Originally Posted by Mister X

A lot depends on the department, but that wasn't my point. The question was how is Fred better trained to respond to an active-shooter in a civilian setting better than the average LEO. When comparing an older gentleman whose experience is pretty much limited to IDPA to a Cop who is younger, stronger, faster, has a few years on the job and has some H2H skills, I would bet my money on the latter in being successful in handling themselves in that situation.

Gun-centric folks tend to only see things from the perspective of a shoot-out. That isn't reality for the vast majority of civilian defense scenarios and it isn't even true when it comes to active-shooters. If you are at ground zero when you recognize what's occuring or when the shooting starts, that's an ECQ scenario and you will want to have the skill-sets(and tools)that are most effective in those situations and IDPA isn't one of them. In terms of gear, I for sure wouldn't want a long gun at those distances and I'm not sure in what bizarre circumstances anyone would have one with them in the first place. If you have any substantial degree of distance between the shooter, I would recommend getting to cover and simply escaping the scene. So, there is an extremely narrow window of possibility where you would actually NEED(no other option or it's likely the best tactic) to engage the shooter in anything that resembles what you do in IDPA and other forms of competitive shooting or even what a lot of folks practice at the range.

I'm not a cop and I'm simply not interested in playing hero and getting into a running ranged gun battle. My obligation is to my family and I'm either getting out as quickly as possible or engaging at very close-range since there is no other option and my lightweight snub will serve me well in either circumstance.