Run, hide, fight, die | Deserter

Hey, teachers heading back to work and parents of kids heading back to school for another school year, the FBI has a video for you! It’s a six-minute public service announcement called “Run. Hide. Fight. Safe in Schools.”

A friend who teaches at the Northern Virginia school where it was filmed recently sent me the clip. For those who haven’t and won’t see it, I did see it. The feds’ attempt to sanitize school shootings would be comical if the real-world body count wasn’t so high. There are no guns and no deaths in the entire movie. No ambulances in the parking lot. Not even a single scream.

My goodness, what a disingenuous, fake piece of garbage.

The film begins before the first bell of the day rings with the principal, a gym teacher, a science teacher, and a librarian walking down a hallway chatting about exercise, school fairs, and school trips. The bell rings and all is well until about a minute in, when gunshots begin to ring out over a soundtrack of ominous keyboard music. No one screams.

No one ever screams. The kids in the gym calmly obey the gym teacher, who calmly advises them to run away. She then turns to the camera and wants viewers to know that when a shooting occurs at their school, they should “keep their empty hands up and follow all police instructions.”

Cut to science class where the children calmly obey their teacher when he calmly tells them to hide. He then turns to the camera to tell viewers that when their school experiences a shooting, they should not “get under desks and freeze” because “that makes you an easy target for the shooter.” An apparent maintenance man with a name tag (“PAT”) on his shirt appears in the science teacher’s classroom with blood stains from an unseen wound on his arm and is calmly told, “You’ll be okay.”

The librarian is then shown in the library calmly telling two subordinates that the unseen gunman is blocking their only exit and there is nowhere to hide among the stacks, so they are going to fight. “If you control the gun, you control the shooter,” the librarian tells the audience, as she calmly gives battle plans to her two coworkers: “I’ll go for the gun. Kate, you go for the arms. Alex, you go for the head.”

Alex, looking studious, calmly nods her head and grabs a decorative rock from a shelf. I suppose that rock gives her a slightly better chance when the shadow of the supposed gunman appears and they head off to confront him. But in the real world, none of these people will come away from this kind of encounter without bullet holes.

Of course, we’re not in the real world. It’s a government film. The screen goes dark before we see the police officers entering the library and the librarians telling them, “We got him!”

Before long, all the main characters are reunited in the parking lot and everyone is happy. The movie ends with a tutorial on how to follow the run, hide, and fight plan. In the end, only Pat, the maintenance guy, shed some blood. But, once again, everything will be okay.

As far as I can tell, the Justice Department never issued a press release or otherwise announced the release of the school shooting video. I can’t blame them. Whoever green-lit this nonsense probably had to run and hide from their superiors once it was finished. An FBI spokesperson declined to answer any of Defector’s questions, including questions about who produced the film or how much money was spent making it.

According to data site Statista.com, there were 82 school shootings in the United States last year. All of us who send our children to school in this country are playing the odds.

Happy school year to everyone. You’ll be fine.