Nathan Eberhardt was in a “classroom” when he heard gunshots down the hall.
As screams pierced the air, he drew his gun and ordered his “students” to take cover. He took his mark and was determined that any threat who came through the door to get to the children would have to go through him first.
It felt real. But it was actually a training scenario meant to prepare Mr. Eberhardt, a special education teacher, and others how to react to an active-shooter incident in a school, church, business, or in any crowd.
Able Shepherd participants practice as if in an active shooter situation during a "Defend The Flock" training session. (Courtesy of Able Shepherd)
Providing that training is Able Shepherd, an emergency readiness training company in Denver. Company instructors prepare teachers, first responders, church staffers, and more at the campus and take the program around the country, from Washington to Florida.
At least one Colorado group and other proponents of tighter gun restrictions don’t think that’s a good idea. They say more guns don’t make places safer.
But statistics show the need for the kind of training that Able Shepherd provides, founder Jimmy Graham told The Epoch Times.
Uptick in Mass Shootings
From 2000 through 2022, there were 484 active shooter incidents in the United States, according to the FBI. Of those, 151 occurred in the past three years.
The FBI defines “active shooting” as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” with one or multiple firearms.
The term “active,” according to the FBI, implies the situation is ongoing and that there’s “the potential for the response to affect the outcome.”
Of those, 49 shootings occurred at schools for children from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Another 21 happened in higher-learning institutions and at school board meetings, as well as one occurring on a school bus.
Active shooters at locations of education alone recorded 200 deaths in the span of those 23 years.
There were also 18 shootings at houses of worship.
The United States is haunted now by the memory of mass killings at schools, churches, and other gatherings. That’s why Able Shepherd and similar companies say it’s time to update security protocols and train people to stand up and take care of each other.
That’s exactly what Mr. Graham aims to do.
Able Shepherd founder Jimmy Graham. (Courtesy of Able Shepherd)
He and his team feel that they’re fighting against the growing spread of the opinion that a traditional, protective, and strong man is a symbol of “toxic masculinity.”
Mr. Graham was part of the U.S. Navy SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air, and Land teams, a special operations force of the Naval Special Warfare Command, and is a former CIA agent.
He’s also a husband and father who’s determined to protect his family and help others do the same, he said.
“At some point, we’ve got to get back to the truth, start doing what’s effective, and boldly do it,” Mr. Graham said.
‘Just Do It’
Over the past few years, there’s been a growing push in Colorado and across the country to fight the rise in shootings with more gun-restrictive laws.
Colorado Ceasefire Legislative Action is one of those groups that insist that “where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.”
The group describes itself as “the longest-service statewide, grassroots, gun-violence prevention organization in the State of Colorado.”
It has worked to help the Colorado Legislature enact gun-related laws and openly stands against allowing teachers to carry guns in public schools.
“Gun rights proponents claim that gun-free zones, such as schools, are magnets for mass killers. But there is no evidence that mass killers select locations based on gun policy, or that armed citizens have been able to stop the attack,” the organization asserted in a 2017 argument that seeks to answer the question, “Do guns make us safer?”
However, FBI records confirm that armed citizens have, indeed, stopped some shooters, and the number of citizens springing into action to stop the killing is growing.
Of the 484 mass shootings, the shooters in 12 incidents were stopped when they were killed by citizens. Of the instances when citizens killed the shooter, eight were since 2019.
Unarmed citizens stopped shooters in other ways in 20 of the 70 attacks in locations related to education.
Five of the shooters who attacked places of worship from 2000 through 2022 were stopped by civilians, FBI reports show.
In 2020, a shooter firing on people in traffic was stopped when an active-duty soldier hit him with his car. No one else was hurt, according to FBI records.
In 2022, 16 percent of active shooter incidents werestopped by civilians.
An emblem on the FBI building in Washington on June 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
“This is ridiculous right now,” Mr. Graham said.
People need to be ready to get involved and take action against danger when necessary, he said.
“Quit asking permission and just do it,” Mr. Graham said. “That’s the nation you live in. People died for that.”
