As school shooting proliferated across the United States, there was one obvious solution. It wasn’t restricting the access to military-grade weaponry capable of shooting dozens of children in the space of a few minutes so that people so mentally imbalanced as to carry out slaughter had a slightly harder time laying their hands on such a weapon. Of course not. The solution was to train schoolchildren to live in a state of constant high alert, always aware that they weren’t entering a place of learning, but a battlefield where they could expect to face monsters.
To address the issue of school shootings, millions of American children are regularly run through drills in which they’re made to visualize having their lives in extreme danger and are deliberately terrorized. Over the years, those drills have definitely not gotten any better, as students are exposed to simulated gunfire, blood in the hallways, and watching the “bodies” of their fellow students carried from the school. Classrooms have been invaded by “shooters” who fire pellet guns as students cower under desks and teachers are made to feign being killed. Some students are even called on to be the corpses that others have to step over to escape.
In February, the NEA made it clear that it wasn’t just school shootings that were traumatizing students, it was active shooter drills. While there is little to suggest that the drills can help to protect students, there is considerable evidence that they’re causing widespread harm. That analysis led to calls to ban active shooter drills, with teachers across the country demanding an end to the lasting trauma generated by these useless drills. But there’s a reason why they haven’t stopped. In fact, there are $2.7 billion reasons.
As the Miami Herald reports, active shooter drills aren’t just something that’s happening spontaneously, they’re an industry. For-profit companies approach both schools and local law enforcement, setting up scenarios that are increasingly “realistic” in their depiction of carnage and fear. However, as a new report from Everytown for Gun Safety makes clear, these drills have a price tag that goes way beyond the billions these massacre simulation companies are raking in.
Active shooter drills are mandated by law in 40 states, but even where they’re not required, they’re common, in part because school boards local law enforcement are easily swayed to take part out of the pretense that this “improves school safety.” The report estimates that over 95% of American schools have implemented active shooter drills … right down to Kindergartens. School shootings are far too common, but they’re still a rare event. Active shooter drills are not. And they’re terrorizing millions of students across the country every year to no good end.
Both the NEA and Everytown emphasize the need for proactive school planning in the case of an actual shooting. Their set of recommendations is focused on informing teachers on the warnings signs of violence, providing teachers with a way to assets threats, and keeping guns out of schools in the first place (including by not following through on ridiculous schemes to arm teachers).
However, active shooter drills filled with simulated violence and very genuine fear are not part of that plan. Because analysis shows that these drills are generating a sense among students that it’s not a matter of “if” someone will come to their school and try to kill them, but only “when.” For high school students, the level of anxiety can be extreme. Younger students can feel that the entire school experience is pointless, as they genuinely never expect to live long enough to graduate. Students of all ages experience stress, hopelessness, depresion, and the same lingering anxiety as people who are involved in an actual shooting.
Analysis from Georgia Tech even shows that active shooter drills have a lasting physical impact. In the months following a drill, social media posts from students were more likely to indicate that they were sick, worried about their health, or taking medication. “The analysis revealed words like blood, pain, clinics, and pills came up with jarring frequency, suggesting that drills may have a direct impact on participants’ physical health or, at the very least, made it a persistent topic of concern.”
Children are definitely suffering, not just from real shootings, but from the play-acting that represents America’s refusal to take real action by limiting access to weapons of mass murder.