Workplace Getting Shot Up? Homeland Security Recommends Protect Yourself With Scissors

You see ! Who needs the Second Amendment? Janet Napolitano has the solution. The department of Homeland Security created a cheesy instructional video (embedded below) to instruct people what to do if a crazed killer comes to your office with a gun.

“If you are caught out in the open and cannot conceal yourself or take cover, you might consider trying to overpower the shooter with whatever means are available,” says the narrator in the video, which shows an office worker pulling scissors out of a desk drawer.

That's not all the video (posted a month after Sandy Hook) advises...once you get the scissors hide under the desk.


Come on! Everybody knows the scissors are never in the office desk where you left them, the guy down the hall borrowed them and forgot to make a return.  With your luck, the guy has a conceal and carry permit...he's behind his desk with his friends Smith and Wesson while you are searching the desk drawers for the office tool.

The video, titled “Options for Consideration,” also advises that people who get caught in an “active shooter” situation should run away, hide under a desk or take cover out of the line of fire.

The nearly four-minute-long video opens with chilling scenes from the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, and the 2011 attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords.

But the video quickly shifts to hokey footage of office workers scampering under desks, crouching in corners and racing into closets to hide from a rampaging gunman on the loose.

“To protect your hiding place, lock the door if you can. Block the door with heavy furniture,” recommends the male narrator, speaking in measured, authoritative tones.

According to Homeland Security the video was made to coincide with President Obama’s attack on the Second Amendment.

Security consultant Andrew Scott called the information in the video “adequate.”

He conceded that Homeland Security was correct in recommending that people use scissors to attack a gunman but only in a “last, worst-case scenario.”

“Just the suggestion [to fight back] is a positive move,” said Scott, a former SWAT commander in North Miami Beach. “You don’t want to be sheep for the slaughter.”

So the cheesy video is semi-valid, but better advice would have been to purchase a firearm, learn how to use it, and keep it handy.

(if you cannot see video below please click here)