An Opposing View
Tom Mauser has served as a board member of Colorado Ceasefire Legislative Action for more than 22 years, serving part of the time as board president. He began his fight to end gun violence as a paid lobbyist for SAFE Colorado in 2000, a year after he lost his son in the Columbine school shooting.
He and others affiliated with the organization believe guns used to stop an active-shooter scenario should only be in the hands of trained law enforcement officers. Other armed individuals only complicate and escalate the situation, he said.
Civilians with guns could endanger the innocent and make it more difficult for them to escape, “because there’s gunfire coming from a number of different directions,” Mr. Mauser told The Epoch Times.
“I think I understand how somebody wants to play hero and save [people] in a particular tragic situation,” he said. “But there’s a lot of other things that can happen.”
Mr. Mauser and the organization aren’t “anti-gun,” just “anti-gun violence,” he said. In fact, he supports having better-funded, better-staffed law-enforcement agencies that could relieve people of feeling like they need to take action in dangerous situations.
Tom Mauser and his son Dan before Dan was killed in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. (Courtesy of Tom Mauser)
CIA-Style Tactical Training
Mr. Graham has concerns about police training, too.
It’s often subpar, he said. And he agrees that it’s a bad idea to fill schools and other public places with minimally trained individuals carrying guns.
Mr. Graham spent 11 years adapting what he learned and taught while with the SEALs and the CIA. The result is a training program that’s more in-depth than what police officers receive, he said.
He hopes that it'll create a general population that’s more prepared than ever to defend loved ones from harm and keep workplaces safer.
Mr. Graham founded Able Shepherd in 2012 after serving as a lead instructor for an elite federal protection detail. Those agents were trained to defend U.S. diplomats in “high-risk” cities such as Kabul, Beirut, and Benghazi.
After that, he began to notice a need to update training standards for those tasked with keeping people safe in the United States.
“For some reason, lessons learned by the CIA and SEAL teams aren’t shared with police officers,” Mr. Graham said. “But they should be, because they are protecting our children at home.”
He started asking questions, and what he found was that officers’ ability to effectively respond to threatening situations was an “absolute failure.”
Upon entering schools and churches, Mr. Graham found himselfimmediately looking for exit strategies to keep his family safe, he said. He also discovered that the people in charge couldn’t answer his question: “What are you guys doing to protect my kids?”
He’s talked with police officers in Spokane, Washington, and Uvalde, Texas, he said.
And after studying the state of police forces across the country, Mr. Graham has realized that there’s a system-wide problem in many officers’ capabilities. It’s a lack of training, he said.
“Now the truth comes out that they don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. “And it’s on us [as American taxpayers], too. We can’t just blame them. We never gave them the tools to be successful.”
This image shows bodycam footage of police responding to a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., on March 27, 2023. (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department via AP)
His training goes beyond what’s taught in police academies, Mr. Graham said. It prioritizes the protection of others over the goal of eliminating the threat—the shooter. Its simulations are as realistic as possible and performed “under stress.”
That makes the training more effective, according to Mr.Eberhardt, who’s been through the program.
“I feel like with the other [police]training that I’ve had, it’s always kind of without stress, like if you’re going through a shoot house or something like that, they put up paper targets as bad guys,” he said.
That method doesn’t feel real, Mr. Eberhardt said, like “here’s your bad guy; kill them and go on your way.”
But the Able Shepherd program left him feeling prepared for a real emergency, he said.
“They use real people, real players who scream and yell and cuss and charge you,” Mr. Eberhardt said. “And so it just gets your heart rate up. And that’s when you really see how you’re going to react, and I think that’s the biggest piece that Able Shepherd offers that not a lot of other places do.”
‘No Place to Hide’
Mr. Graham adopted and trademarked the acronym D.E.F.E.N.D. for his training modules. It stands for steps to follow in an active shooter situation: Defense (fight the threat), Evacuate, Fortify, Emergency medical aid, Notify others, and Dial 911. The order of these steps is determined by the severity of each situation.
Learning to execute them properly is intense.
“We have scenarios where I’m gonna hand you a real gun with real bullets, and you’re gonna go shoot a real person,” Mr. Graham said.
