ISTANBUL, TURKEY — A coordinated attack involving a number of suicide bombers took place at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Thirty one people are confirmed dead and as many as sixty injured. In one harrowing video, a security guard is able to shoot one of the suicide bombers before he was able to detonate.
Another police officer allegedly dove onto another suicide bomber but was consumed in the blast.
The attack kicked off in the entranceway of the airport — well before the security screening area. It’s a harrowing reminder that Islamic State militants are able to perpetrate extreme attacks far from their base of operations in Syria and Iraq.
News agencies like NBC and Sky News can give you greater insight onto the event, but we wanted to discuss the security guard who was able to save countless lives by neutralizing the attacker with his gun.
The suicide bomber was still able to detonate but the quick reflexes of this security officer was able to neutralize him long enough to evacuate people from the area.
News reports disagree about precisely how many explosions took place, how many suicide bombers participated, and a number of other elements. It’s giving us a real understanding that these types of attacks — whether in a nightclub or an airport — do not reveal themselves easily.
Just because one suicide bomber was neutralized, there may be more. Just because one shooter is taken down doesn’t mean there aren’t more behind him or lying in wait.
If the events in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and countless of other places reveal anything is that the enemy will be unpredictable.
This directly applies to concealed carry practices here in the United States.
If you are so fortunate as to neutralize an attacker before he can do you harm, never assume he is acting alone.
A trend I remember from my days in Iraq was the use of follow-up attacks after a main attack. In any coordinated attack, you have the main elements that kick it off and then you sometimes have groups of men who show up to fight once the fight is believed to be over. Often times they can target emergency services, police officers, and even innocent civilians.
Any target that is a “target of opportunity” is a valid target. And we unfortunately live in a world where we are beginning to see that we can be targets of opportunity.
Our jobs, collectively, is to make those targets hardened.
There are good people out there in this world that will rise to the occasion when bad guys attack. And I guarantee there will be concealed carriers amongst them willing to answer that call.