That 1981 attack illustrates a dozen best practices and operational realities. Ambushes occur most often in and around vehicles, people tend to hit the ground at the sound of gunfire, and the Secret Service relied on their training to stay focused and get the P off the X. (If you’ve ever had a handgun fired near you without ear protection, you know just how impressive this is.) Though Reagan’s detail was armed, the attacker was still neutralized the old-fashioned way.
“I know there’s a lot of gun talk in this industry,” Ghee told the class. “But 90 to 95 percent of the time you’re going unarmed.”
“Overseas?” Shaw added. “Forget about it.”
While many of these guys might prefer to be armed, as civilians traveling between jurisdictions with jet-setting clients, they can’t necessarily maintain all the relevant licenses, even where reciprocity between US states exists. When protection details do need armed agents, they typically outsource the risk by hiring them through local contractors. And even that’s no guarantee.
In 2020, Matt Dolloff, hired by Denver’s 9News through security giant Pinkerton, fatally shot a spray-can-wielding right-wing protester named Lee Keltner during an altercation between dueling demonstrations, a Patriot Muster and a Black Lives Matter–Antifa soup drive. Prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charges; however, local news reported that because Dolloff was not licensed to work as a security guard in Denver, the subcontractor that employed him, Isborn Security Services, agreed to surrender its operating license for five years. Pinkerton’s own license was also temporarily revoked by the city.
Shaw told his class they’d be hard-pressed to show him an incident where the protector had prevented an attack on a principal using a firearm.
In Just 2 Seconds, de Becker explains, “In most incidents we studied, it was the gunmen who decided when to stop shooting.”
In my own research, I came across three cases where a firearm may have preempted an incident. The first was when two Puerto Rican secessionists stormed Blair House, where President Truman was living while the White House was being renovated, on November 1, 1950. Before they could enter the building, one of the attackers, Griselio Torresola, was shot and killed, and the other, Oscar Collazo, was critically wounded. A White House police officer, Leslie Coffelt, died from three rounds to the abdomen. The second two incidents involve President Trump.
Fewer than six seconds into the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania, attack on the then candidate, Adams Township sergeant Aaron Zaliponi fired what’s come to be known as “the ninth shot,” which is believed to have struck the gunman’s rifle. The FBI has reported that there is no forensic evidence to support this belief, but the gunman never fired again, and, within seconds, a Secret Service countersniper had killed the attacker. In the third case, also in 2024, a Secret Service agent at the Trump International Golf Club noticed a rifle barrel poking through the foliage and fired several shots. The suspect fled before being apprehended.
Research from Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training suggests it’s nearly twice as common for bystanders without weapons to intervene, as was the case in the shooting of then congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. Patricia Maisch, one of several people who tried to intervene, was in line to take a picture with Giffords when she grabbed the magazine as the shooter went to reload. De Becker calls it “projective” interruption, a responsibility given to protectors on the perimeter. For protectors who spend the vast majority of their working hours unarmed, there comes a moment of realization that being a bodyguard is less about guarding a body and more about being one. Kendra Geronimo, a mixed martial artist and firearms instructor who works Icon details out of Miami, said, “I am a bodyguard. That means I have to literally put my body in harm’s way to protect you.”