GUN SHY OR GUN SMART?
I was attending Asbury College freshman class in 1970, when our journalism teacher tried to teach us about the reliability of first hand crime reports by having a fake gunman "attack" our class.
It might have worked, except that I'd grown up in Haiti, where we sometimes dove under furniture when we heard machine gun fire in the valley below to escape stray bullets.
So, as soon as a strange guy rushed into the room and knocked down the teacher, then pulled out a gun, I'd already dropped to the floor and slid out the door.
I heard gunshots as I left, but nobody was running or screaming. Then I realized that the gunshots sounded hollow, so were blanks.
After a ten minute wait, I returned to the class to find everyone writing up their version of the "crime" and later students teased me for leaving.
"You were SCARED..I SAW you leave! Ha, ha!"
But all I did is wonder how everyone could just sit there passively, making no move to save themselves.
But with all the mass shootings later on, most people have started planning ahead how to react in a crisis.