The Case Against Active Shooter Drills

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, is
one of the country’s leading authorities on mass murder—and a
leading
voice of caution when Americans react in poorly considered ways
to statistically rare crimes. In an
op-ed for USA Today, he makes the case against the

sometimes gruesomely realistic lockdown drills that have taken
hold in many schools:

Drills to prepare students in
the event of fire or other natural catastrophes are commonplace.
Yet the aggressive nature of shooting drills staged in many schools
makes them qualitatively different and exceptionally more
traumatizing to children. The
psychological harm that may come from these simulations is not
warranted in light of the low probability that such an event will
actually occur….

Commercial airlines train their flight crews to handle disaster
situations—such as the unlikely “water
landing“—but passengers are only asked to watch a brief
demonstration of grabbing hold of oxygen masks, without having
actually to practice this maneuver. Cruise ships require that
guests don life jackets and learn the location of their muster stations, but
no one has to step foot inside a lifeboat or suffer the experience
of being lowered into the water. In case of a catastrophe in the
air or at sea, the passengers will be directed where to go and
advised what to do.

This same reasonable posture should apply for schools: prepare the
staff but spare the students. As with the usual pre-flight or
pre-cruise protocols, a few simple instructions on escape strategy
may be sensible. However, over-preparing students needlessly risks
intensifying their fears and anxiety.

And for those whose fear of school shootings overwhelms all
sense of proportion, Fox adds this:

Airlines and cruise lines don’t inspire dangerous ideas
by reciting emergency drills. By contrast, there are a few students
for whom the notion of wreaking havoc on their schoolmates may seem
like an exhilarating idea. Obsessing over the unlikely possibility
of a school shooting can unfortunately serve to inspire potential
copycats and inadvertently increase the chance of
tragedy.

As some schools add
fake blood and guns shooting blanks to their drills, there
comes a point where what schools are doing looks less like disaster
preparedness and more like a ritual reenactment. I’ll let the
anthropologists debate what sort of cultural need such security
LARPing might be fulfilling; it certainly goes well beyond what’s
needed for public safety.