Arguably, one of the biggest law enforcement training errors that we, as concealed carriers, must never imitate is what are called “goofy loops.”
What’s a goofy loop? Repeating substantially identical verbal commands over and over again while an imminent deadly-force threat remains unresolved.
“Drop the gun! Drop it! Put it down! Drop the gun, do it now! I will shoot you!”
Again. And again. And again.
At some point, this stops being meaningful communication and becomes an exercise in wishful thinking. It is an abdication of responsibility when someone has accepted a leadership role and responsibility for protecting others. It is excessive hope at precisely the moment when sound judgment, decisiveness, and moral courage are required.
Perhaps if we give him sixteen more warnings, he’ll finally do the right thing and put the firearm down.
That is not a sound strategy when an innocent person’s life is hanging in the balance.
If there is a hostage, you’re gambling with the hostage’s life. If you’re alone with an armed, unjust aggressor who has initiated an imminent deadly force threat, you’re gambling with your own life.
We cannot escape the fundamental reality that, in a lethal encounter, the person who initiates an attack generally possesses an action-reaction advantage. We cannot wish that reality away.
When an innocent person is facing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, every unnecessary delay deserves serious scrutiny. Where a person has a genuine moral and professional responsibility to protect others, that responsibility cannot simply be transferred to the aggressor through inaction.
Think about what repeated, ineffective commands can communicate through conduct:
“I lack the courage or resolve to make the difficult decision that this situation requires. Instead, I am going to surrender the initiative and leave the next consequential decision in your hands. I am willing to gamble with an innocent person’s life, and perhaps my own, in the hope that you will voluntarily decide to stop threatening them.”
That is a profoundly dangerous way to approach a potentially lethal situation.
The unjust aggressor has no moral, ethical, or legal entitlement to threaten innocent people with death or serious bodily injury. Nor does an officer’s moral and professional responsibility to protect those people disappear simply because the aggressor refuses to cooperate.
What Is the Aggressor Communicating Through His Conduct?
Psychologists and communication researchers have long recognized that human communication extends well beyond spoken words. Conduct, positioning, gestures, and other observable behavior can communicate important information about a person’s intentions.
Consider the video in question.
When the officers arrive, what does the armed aggressor do?
He positions his ex-wife, whom he has taken hostage and refuses to release, between himself and the responding officers. In other words, he places another human being in the position of a human shield.
That is an enormously significant observable act.
It is not merely a failure to comply with police instructions. It is conduct that must be evaluated in the context of an armed hostage-taking situation.
What does that positioning tell us? At a minimum, it demonstrates that the aggressor is deliberately using the hostage’s physical presence to complicate the officers’ response and protect himself from their intervention.
That conduct must be taken seriously.
Likewise, when officers exit their vehicles, draw their firearms, and issue commands, those actions communicate the seriousness of the situation and the consequences of continuing to present an armed threat.
The aggressor can see the officers. He can observe their response.
Someone who genuinely intends to end the immediate danger has an opportunity to show that intention through observable compliance.
But what if he doesn’t?
What if he retains the firearm? What if he continues using the hostage as a human shield? What if his conduct continues to present an imminent threat to her life or the lives of the officers?
Feasibility
Feasibility matters. A warning that can reasonably be given without compromising the ability to protect innocent life is one thing. An inflexible demand for additional warnings when doing so would create an unreasonable risk to an innocent person’s life is something entirely different.
During my career at my former department, verbal warnings before using deadly force were required only where feasible.
That qualification was important. Feasible means capable of being accomplished under the circumstances. It does not mean that an officer must undertake an action regardless of whether it is practical, safe, or consistent with the immediate demands of the situation.
One of our best instructors during active-shooter training would position himself near a doorway so that responding recruits initially obtained a line of sight to his back.
If a recruit encountered him and issued a warning to drop his firearm rather than immediately addressing the simulated active-shooter threat, the instructor would briefly move into the room, return to the hallway, and place a paint-marking round in the center of the recruit’s face mask.
He would then explain the consequence of that decision.
Because the recruit had unnecessarily delayed, additional simulated victims had been killed. The recruit had also been taken out of the fight, and another officer would still have to resolve the threat that the recruit had failed to address.
It was an intentionally memorable lesson.
The point was not that warnings are inherently inappropriate. The point was that warnings must be evaluated in context. There are circumstances in which they are feasible and appropriate, and circumstances in which they can create an unacceptable delay.
A training program that fails to teach that distinction is doing its people a disservice.
Every Second of Continued Threatening Conduct Matters
A failure to act when action is required can surrender the initiative to the very person creating the danger.
Consider the sequence in this video.
From the moment the aggressor sees the officers arrive, his subsequent conduct becomes part of the totality of the circumstances.
He retains the firearm.
He refuses to release the hostage.
He positions her between himself and the officers.
He continues to present an armed threat.
These are not meaningless observations. They are facts that must be evaluated together.
The continued possession of that firearm in the context of an armed hostage-taking, coupled with conduct that maintains an imminent deadly force threat to another person’s life, demands action to stop the threat.
We must stop treating the passage of time as inherently evidence of progress toward a peaceful resolution.
Sometimes time is an opportunity for de-escalation. Sometimes it is an opportunity for the aggressor to continue controlling the situation, maintaining a lethal threat, and sometimes it is an opportunity for them to destroy innocents.
The distinction must be made through an objective assessment of what is actually happening.
The Moral Responsibility of Leadership
Another dimension of this discussion deserves equal attention: moral responsibility.
When someone accepts responsibility for protecting others, that responsibility carries weight.
A police officer has a professional and moral or ethical responsibility to protect the community. A husband and father has profound responsibilities toward his family.
None of those responsibilities grants unlimited authority to use force. The law still governs. Innocence, imminence, proportionality, reasonableness, and the applicable legal standards still matter.
But neither should those responsibilities become empty words when a genuine, imminent deadly-force threat materializes.
We should not confuse restraint with indecision, patience with paralysis, or de-escalation with endless repetition of ineffective commands.
We should not teach people to surrender their judgment to a formula that demands more words when the circumstances demand an immediate, reasoned response.
The unjust aggressor is responsible for his own criminal conduct. The innocent hostage is not responsible for it. And those entrusted with protecting innocent people must not lose sight of whose life is actually being threatened.