The “bullet” used is actually what’s known as a “simunition” training round used by the CIA. It’s a special paintball the size of a normal round of ammunition, and Able Shepherd has a special license to use them.
They don’t kill. They do sting.
Able Shepherd participants during a "Defend The Flock" training session. (Courtesy of Able Shepherd)
“You’re engaging real people, and there is no place to hide,” Mr. Graham said of the simulated emergencies he stages. “You have to go in.”
He teaches participants how to stay calm and efficient as the heart pounds, gunshots ring out, and people run past with their hands up.
Participants progress through classes at their own pace and only advance after they pass an exam. They master ever-increasing pistol and rifle skills, from proper posture while shooting to entering a room strategically in an active-shooter scenario.
Most of the live-fire training is done onsite at Able Shepherd’s facilities in Centennial, Colorado. But the organization also offers a five-day intensive course for out-of-state clients at a starting cost of $3,500 per person.
Those who become “Able Shepherd Certified” are required to retake a certification test every six months to retain their status.
But it’s not all about gun skills.
Able Shepherd also requires advanced students to understand how to control the bleeding of a victim in an emergency and how to effectively execute an evacuation and lockdown.
“Let’s say you’re in a library and you hear shots,” Mr. Eberhardt said.
He learned to use the “Link on me!” command, telling anyone he needs to protect, such as a family member or student, to grab his belt or put a hand on his shoulder and stay behind, so they can move as one. That way, he can keep himself between that person and the threat.
In cases where people he’s with can’t move, such as in a classroom full of children with special needs, he learned to leave them in a safe place and make a trained decision to encounter the threat on his own.
“When you hear bang, bang, bang in the hall, and you know that that is an absolute threat, don’t wait for the threat to come to you,” Mr. Eberhardt said, repeating his Able Shepherd training. “It’s time to go deal with it.
“They teach you how to get through doorways, how to move through corners, and there’s a bad guy on the other side that has to be dealt with. There’s no perfect way to get to him. But you need to. You’ve got to get to him.
“You’ve got to deal with it. Because it’s coming.”
Now, he feels confident that he knows the best strategies to give himself and those around him the best chance of escaping unharmed.
Protect Our People
Like all other Able Shepherd participants, Mr. Eberhardt first had to pass a four-hour prerequisite class before beginning the three-phase training. The $200 course is called “P.O.P.” which stands for Protect Our People.
It wasn’t hisfirst time learning to protect others.
Mr. Eberhardt joined the U.S. Army right after high school. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and became a police officer in Southern Illinois.
From there, he moved to Colorado, where he reenlisted in the Army National Guard. And he worked in security at a school district where he now teaches.
“All the other training I’ve ever had was all about how to end the threat, which means basically to kill the bad guy,” Mr. Eberhardt said.
At Able Shepherd, the goal was defined differently from the start, he said.
“This was the first place where I showed up where it was ‘OK, well, we can talk about ending the threat, but it doesn’t do a lot of good if you kill the bad guy, but your family members are dead.’ That was the first time I’ve experienced that.”
For him, that resonated.
What happens if “you’re with your family in a store, and something bad happens? Are you just going to leave your family and go take off [after the bad guy]?” Mr. Eberhardt said. “No. For me, my priority is my family.”
Nathan Eberhardt, an Able Shepherd participant. (Courtesy of Nathan Eberhardt)
After his previous law enforcement training, that change of thinking required a dose of humility and a need to reprogram his way of thinking, he said.
In one of the first training scenarios, Mr. Eberhardt was given a simulation pistol—loaded with paintballs—and was told to stand on a mark. Then, a “bad guy” blasted through the doorway at him. His previous training kicked in with “tragic” results.
Instead of standing his ground, as he had been instructed by an Able Shepherd trainer, he jumped to the side and shot the “bad guy.”
That’s when Mr. Eberhardt saw a second body, an actor playing the role of someone important to him. That person also was on the ground “dead.”
The Able Shepherd program, he learned, “is about protecting those that I love.” It teaches this mantra: “In order to get to them, you got to go through me.”
