Improvised Classroom Shelter in Active Shooter Situations

I thought that I blogged about this a few months back, but maybe not.

It turns out that 9mm pistol bullets ricochet off wood if hitting at angles of 11 to 20 degrees from the path of a 9mm bullet.  What I have told students to do in an active shooter situation is take the emergency exit and run zig-zag (harder to hit a target that is moving laterally), but if exit is not available, put tables or desks at a 70 degree angle to the entry door, preferably several, and hide behind them.  This won’t help against a rifle, but half of all mass murders are done with pistols, so better than nothing.

A reader pointed me to this experiment.  Straight line and zig-zag had similar number of hits but zig-zag hits were less often head or torso hits.  I wonder if the skill of the shooter, distance (20 feet) and knowledge that the target would be zig-zagging might be a factor?  I( think I will stick with z-g-zagging, or better, returning fire or fixing the state mental hospital system.