Like most right-thinking people, I get all of my active shooter self-defense advice from metrosexual liberal opinion e-zine Vox, and correspondents to a fake news show on a cable comedy channel.

German Lopez’s experience is writing for an alternative weekly in Cincinnati before joining Vox to write about criminal justice, drug policy, and LGBT issues. He seems qualified to tell you not to drop the soap while you’re in jail for drug possession… and not much else. That still makes him better qualified than Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show, who is, after all, just a struggling comedian.

We all saw this coming from a mile away, didn’t we?

It has been said millions of times after a mass shooting: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

On Thursday, The Daily Show‘s Jordan Klepper put the theory to the test. He trained on the basics of using a firearm and got a concealed carry permit that’s valid in 30 states. Then he participated in mass shooting simulations to see how, exactly, he would hold up in such a scenario.


You mean that a comedian, working for a fake news show that specializes in satire, failed at a task he intended to fail the entire time?

Let me show you my shocked face.


But it kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

How might a real person fair in an active shooter scenario after they’ve had competent training, and aren’t more focused on prancing around in front of a camera being a pretentious ass for laughs?

What if you had serious trainers, and serious students, and realistic force-on-force scenarios?

Why, you might get something like this.

Or this.

Professional firearms training centers have been offering active shooter training to law enforcement agencies and individual officers since the Columbine High School massacre. Some, like Sage Dynamics and Gunsite Academy, are now offering dedicated active shooter response training to the public.

I’ve been to a number of firearms classes as a student and as an observer. I’ll tell you straight up that merely getting a concealed carry permit and buying a gun no more prepares you for confronting a criminal or an active shooter any more than buying a piano and a song book makes you a musician.

But if you get good defensive firearms training from a reputable instructor cadre, which involves marksmanship, weapon manipulation, and most importantly, develops the proper mindset, you’ll be a very good position to survive this sort of attack.

Relationships between serious firearms training schools and their students don’t stop when class is over. Inevitably, students end up reporting back to their instructors when they’ve had a real-world encounter.

In the vast majority of real-world encounters, the trained self-defense shooter defeats the bad guy, who typically has no training. These are typically individual or gang attacks focusing on individuals. When we have an active-shooter scenario, we’re typically dealing with a poorly-trained or untrained individual without specific focus, looking to take out the easiest targets possible.

Seriously, give it a moment’s thought.

A graduate of any serious shooting school has practical firearms training on par with and often exceeding that of law enforcement officers. How fast would Sandy Hook have ended if the staff member who walked up the hallway behind the deranged anorexic gunman had a concealed handgun and training?

BANG. Done.

The same holds true for the majority of shootings.

How much easier do you think it is going to be for the trained citizen when the bad guy doesn’t know or expect armed resistance?

These uneducated beta-males from Vox and Comedy Central—let’s call them what they are—don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

Citizens can and will defeat active shooters, and they have.

The police know it and ask us to be armed and trained.

To whom will you listen?