http://youtu.be/D6Ixfl3Z-GI

“There’s a stark difference between a lockdown drill and active shooter training,” Massachusetts educator Jennifer Leung asserts in a comment underneath the post School Lockdown Calculus: The Line Between Preparedness And Trauma at commonhealth.wbur.com. “Our school asks kids to practice by pretending a shooter is in the building. They have been taught to throw books or water bottles to defend themselves against semiautomatic gunfire. In training with the adults alone police admitted some kids will not survive the worst case scenario with this technique. Middle school children aren’t stupid. Many of them find these drills . . .

terrifying and disorienting. Some would choose not to participate if they had the right, but neither students nor teachers may opt out. They feel abandoned by the adults in this country who claim nothing can be done to protect them from angry, deranged attackers while at school. I have nightmares after every drill. It’s an abdication of responsibility and an empty promise to the children and families we serve that somehow this victim-practice is all we need to keep the bogeymen away.

Who said active shooter training is “all we need” to defend against terrorists and madmen bent on slaughtering our children? That’s exactly the kind of false dichotomy that salesmen use to move the metal. “Do you want to buy this new car or do you want to break down and be stranded in Roxbury some Saturday night?” “Do you want more gun control or do you want your children to die from a school shooter?”

As for the article’s contention that active shooter training can traumatize children, sure, it’s possible. (The author’s admission that “We also have almost no data that documents the effects of these drills on students” doesn’t convince me that this is a genuine issue.) The key to making the drills less potentially psychologically damaging: putting the threat and responses into context. Setting the exercise within the framework of a lesson on the importance of fighting to win.

Oh wait. Children aren’t supposed to fight. Hell, there are school districts where they’re not even supposed to “win.” Yeah, that’s a problem. [h/t SS]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

113 COMMENTS

  1. You want to talk “terrifying and disorienting?” When I was a kid we had to do nuclear attack drills where we took cover under our desks! Like that would have worked!

    Of course, teachers today know so much more about what kids need, which is why modern kids are so much smarter and farther ahead of kids in the rest of the world…NOT!

    • Yep.

      And those of us who were nerds and studied physics and engineering knew even then that the whole “duck and cover” drill nonsense was largely intellectual onanism.

      The irony of the situation is that the duck-n-cover BS led me to understand that MAD was an appropriate and justified national defense strategy.

      • But you have to admit that “Duck and Cover” was a catchy tune.

        There was a turtle by the name of Bert
        And Bert the turtle was very alert;
        When danger threatened him he never got hurt
        He knew just what to do…
        He’d duck! And cover!
        Duck! And cover!

      • Personally, I think what would be more effective would be a sign in BIG BOLD Letters that say “No Beheadings Allowed on Campus & We Mean Business!”
        That way, if an active beheader/Muslim saw the sign, they would say something like “Aw shucks, I better go somewhere else and kill people.

    • We actually went to an underground boiler bunker room as part of our drills. We had a lot of fall out shelters.

      • I remember the teacher mentioning we all might go to the boiler room where all the CD barrels and boxes were. I remember thinking that being stuck in the boiler room and to survive, growing up there would be hell. No thanks, I rather be outside waiting for the flash.

        • I always said that I was going to hang on the fence of Carswell AFB watching the B-52s scramble when the big one hit. “Mad Max: The Road Warrior” was a awesome movie, but I didn’t really relish the thought of being a post-nuclear holocaust survivor.

    • I can still hear those civil defense sirens in my head. With NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain near by, we would have been toast.

      • OMG! I thought I was the only one here OLD ENOUGH to remember those “duck & cover” drills, or that jingle!

      • Ah, yes… The sirens.

        Being a military brat in the 70’s, the “End Of The World” sirens were the norm.

        Once a week they got tested, if you heard ’em at any other time it meant one of two things.

        Tornado Warning, or inbound nuke. Southwest Oklahoma, Altus AFB. We heard those damn sirens far more often then we wanted.

  2. Sucks learning that the world is a violent place. I am sure that making the active shooter drills “go away, will also make the violence “go away.”

    The alternative is trying to live with your head in the sand, but remember what is left exposed.

    • They are children, all children of a certain age learn about violence and coercion when they meet their first bully.

      The really traumatic thing for these kids is that they come to the realization that a large number of adults are so fearful of things that their rational thought process breaks down. Kids grow up being told they shouldn’t have irrational fears, then they find the ones teaching them are some of the worst hypocrites.

    • But school shootings are vanishingly rare. It’s like teaching kids what to do if you are swimming in the ocean and your friend is attacked by a shark. It might be valuable knowledge in the (very rare) event of a shark attack, but for everyone else, it just scares them about swimming in the ocean, which is quite safe.

