Last week, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at improving active shooter drills in schools nationwide.
The order directs the secretary of the Department of Education and the secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the U.S. attorney general, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and the surgeon general, to publish recommendations for schools, lawmakers, students, and parents to improve active shooter drill protocol.
However, the Biden administration should discourage active shooter drills. Not attempt to reform them.
School shootings, though tragic, are exceedingly rare. From 2013 to May 2022, 77 K-12 students died in mass shootings, fewer than 10 per year, according to a report from Northeastern University. The United States has about 40,000 gun deaths annually, nearly all of which are not from school shootings. In a country with almost 50 million students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the odds that a child is a victim of a school shooting are low.
While schools should have safety protocols in place to prevent violence, including gun violence, active shooter drills are not the way to combat this problem.
Active shooter drills instill fear in children. These drills can include fake blood and firing blanks at students, which are far more likely to traumatize them than save their lives. The Biden administration’s executive order might discourage those practices in a few months, but pretending active shooters are in schools will still scare children.
A 2021 study from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that school active shooter drills led to a 42% increase in stress and anxiety, a 39% rise in depression, and a 23% increase in physical health problems for children as young as 5 years old, plus high school students, teachers, and parents.
This is why gun control groups, such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Sandy Hook Promise, agree with former President Donald Trump that active shooter drills are bad despite often disagreeing with him on Second Amendment matters.
Everytown for Gun Safety says it cannot recommend schools conduct active shooter drills.
“Students, educators, and staff have experienced distress and sometimes lasting trauma as a result of active shooter drills,” its website says. “Everytown does not recommend these drills for students and believes schools should carefully consider these impacts before conducting live drills that involve students.”
Sandy Hook Promise expresses a similar sentiment.
“Now, imagine there was someone running through the halls pretending to be a shooter,” its website says. “Imagine them carrying a fake weapon, pounding on your student’s classroom door, and taking aim at students and teachers in the hallways. Imagine your local school piping in the sound of gunfire, claiming it will help students prepare for the real thing. How can we expect students to walk away unscathed?”
Trump has also expressed worry about how these drills affect students.
“Active shooter drills is a very negative thing,” Trump said in 2018. “I don’t like it. I’d much rather have a hardened school … I think it’s crazy. I think it’s very hard on children.”
Our politicians should work hard to reduce the number of gun deaths, including school shooting deaths. However, they should pursue evidence-based policy rather than ineffective scare tactics. Schools can take security measures and try to improve students’ mental health in hopes of preventing these horrific tragedies.
Some possible safety and mental health measures include requiring a single entry point into schools, external door locks, fencing around schools, buzz-in doors, limiting student cellphone use, providing students with mental health days, and sharing students’ mental health problems with their parents.
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If we want to reduce gun violence, let’s secure schools and improve mental health, not worsen it. That means Biden should call active shooter drills malarkey instead of reforming and continuing the terrible practice.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.