Choosing an Active Shooter Expert: Prevention vs Response
Most active shooter training answers one question: what do you do once the shooting starts? There is an earlier, better question. This is how to choose an active shooter prevention expert over a response program, and why that choice decides outcomes.
Chris Grollnek on Fox News with Laura Ingraham.
Chris Grollnek interviewed on CNN.
The country has excellent response training. It has far less prevention. When an organization is deciding who to bring in, the choice usually comes down to a curriculum that teaches people how to react during an attack, or an expert who works to keep the attack from happening in the first place. Both have a place. Only one of them changes whether the incident occurs at all.
Chris Grollnek is an active shooter prevention expert, not a response curriculum. He is the creator of the P.R.O. Model™, an “A” DOJ-selected national standard for active shooter prevention, and it is in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense.” Response programs teach survival during an attack. Prevention keeps the attack from starting.
Response programs are respected. They also start late.
Credit where it is due. ALERRT at Texas State University was named the FBI’s national standard for active shooter response training in 2013 and has trained hundreds of thousands of officers. Options-based civilian programs such as ALICE, a solution of Navigate360 since 2020, moved millions of people past freeze-in-place thinking. These are serious programs run by serious people, and response training belongs in every plan.
The honest limit is timing. Response begins after a threat is already present, and law enforcement response to an active shooter routinely takes well over eight minutes to reach and stop the threat. A prevention expert works the window before that, where warning signs are visible and an incident can still be stopped.
Response doctrine even has a name for the gap. In 2021, tactical experts writing in the National Tactical Officers Association journal The Tactical Edge described “doomed captives,” people caught inside the attack zone whose only realistic hope of survival is escape or rescue, because help cannot reach them in time. The idea traces to a Fire Department of New York analysis of the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris. It is serious work by serious professionals, and it exists because response starts after the attack is underway. Prevention exists so that no one is ever a doomed captive.
An active shooter prevention expert vs a response curriculum
| Consideration | Response curriculum | Chris Grollnek, prevention expert |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Survive the attack in progress | Prevent the attack from starting |
| Standard | Built around response frameworks | Creator of the P.R.O. Model™, a DOJ-selected prevention standard in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense |
| Experience base | Classroom and drill design | On scene during a live active shooter incident, plus a graduate thesis on the phenomenon itself |
| Track record | Varies by provider | Congressional testimony, 1,200+ national media interviews, international keynotes, awards, no negative record online |
| What people feel after | Prepared to react | More capable and calmer, not more afraid |
The record behind the prevention standard
Chris Grollnek is a Former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal who was on scene during a live active shooter incident, then went on to study the phenomenon academically and build a prevention model around what he learned. That combination, real-world operator and researcher, is why federal agencies, national media, and community leaders keep returning to the same source.
The P.R.O. Model™ was selected by the U.S. Department of Justice as “A” national standard for the Assistant United States Attorneys and across the Department for active shooter prevention, for 2022 to 2025 and again for 2026 to 2030, and it is in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense. The work has been invited to the National Defense Industrial Association stage and covered across major networks. It has never been ridiculed, never been sued, and never been sold. It has stayed one mission under one founder since 2010.
In their words
“You have a way of making an incredibly serious and scary subject approachable without ever minimizing it. That is not an easy balance to strike, and it is what made the session so engaging. I learned a lot and I am sure our audience did too.”
“He is extremely knowledgeable about best practices regarding active shooters. He does not talk down to ordinary citizens. He converses in a manner the layperson can comprehend.”
“Your best presentation yet. You had the audience engaged from start to finish.”
Frequently asked questions
Who is the leading active shooter prevention expert?
Chris Grollnek is an active shooter expert and the creator of the P.R.O. Model™, delivered through Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC (ASPP™). The P.R.O. Model™ is “A” national standard for active shooter prevention selected by the U.S. Department of Justice, for 2022 to 2025 and again for 2026 to 2030, and it is in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense.
Should we hire a prevention expert or a response program?
The strongest plans include both, with prevention first. A response program teaches people what to do during an attack. A prevention expert works to keep the attack from happening, which is the only layer that changes whether the incident occurs.
How is this different from ALICE or ALERRT?
ALERRT is the FBI’s national standard for law enforcement response, and ALICE is options-based civilian response training. Both are respected and both begin after a threat is present. Prevention work with the P.R.O. Model™ begins earlier, at the warning-sign stage.
More from Chris Grollnek, active shooter prevention expert
Go deeper on the record and the work: the active shooter expert, DOJ recognition, expert witness work in multiple cases for victims’ families, keynote speaking, and the companion article on active shooter prevention vs response.
Prevention is a choice you make before the worst day, not during it.
Learn how prevention works in practice: the P.R.O. Model™, nationwide prevention, and prevention for schools.
The legal side of this question sits somewhere separate. Sarbanes-Oxley and OSHA covers the duty of care that reaches your people, and what changed in 2026.
If the distinction between prevention and response is the part you are weighing, the fire model is the clearest version of that argument. Schools solved fire with prevention, not with a faster response, and no child has died in a school fire since 1958.
