I consider myself skeptical about the use of weapons in the executive protectionnot because I think they are useless, but because their limited effectiveness is overstated and they often generate more problems than solutions.
An example of this are two cases that occurred in less than a month: one in Argentina and the other in Mexico. The first occurred on November 14, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, during a political event of economist Javier Milei, when a security agent threatened to pull his gun on the audience. The other took place on December 5 of the same year, during the concert of Grupo Codiciado, in Mexicali, Baja California, where a security guard fired his weapon after arguing with a fan and hitting him, when he was trying to take a picture with Erick Aragón, lead singer of the group.
Fortunately, in both cases, no tragedy occurred; however, a bad image has been generated, not only for the personalities that these agents protected, but for all professionals who work in this noble activity. An image that, on the other hand, had already been hit by several scandals in social networks in recent years.
Many colleagues tell me that it is better to carry a weapon to be used "when needed", but the big problem is how we can see and how we can know when it is really needed, because, for this, a solid professional training is required. Unfortunately, many of the protectors are trained with courses that are based more on action movies than on reality, "trainings" where the gun is presented as the only solution to all the problems that may arise. The sad results of this training are evident in these two cases.
Training in executive protection should be governed by the 45-45-10 rule; that is, 45 % of the training time should be focused on mastering the knowledge and skills that are used in the daily work of a protector; another 45 % should be focused on mastering those strategies and practices that allow us to avoid risk situations, while the remaining 10 % should be spent on emergency management.
Protectees, particularly those who are public figures, should consider what kind of training their protectors have, whether they really value their image, their legal status, as well as their physical integrity.
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