Personal Protection Service Teaches Life-Saving Strategies

It's been a month since 12 people were killed inside a Colorado movie theater.

The week before, two men were shot and killed at a Tulsa Best Buy.

The same week, a man was convicted for the deadly shooting inside Muskogee's Arrowhead Mall.

If you found yourself in a public place with an active shooter, would you know what to do?

A group of retired state troopers and police officers shared their life-saving strategies Thursday night at the New Glenpool Convention Center.

It was all part of a personal survival training course.

The idea behind the class was to arm the public with knowledge and three simple steps to staying safe in a shooting situation.

It could happen at any time and any place a gunman opens fire in public setting with one goal in mind.

"Most of them are delusional. Most of them have one thing in mind, and that's to inflict as much damage as they possibly can," Ken Stafford, owner of AMG, said.

AMG is a personal protection service. Stafford and his team, combined, have more than 100 years of law enforcement experience.

They organized the course as a direct result of the movie theater massacre in Colorado.

Stafford said knowing how to react will save your life if you're put up against an active shooter.

"When your life is on the line, I promise you, you will remember what we have taught you," Stafford said. "That's the first thing that you'll do."

If you ever find yourself in such a situation, there are three living-saving strategies Stafford teaches.

• Evacuate - know your exit routes and plan for those ahead of time.
  
• Shelter - find a place, like a closet, where you can lock yourself down away from the shooter until help arrives.
  
• Fight back.

Stafford said, "You have to get a lot of mean in you. You have to decide, ‘Hey, I'm at this point, and it's my life or his.'"

Chase Roberts, a 17-year-old student at Oklahoma Union High School said fighting back would be his first instinct.

"If I had to do something, I would probably do what I had to, and if it came to sacrificing my life for the good of others, then it's going to come down to that," Roberts said.

Stafford said gunmen rarely have an exit plan, which is why 97 percent of public shootings end in suicide.

"They're cowards by nature and so, when you engage them, you can break the cycle of them being in control," Stafford said.

He said the most important thing to remember is to move and not freeze up.

AMG will be holding the exact same course in Glenpool again next month. For more information, visit www.amgpps.com.