“That was when I started learning to [say], ‘No, no, no! I’m gonna stay right here. And those that I am protecting are gonna stay behind me,’” Mr. Eberhardt said.
The second order was to keep his finger off the trigger.
That so-called trigger discipline is one of the most critical pieces of the training, according to Mr. Eberhardt.
“You’ve got usually one gunman going through and then people running around in a panic trying to do what they can to save their own lives,” he said.
During the high-stress training activity, Mr. Eberhardt realized the risk of shooting a “good guy” along with or instead of a bad guy.
“You learn to take that extra half a second and really check those hands and [ask], ‘Do they have a weapon or do they not?’” he said.
He learned to develop a “protector’s mindset,” risking his own body to save others.
‘Good Guy with a Gun’
But even with his advanced training—in the military, as a police officer, and through Able Shepherd—Mr. Eberhardt isn’t allowed to keep his pistol with him at school. No firearms are allowed on campuses in Colorado’s Cherry Creek School District.
Teachers and school officials aren’t necessarily “anti-firearms,” he said. And they’re understandably worried about school shootings.
Able Shepherd can help with that, Mr. Graham said. In addition to providing CIA-style training, he and his team help retrofit school buildings with features that will make it less likely that someone hoping to do harm will be successful.
But arming teachers is harder for some to accept, Mr. Eberhardt said.
“I don’t think they’ve wrapped their mind around [the idea that] the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said. “And that good guy doesn’t have to wear a badge or a uniform.”
Pedestrians pass a "gun-free zone" sign in New York on Oct. 13, 2022. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
He and Mr. Graham believe a so-called good guy with a gun should be able to earn trust through training.
But some remain unconvinced.
“We just don’t agree with that,” Mr. Mauser said. “I mean, who are ’the good guys’? We don’t wear labels on our heads that say, ‘This is a good guy.’
“So if a law enforcement officer shows up on the scene of an active shooting and sees somebody with a gun, even if it is a ‘good guy,’ you have no way of knowing that that’s the good guy versus the bad guy.
“A lot of people who have been active shooters may not have had a criminal record before that. They may have been a ‘good guy.’”
His group is concerned about citizens receiving tactical firearm training from people other than police.
“Who are they responsible to,” Mr. Mauser asked, referring to Able Shepherd participants. “Who was policing them? How far does this go in the development of this sort of paramilitary thing?”
His group objects to “having more guns out in the public.”
“If they want to play the role of ‘cop,’ I think they ought to consider becoming a police officer,” Mr. Mauser said.
Standing in Strength
The pushback from educators uncomfortable with his program is unrelenting, Mr. Graham said. And lawmakers considering an ever-increasing number of gun-control bills hear loud arguments from gun-control activists.
And as people move to his state from other places, such as California, the anti-gun arguments get louder, he said.
As a result, many people, including some of Mr. Graham’s friends, are leaving Colorado for states with stronger gun support, such as Florida. But he doesn’t want to move.
“I tell people to stand in strength because you’re going to run out of places to run,” he said. “If I was in Florida, I would say ’stay home' because I don’t want runners. I want people that would stand and fight for their state.
“You should stand in strength, not in weakness, not out of fear, because your kids are watching.”
Mr. Graham doesn’t want children to feel that it’s better to flee than defend what’s worth fighting to preserve, he said.
Some leaders of churches, private schools, and charter schools agree that it’s time to train for the worst and have hired Able Shepherd to prepare.
But Mr. Graham understands why it’s hard for some to accept that this kind of training is needed. It means accepting that the level of danger in churches, schools, and other public places has increased, he said.
“What would you expect from people that grew up in the land of milk and honey?” he asked. “This is a lap of luxury. America is a paradise of sorts, right? And now it’s changing and going back to a dangerous thing.”
Most people seem to “want someone to come take care of [them],” according to Mr. Graham. But that thinking is flawed.
“The job is yours to take care of your family,” he said. “It always has been.”
Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, T.J. Muscaro covers the Sunshine State, America's space industry, the theme park industry, and family-related issues.
