JESSICA VALENTI
Active Shooter Drills Will Not Save Our Kids
With the new school year, we’re once again traumatizing a generation of children with a lesson that won’t work
My nine-year-old daughter will start fourth grade in a few weeks — another year of reading, playing, and, a few times over the course of the year, quietly huddling in the corner of a classroom pretending to hide from a mass shooter.
Her first active shooter drill occurred when she was two years old, in the weeks after the murder of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Her daycare installed security code–controlled locks on the doors and instructed teachers to play “quiet time” with the toddlers.
My daughter was too young at the time for it to affect her, but I was distraught — not just because of what it meant to live in a country where babies have lockdown drills, but because I knew it would do little to help in the case of an actual mass shooter.
There is no amount of running or hiding behind desks that will protect children from weapons like the ones mass shooters often use. The gunman in Dayton, Ohio, for example, was able to shoot 27 people and kill nine in just over 30 seconds. The rifle he used was modified to hold a 100-drum magazine and was…