      Kids are way more likely to die in a car wreck on the way to school than in a school shooting. School admins need to just chill out.

      • Shootings are vanishingly rare.

        So are child abductions (particularly those not by the non-custodial parent). Yet no one walks to school any more and people feel entitled to leave their shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot because their kid might be snatched in the short time it takes to put the doggone cart away.

        • For what it’s worth, kids still walk to school. Park yourself outside most schools in Orlando when school lets out, and you’ll be amazed at the number of kids that hit the sidewalks.

    • Most of these “drills” are nothing but sadistic exercises for the adults that put them on. There is little or nothing involved that is relevant in the case of an actual attack. Much of that is because there is no actual defense possible against random attacks in so many cases, since the SWAT teams don’t get there in time and criminals don’t make an appointment or file a script they plan to follow. Armed and trained faculty, staff and parents would be a great improvement, of course. But these “drills” have nothing to do with that.

      The real problem is herding hundreds or thousands of little, defenseless people into small rooms – often with only one entrance. No matter how many adults are present, even if some of them are armed, you still have helpless fish in a barrel.

      Get the children OUT of tax theft government school and take personal responsibility to educate them yourself… one way or another.

  4. How much trouble would a student get in if they brought their own paintball marker/airsoft gun and took out the bad guy in one of these drills?

    • We had drills like this back when I was in high school. Not too long ago. I brought my own weapon for this. In my school’s physics classroom, there was some experimenting and testing apparatus. Among these, whose purpose I could never discern, were 3 foot long, 1 inch wide iron rods. When these drills occurred I would borrow one of these rods, and stand by the door of the classroom. My plan was to aim for arms. An active shooter isn’t much of a threat if his arms are too broken to hold a gun. Other students saw me doing this. After a while, others began borrowing those iron rods. Sure, it wasn’t ever going to be as effective as setting up barricades and sighting up the door with shotguns, but it was a hell of a lot better than trying to throw books.

  5. Oh, and do they teach them to whiz and puke on attackers once they’re out of shoes? For all the good it does, they might as well go back to bomb drills, or they could adapt the old tornado drill (“put your head between your knees and kiss your @$$ goodbye”) to where it’s done behind a locked door rather than in the open hallway.

    It’s just a poorly conditioned response meant to prevent a full-fledged outbreak of panic. Which has a modicum of value, but just that bit.

  6. You found a middle schooler that could use the word “abdication”? That alone is impressive.

    No Chris Hayes, I do not not have fond memories of fire drills as a kid, and I definitely didnt see them as kids being “called to action” while we were being ushered single file out of the building and told to STFU and stay together…

    Reality can be scary, isnt that kind of a life lesson you begin to learn in middle school?

    • Scary thought after I read your comments. Shooter going in and pulling the fire alarm (without attacking anybody). Waiting til all of the students have filed out and then opening fire while some of the teachers are inside searching the school. That sounds like a worst case scenario. That is scary.

    • Fire drills were fun because we went to the playground to sit and wait for the drill to be over. We got out of class for a while. We were able to play games and eat food. Basically we had a picnic instead studying.

  7. Practice being a victim…pretty much the narrative for what we as a nation have become. Practice dying, practice fear, practice herding into a corner, practice the skill set of dying. Practice the failure to protect, Practice the futile attempt to protect children with flesh of teachers & administrators, practice the failure of moving to sound of guns,
    Practice the lie of protecting students from criminally insane. Continue the daily failure of local, state, and federal governments to pass lawful self protection.

    It ends when a good guy with a gun, responds, shoots, and kills a bad guy with a gun.

  8. I had the best teacher in the world when it came to this. He was my 10th grade history teacher, and an ex-Abrams gunner.

    The day we had to do a school training lock-down, he explained it very clearly to us. He would be standing just to the side of the door, armed with whatever he could, likely the fire extinguisher mounted near there. He instructed the rest of the class that we should be crouched along the wall behind him, completely contradictory to what the school was saying to do, which was to lay on the ground under your desk. He would take the first swings at anyone that tried to force their way into the class, and if for any reason the attacker was to get inside the door, we were to mob rush the attacker, trample kick punch bite, anything at all, until they stopped moving on their own.

    He laid it out very simply and frankly to us. If the worst were to happen, we had the option of all being guaranteed to die, laying under our desks, or we could all attack and still have the possibility of being killed, but you at least give yourselves and your friends a chance to live.

  9. One of the problems in American education is how feminized the entire process has become.

    Men have understood from the start of time that there are some situations in which savage violence is not only justified, it is required.

