It’s your best defense. When seconds count, help IS ONLY MINUTES AWAY.
They don’t want to negotiate with you. They don’t want you to understand their grievances. They don’t want you to blame your SUV on them. They are like the alien in Independence Day; they want you to die. Try not to let it happen.
Or another example:
“No, Mr. Bond, I don’t want you to talk, I want you to die.”
Or a Mal reference from Firefly.
“And don’t you stand for that sort of thing. If someone ever tries to kill you try to kill them right back.”
I work in a Federal office building. We have to take annual training on a lot of things, and the one that irks me the most is the “active shooter” training. It is as advertised: run, hide, fight. However, there is another training that we have to take, viz “prohibited items.” These include weapons, things that can be used as weapons, and anything resembling or depicting a weapon. Having any of these in a Federal office building is grounds for dismissal from federal service, permanently.
Now, in the “fight” part of the “active shooter” training, they encourage everyone to improvise a weapon. IMPROVISE a weapon, when nothing in the entire building is allowed to even resemble a weapon, and everyone is scared out of his or her freakin’ mind! If there were any way for a person to improvise a weapon of sufficient lethality to go up against anyone carrying a firearm under such panic conditions, why couldn’t anyone just calmly improvise such a weapon any other time, and go around killing people with it? No need for a gun, just make up this mythical improvised weapon, and go to town. (No examples are given, by the way, which means the training really sucks even more.)
In reality, “run, hide, fight” means “run, hide, give in and die, most likely.” I think is is a violation of human rights to deprive people in Federal office buildings of any means to defend themselves, while advertising to the world that anyone who will violate the law against murder will have no opposition in Federal facilities.