With more than 503 mass shooting events recorded in the U.S. last year, active shooter incidents continue to be a critical security risk in public venues such as schools, hospitals, houses of worship, retail stores, restaurants, and stadiums. The damage they can do in just a few minutes is irreparable and can result in the devastation of lives lost and families shattered. That is why swift and informed action is crucial. From the moment a gunman arrives, it’s the speed and accuracy of the response that ultimately determines if lives are saved or lost. A key component of that response is situational intelligence—the ability to collect, analyze, and act on real-time information to make rapid, informed decisions. This innovative capability is a game changer in the defense against active shooter threats, when every second counts.
The Grim Reality:
- There were 503 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2024.
- Additionally, there were 330 incidents involving gunfire on school grounds (that’s the 2nd highest annual total since 1966).
- The number of school shootings in each of the last 4 years is more than 107 percent higher than any year prior to that for the last 25 years.
The faster a gunman can be stopped, the more lives can be saved. The ability to gather and utilize situational intelligence in your environment is a vital and effective tool for saving lives in active shooting incidents.
What is Situational Intelligence?
When an active shooter arrives—whether it’s outside on the grounds or inside a building—the first and most critical step is early identification of the weapon. The faster a threat is recognized, the quicker staff and first responders can be alerted to danger. This rapid situational awareness enables the execution of a swift, coordinated response designed to get people out of harm’s way, mitigate the damage done, and ultimately, to save lives.
Many technologies and tools are used today to detect weapons. This includes metal detectors, added security personnel, and advanced technologies such as visual AI gun detection systems that can detect and identify firearms in real-time. Each of these approaches can be highly effective and thwart a gunman before a shot is fired.
However, even with the most sophisticated measures in place, there will be times when a shooter is able to bring a weapon inside a facility. In these cases, the challenge for first responders is locating the attacker quickly in a large and often chaotic environment. This is where situational intelligence is critical, delivering real-time, potentially life-saving information such as:
- The Location of the shooter(s)
- How are they armed
- A physical description, including what they are wearing
- If they are alone or working with other gunmen
- A description of the environment where they are operating
How Organizations Can Gain Situational Intelligence
Advanced solutions such as Omnilert's Gun Detection System are designed with situational intelligence in mind. Omnilert Gun Detect utilizes Artificial Intelligence to identify a firearm the instant it is brandished, providing a crucial layer of protection within an organization’s overall security infrastructure. Omnilert integrates seamlessly into nearly any existing IP-based security camera system, and once a threat is verified, it can immediately activate a comprehensive response. This includes dispatching law enforcement, locking doors, sounding alarms, and sending real-time alerts to notify those in harm’s way. All of this occurs in seconds, giving your organization the opportunity to save lives.
Recognized under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s SAFETY Act, Omnilert Gun Detect is designated as a technology that can be used to respond to and prevent acts of terrorism. Gun Detect is not just reducing the operational, legal, and social costs of gun violence; it’s saving lives.
Case Studies: How Situational Intelligence Could Have Helped in Prior Shootings
Covenant School in Tennessee
A fast response providing real-time, actionable intelligence can potentially change outcomes in a moment of gun violence. Six people, including three 9-year-olds, tragically lost their lives in the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. A summary of the timeline reveals several facts:
- 10:11 a.m.: The shooter, Audrey Hale, entered the school by shooting through glass doors.
- 10:13 a.m.: The first 911 call was received, reporting an active shooter inside the school.
- 10:21 a.m.: First responding officers arrived on campus.
- 10:23 a.m.: Officers entered the school building.
As this news report highlights, once officers entered the building, 12 minutes after the first shots were fired, this is how the response occurred:
- Officers searched classrooms on the first floor
- Officers searched an office on the first floor
- Officers ran up a stairway looking for the shooter
- Officers traveled down two long stairways
- At 10:25 a.m., Officers engaged and fatally shot the suspect.
These officers followed protocol and, after a thorough search, they were able to locate the shooter and stop them from hurting anyone else. However, it took a significant amount of time until they were finally found, confronted, and the rampage came to an end.
Now let’s look at this sample timeline of events, and see what could have happened if the sort of situational intelligence provided by an early detection system was available to incoming first responders:
- Law enforcement arriving at the scene has already received alerts from dispatch, including the most recently known location of the shooter.
- Key details such as a suspect description, number of shooters, and information about the firearms involved have been relayed to responding officers.
- There is no urgent need to clear the lower floors. The suspect’s location is already known.
- Officers are able to proceed immediately to where the shooter is, drastically reducing response time.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
In many active shooter incidents at K-12 schools and college campuses, students and staff have often had to shelter in place for hours while law enforcement worked to locate threats. This was the case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023, when the campus remained on lockdown for 90 minutes before first responders apprehended an active shooter.
Specific details of the event can be found in this previous blog. Having the advantages of real-time information during an event allows for numerous advantages. Public safety officers and police are provided with immediate and ongoing intelligence, such as still images and video, to support their search. A shooter would be quickly identified, the current location transmitted to stakeholders, and informed decisions could be made quickly. Strategies, such as how to quickly evacuate students and staff, could be executed quickly. The fear among those waiting is one of the lasting traumas of active shooter incidents, and enhanced situational intelligence can play a role in minimizing the confusion of an unknown threat.
