The Cold Truth About Active Shooter Incidents: FSU’s Latest Tragedy Unpacked by a Retired Cop

This topic is one of the most prevalent and controversial issues surrounding our society, short of race relations, and it occurs too often and sparks more outcries on gun control and the 2^nd Amendment than anything else. On April 17, 2025, another active shooter incident took place, this time on the campus of Florida State University (why? fertile hunting ground), committed by a student. The most covered aspect of this will be that he is the stepson of a sheriff’s deputy and that he used one of her weapons, not the shooting itself, and that will be unfortunate.

My opinion on this comes from many years of being an active shooter-response instructor. I offer an informed perspective on the incident itself, the subject’s motivation, and where Tallahassee Police were outstanding in their response. 

The Shooter

Who is or becomes an active shooter and why? That question is continuously pondered by experts, academics, law enforcement, the medical/psychiatric community, politicians, and people in general. What makes a person go to these extremes, where they are so deranged or enraged that they want to kill massive numbers of strangers? Some profiles have emerged over time; They are usually white males, who have a history of mental illness (consistent with every shooter) or domestic violence, childhood traumas, have a specific grievance like against the government, no kidding, have hatred and possibly racism issues, another surprise, suicidal ideations or are seeking fame by killing many and maybe going out in a blaze of glory when the police arrive. It is estimated that 56% of these mass killers commit suicide before police arrive. Good! The idea of getting into a gunfight is a bad idea for any officer. They usually leave a manifesto behind for law enforcement to find that lays out their pathetic, unfair, “me-against-the-world” deraignment, and their plan on how they were going to carry out their killings. Some are so cunning, knowing that the police will eventually find their home, that they booby-trap the entrances and windows, hoping to take a few cops with them. Crazy, yes, but pretty savvy if you think about it. 

The Motive

Whatever the motivation, we know that these are highly determined individuals with the goal to kill as many innocent people as possible, and also know that when the police arrive, they very well might be killed themselves if they haven’t already done so. There are countless studies done by doctors, universitie,s and the FBI profilers that I won’t compare myself to these far more educated persons in their respective fields in giving you the exact reasons and diagnoses because I can’t; I’m just a “cop,” without all of that formal psychological education. But, as a cop, while the characteristics I’ve laid out above may be relevant after-the-fact in an attempt to understand these people, they are not at all important to me as the guy who would need to respond to one of these incidents save two; that they are heavily armed and motivated and their job is to stop me from doing my job which is to stop them!  The backgrounds of these killers will be analyzed, after they have killed and after I (police) have either stopped them or not. White, Black, Asian, male, female, racist, separatists, religious extremists, was abused as a child, chicks didn’t like him, didn’t make the varsity team, lost money in the stock market (we all have), his mother didn’t love him enough, or whatever the “F” is wrong with them, it doesn’t matter. None of that matters to us in the heat of the moment, and it certainly doesn’t matter to the victims in the line of fire, does it? What we do know in part about the FSU shooter is that he is far-right and fascist in his ideology, so he fits several of the profiles.  

The Police Response – Truths & Myths

I am speaking from experience here regarding the training, and here’s how it goes.  We at Miami-Dade Police, as did many other agencies, established what came to be known as “Contact-Teams” utilized to address an active shooter. Instead of waiting for SWAT or SRT, the first-responding units of uniform patrol would form teams to enter immediately. The first 3, 4, or 5 officers arriving would become the Contact-Team, make entry as a team, and seek out the shooter or shooters by going towards the sound of the gunfire, confront and neutralize the threat, meaning kill the bad guy(s) if necessary. Tallahassee police did exactly this as they were trained to do. Our/Their only mission was to go after the threat and nothing else. Even if we came across wounded persons crying out for help who could possibly be saved if we rendered aid, we were to leave them to the “Rescue Teams” that would come in afterwards and evacuate the wounded. Here is something everyone needs to understand about entering an active threat environment and wounded victims: we can’t stop and render aid until the lethal behavior (the shooting) is stopped. Until we take out the shooter or he kills himself or gives up, helping others will just lead to police casualties as well as civilians, because the shooter will see us focused on the victims and try and take us out. That’s the cold, hard truth about finding victims, and it will not nor should it change.  

How will officers react?

This has become a point of contention and criticism in recent years. During training, where we would set up scenarios for officers to enter a room where the shooter is waiting for them and they know it, some officers have said to us, “I’m not going in there because I’ll get shot!” And there is part of the problem. He may very well have been shot at and perhaps shot, but his own personal survival instinct is kicking in, and that instinct is the most powerful a human has; to survive, isn’t it?

Say, yo,u as a civilian are out at the mall or theater, and you hear gunfire close by, what is your instinct telling you to do? It’s saying, “Marcos, don’t go that way, are you an idiot? Go the other way if you want to live!” That is exactly what happens to most and even to cops, firefighters, and military personnel. Two edges to this sword here; on the one hand, we might say that he or she is a coward for not entering the active shooting environment alone, or we can look at it as they may be completely terrified and are unable to engage. Remember what I said; the survival instinct for any animal overrides everything else. The fight or fight-or-flight response takes over, and it is difficult to override. 

So now we come to the police response to the active shooter. What the uninformed public, so-called experts and of course politicians who think they know better, expect from us is to arrive at an unfamiliar building, with an unknown number of subjects inside and their locations, shooting with unknown types of weapons, laid booby-traps, and enter with a sidearm and take out the shooters, alone and without back-up! Mmmm.  

So what’s wrong with this expectation? Everything! Why does it seem that a police officer is expected to possibly sacrifice himself by going against every survival instinct and police training procedure in his response to an active shooter or similar incident in scope and danger, and will be heavily criticized and possibly prosecuted for if he doesn’t go it alone? Updated Training dictates today that an officer is expected to enter alone, but will they? 

In some cases, they will, and we can only hope that when they do and confront the shooter(s) that they somehow prevail, though the odds will be against them. I’m afraid that this issue will be with us for a long time to come and if officers are prosecuted for not going it alone, what will happen instead is the officer that wishes to first stay alive, and second, not be criminally charged by activist prosecutors, won’t be the first on-scene and will make sure that they take the looong way around to get there.  If you’re not there, you can’t get in trouble, can you? Some of you may not like what I’m saying, I get it, but the truth is the truth. This time, though, Tallahassee law enforcement braved the danger and did their job and prevailed. Heroes all! 

Sgt. (Ret.) Bert “Maverick” Gonzalez is a decorated 37-year veteran of the Metro-Dade Police Department, police trainer, author, and host of Sgt. Maverick – The Podcast.