There’s a Good Point About Active Shooter Drills We Need to Talk About

Since 1999, mass murders at our schools have become far too common. They’re an unfortunate part of American life and our kids grow up being told they need to fear these things.

Unsurprisingly, many internalize that fear, all despite the fact that if you look at it statistically, the odds of any student being in a school when something like that happens are still extraordinarily high. Fear, however, is rarely rational.

So, schools have active shooter drills to teach students and teachers what to do. People are then told not to talk about the drills so as to not give intel to the bad guys.

Makes sense, right?

Well, there’s a problem with that.

Teachers are told not to share information about the lockdown drills because it could give a potential shooter “intel” into the school’s systems and protocol, said Ms Hahn, who left the education sector in 2020.

“They already know what we’re doing – the ‘intel’ we have – because they’ve faced it themselves,” she said. “These kids [school shooters] have come up through the school system during the time that we’ve had these active shooter drills.

“There’s no hiding from that anymore, we need to address it.”

Bingo.

The killers know the drill. Literally. 

They know what teachers will do, even if they didn’t attend that school, because they’ve seen what the teachers do.

How bad are these drills? Well, you’re going to see me agree with Everytown about at least part of how they suck.

Everytown, a US gun violence prevention organisation, argues there is “almost no research affirming the value of these drills for preventing school shootings or protecting the school community when shootings do occur.

“Students, educators, and staff have experienced distress and sometimes lasting trauma as a result of active shooter drills.”

A former teacher, who wished to remain unnamed, said she “hated” doing the “awful” drills – and they were one of the reasons she left teaching.

“I can’t tell you how it broke my heart to help crying kindergarteners who were locked out of their classrooms to find a bathroom to lock themselves in until I came to tell them it was safe. It was brutal,” she said.

“They’d tell us to shake the doors as hard as possible and listen to see if kids reacted [or] screamed, so we could ‘coach’ them later on how to hide better.”

So we’re traumatizing kids, teaching the bad guys what the plan is for when they show up–which might be why the Parkland killer hit the fire alarm first since he went to that school–and accomplishing absolutely nothing positive.

Now, I’m partial to the belief that training is important, but training has to be productive. If training doesn’t work, then you need to change something, and yeah, would-be mass murderers are already getting the supposed intel that teachers are told to keep to themselves.

My son went through one of those drills when he was in high school. He wasn’t traumatized, but his teachers were apparently not idiotic enough to try and terrorize the kids for some sadistic reason. Not every teacher has that approach. Obviously.

Instead of what we’re seeing, training protocols need to evolve in such a way that students aren’t involved. In a situation like a mass shooting, people tend to take direction, so teachers knowing what to do will be sufficient, so leave the students out entirely. Involve law enforcement as needed, but adjust fire and quit making a mess of things.

You know you’re screwing it up when I agree with Everytown on something, folks.