unlikely) occurrence, you have effectively made terrorism in this form that much more effective.

I think the fact these attacks are happening regularly all over the world normalizes this already. The odds of you being the victim of a terror attack are low but honestly you don’t need a 15 minute course on tips. Make news distributors run a 2 minute clip on how to effectively maximize your odds of survival during every broadcast coverage of a mass shooting. I think it also changes the narrative in a would be perpetrators mind: if this is about power over others, to some extent others are now prepared to either flee or effectively attack a terrorist en masse.

> I think the fact these attacks are happening regularly all over the world normalizes this already.

I think you overestimate how common this style of mass shooting are outside of war zones. Even in places where gun violence is high mass shootings are incredibly rare[2].

Between 1966 and 2012 there were 18 mass shootings in the country with the second most count[1].

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/03/americas/us-gun-statistics/in...

[2]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/theres-a-new-global-rank...

Some advanced CPR classes actually do cover active-shooter scenario training. I get refreshers every 3 months and full training every year. Ask your CPR training company if they have this available. Not all of them do it.

Marine friend said if there's a shooter, charge them. Most people aren't trained to handle it. Throw something at them and run at them. If even 5 people had attacked this guy at once, he would have been taken down and many people saved.

This guy maybe was trained... but who knows, 10 people fighting for their lives of their families and kids would be scary to face.

> If even 5 people had attacked this guy at once, he would have been taken down and many people saved.

But those 5 people would have to take the increased risk of getting killed, which is difficult to convince than just run. Also the standard safety norms, says to do not indulge with the attacker.

You could have a point; as a reference, airline passengers reputedly put up a lot more fight against hijackers post-9/11. I don't want to watch the video- but perhaps a similar sort of shift in mindset could be brought about for these kinds of attacks, whether that be more running or more teaming up to fight back.

The need to see a video is proven wrong by your very example: Passengers on 9/11 already started putting up a flight before they’d seen the video, after they heard on their cell phones from loved ones what had happened to the other flights the passengers knew they had to fight back leading to the Pennsylvania crash.

Prior to this established hijacking procedure and expectation was cooperate, you’ll be flowen to some foreign country. There’ll be a demand for such and such prisoners to be released. A negotiation. Eventually the passengers will be released. As soon as people knew the planes were being used as weapons and this wasn’t the hijackings of past the fought back.

It didn’t require video.

Ah yes how enlightened. Mandatory first person murder video screenings. This must be a joke I'm not getting.

I tentatively agree. but obviously blur out or maybe completely re-render every individual in it.

I tried to watch it. I had to stop the video as he entered the mosque before he fired a shot.

My heart started racing and i felt sick. it was such a pedestrian build up.

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