Why Every Second Counts
As you can see from the above case studies, every second counts during an active shooter incident. According to the FBI’s 2014 study of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013, the majority of active shooter events are over in 5 minutes or less. By leveraging solutions that can provide detailed and timely situational awareness and actionable intelligence, first responders gain immediate insight, knowing exactly where to go, who to look for, and what type of threat they face. This ensures a faster, more effective response.
Detailed situational intelligence provides additional benefits beyond simple threat identification:
- Improved clarity: Entering a facility without knowing the shooter’s location can cause hesitation and delays. Unfortunately, we saw this play out tragically in the Uvalde school shooting. Officers were on the scene within minutes, but were not able to enter the building for over an hour. This tragedy highlights the delays that uncertainty and a lack of accurate information can cause.
- Faster, targeted evacuation: Knowing where the shooter is located allows responders to better coordinate safety efforts. Groups trapped inside a building can be safely evacuated without the risk that they will encounter the shooter. For example, if a threat is located in the West wing, individuals in the East Wing can be directed to designated hallways and staircases to evacuate safely.
- Real-Time information: The shooter’s movement can be communicated, tracked, and better predicted, allowing first responders to plan a more effective response. As the shooter moves, tactics can be altered quickly, and response efforts can effectively adjust.
Post-Event Advantages of Actionable Insights
Being prepared is essential for any active shooter situation, and learning from past events can be equally as important, especially when the goal is effective training and revising response plans. Solutions that provide important situational intelligence, like Omnilert Gun Detect, shine a spotlight on the important moments in the already captured video footage. They prevent the need for hours or days of review, and instead allow for a laser focus on the important moments. For example, if you're a campus with 1000 cameras, and the shooting took place over a 30-minute period, that’s effectively 50 hours of forensic materials that need to be reviewed by hand in order to put together a post-event analysis and debrief. An enhanced situational awareness allows for a faster response to an incident, and a more complete narrative of what happened, eliminating missed guns due to human error. Post-event response and training can be undertaken with a more complete picture.
As an example, a post-incident review might reveal that the gunman was able to gain entry to multiple areas of a building through one specific, unsecured hallway. The security team may decide to install remote door locks in these locations, which can be immediately activated in the event of a crisis. If an active shooter event were to occur in the future, the doors could be locked down the instant a shooter is identified, preventing entry to highly populated areas.
Key Takeaways
- 503 mass shootings in the U.S. and 330 incidents involving gunfire on school grounds alone highlight the ongoing need to provide layers of protection, including technologies such as visual AI gun detection
- Tools that provide situational intelligence, like Omnilert's gun detection, are critical. They provide life-saving information to both on-site security teams and first responders, including details on where to go, who to look for, and the type of threat they face.
- Stakeholders can leverage the situational intelligence provided by video feeds and images post-event to reinforce best practices or adopt new strategies to mitigate gun violence, such as access control, increased security at key areas, bulletproof glass, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: What is situational intelligence?
Situational intelligence is the ability to collect, review, and act on information about an unfolding event in real-time, in order to make quick, informed decisions. The situational intelligence provided by Omnilert Gun Detect can deliver key life-saving information to first responders, such as:
- The Location of the shooter(s)
- How are they armed
- A physical description, including what they are wearing
- If they are alone or working with other gunmen
- A description of the environment where they are operating
Q: What sort of solutions provide a high level of situational intelligence?
Advanced solutions such as Omnilert's AI Gun Detection are designed with situational intelligence in mind. Omnilert Gun Detect utilizes Artificial Intelligence to identify a firearm the instant it is brandished, providing a crucial layer of protection within an organization’s overall security infrastructure. Omnilert integrates seamlessly into nearly any existing IP-based security camera system, and once a threat is verified, it can immediately activate a comprehensive response. This includes dispatching law enforcement, locking doors, sounding alarms, and sending real-time alerts to notify those in harm’s way.
Q: Can this situational intelligence help after an event?
Yes. By reviewing information after an event, first responders and staff can gain valuable insights to help them be better prepared in the event of another active shooter incident in their facility.
Q: Are solutions like these necessary in the U.S.? I live in a safe neighborhood… That sort of thing can’t happen here.
With more than 503 mass shootings, over 16,000 deaths, and more than 30,000 injuries from firearms in the US in 2024, it is clear that we need to be prepared to respond to this type of crisis, no matter where you reside. Organizations need to adopt a layered approach to security. This may include visual AI gun detection, metal detectors, onsite school resource officers, access control systems, or bulletproof glass. While no one technology on its own is effective at stopping gun violence, a comprehensive security infrastructure means adopting many different technologies, procedures, and strategies.
Q: Will situational intelligence work with my camera?
Yes, Omnilert Gun Detect works seamlessly with your existing security cameras and video management systems (VMS). As long as your cameras are IP-based and support RTSP streaming, they can be used with Gun Detect—no need to replace or upgrade your hardware. This ensures that deployment is quick and flexible, and allows you to enhance your current infrastructure without a major overhaul.