Spirit Lake, IA (KICD)– Spirit Lake Community Schools hosted a seminar Monday giving community members an opportunity to think about how to properly prepare for an active shooter event.

While the overall hope is that nothing of the kind will ever happen, trainer and researcher Ed Monk says we have to face the uncomfortable fact that the world is not always as it should be which makes planning key to keeping casualties at a minimum.

In order to reduce numbers seen over the last forty years, those making active shooter response plans like schools, businesses and churches have to keep to big factors in mind: time and math.

Monk says one key mistake made in the response planning stage is not starting with an acceptable goal which he says in many cases is for political or religious regions.

Monk does discuss having armed staff on school campuses during his presentations as a way to quickly end a shooter situation noting how a policy is written including how people are armed varies from one institution to the next.

Of course, in any active shooter situation law enforcement should be contacted immediately, but Monk does caution that response times COULD be delayed just based on the number of the steps the response system has to go through before help can arrive.