A rise in active shooter incidents and the escalating impact of hostile events has prompted the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) to process NFPA 3000, Standard for Preparedness and Response to Active Shooter and/or Hostile Events as a provisional standard, which means it would be available for use as early as April, 2018. As part of the standards process, NFPA 3000 is now open for input until February 23, 2018.
This marks only the second time in NFPA’s 121-year history that provisional standard status has been authorized by the NFPA Standards Council.
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Provisional standards are developed when there is a serious life safety concern that warrants an abbreviated standards development process. The typical standards cadence is condensed so that a standard can be issued in a shorter time period in the interest of the public; and in this case, first responder safety. The tragic trend of hostile events in the United States prompted the NFPA’s Standards Council to authorize processing of the provisional standard.
Although this standard will benefit authorities around the world, mass killings are largely a United States phenomenon accordingly to a recent CNN article. With just five percent of the world's population, the U.S. holds the unfortunate title to 31 percent of all public mass shootings. Over the course of nearly 17 months from June of 2016 until early November 2017, a trio of domestic perpetrators inflicted nearly half the casualties that the nation witnessed during the course of a thirteen year period from 2000 through 2013. A shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida left 49 dead and 58 wounded on June 12, 2016; a massacre in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 1, 2017 killed 58 and wounded 441; and less than 35 days later on November 5th, a gunman