    Paralytic intellectualization and emotional collapse in such situations are worse than useless. Yet, that’s what the educational bureaucracy and “deep thinkers” are offering.

    We’ve been seeing this end point coming for years. If I had to point to the early indication of where it started, I’d say it was when dodgeball was eliminated from gym classes.

  10. These drills would only happen in high end schools. Can you see it in a ghetto school?

    “Now class, who knows what to do if a bad man comes into school with a gun?…Yes, Johnny?”

    “Thas’ easy, teach. I’d cap his ass with my nine!”

    • These dramatized drills are conducted for only one reason, to have the kids contemplate, during the drill, the “horror of guns that nobody needs.” It’s a political game no different than that played in the late fifties and sixties, in that case to build support for big strategic-forces budgets. It worked. Don’t be surprised if this one works too, for the gun-grabber agenda. Of course, it won’t alleviate the problem of Adam Lanzas supervised by facilitator parents.

      As for the ghetto kids, they’re learning why they should keep their record clean: It’s so they can qualify for a carry permit down the road. Simple. And the ones who fail to keep to the straight and narrow? “Who needs a permit?”

      • It’s certainly convenient.

        Security theater doing double duty as brainwashing.

        “We’re all helpless in the face of a bad guy with a gun. The ONLY solution is to ban guns.”

      • When I was in middle school in the early 2000s, I know someone who carried a 4″ .44 mag to school every day for months after getting jumped by a gang(yes, gang. in nowhere-near-urban PA) of black kids two times, for no reason other than because his intramural flag football team beat theirs. I witnessed the first jumping from a distance. 12 homeboys chased him down after school. He was hit from behind, knocked down, and didn’t have a chance. It was gut wrenching. Our legs just couldn’t carry us fast enough. By the time we were able to reach him, they had fled, and we couldn’t catch up.

        Second time, I was not there, but it was 18 on 3 after a high school football game. My best friend was one of the 3. The homeboys had bike chains and brass knuckles. According to all who saw, my best friend did not even get taken to the ground, and even managed to take a few out of the fight. The other two were not so lucky. My friend still has scars and sinus damage to this day. This time, very angry parents got involved, and revenge came in short order. I’ll leave it at that.

        But back to the gun part. After the second incident, the one took his dad’s .44 and devised a way to essentially tie it to his back under his shirt with a leather belt and some sort of synthetic rope. Might have even been 550 cord. I only saw the rig once outside school, and I didn’t exactly have time to study it, but it was pretty cool. With his body type, you couldn’t tell it was there, even if you knew. Mind you, this was known to be one of the most badass dudes in school. The kind that you really DID need that many people to have any effect. But after twice getting stomped by a self-proclaimed gang(at least 90% of the blacks in the school were part of it), he was not eager for a third go-around. So he armed himself, and thank God he never had to use it.

        The point is that if someone can carry a gigantic handgun to school, in the relatively immediate post-Columbine era, every day for months and not get caught, that should tell you something about the effectiveness of these “countermeasures”.

  12. While I would like to believe that, perhaps, Jennifer is one of The People Of The Gun, my guess is that she isn’t and that her shock and dismay at active shooter training is over the fact that she’s finally confronting the danger she’s been happily denying for such a long time. So, now, the thinks the drills are “abdication of responsibility and an empty promise to the children and families we serve that somehow this victim-practice is all we need to keep the bogeymen away”. Indeed, Jennifer. Now you know what we’ve been saying to gun-controllers all along: the kids in your school are vulnerable and so are you. This is why some teachers, administrators, and staff in every school need to be armed and trained. As for kids being traumatized, think of this: would it be more traumatizing to have shooter drills when the kids know they’ll be protected by armed school personnel or to have drills where the kids are told to throw books and water bottles at someone who’s come to try and kill them?

  13. That guy has no idea what he is talking about. Active shooter training isn’t to scare the shooter away, it’s to prepare the kids for an event if it happens. The same way fire drills don’t scare the fire gods from setting someone’s lunch on fire in the microwave.

    • Prepare the kids if it ever happens? Seems more like a conciousness-raising exercise. Hopefully, the smarter kids among them will realize that their administrators and teachers have no plan with more than a prayer at being effective. Some might begin to think for themselves: ‘Let’s see, the bad guy has a gun. I don’t have a gun. Ms Smith doesn’t have a gun. Mr. Jones doesn’t have a gun. So, I suppose we will all have to wait ’til the cops get here. Wonder how long that might take. So, the bad guy has a gun . . . Hmmmm’ A couple of the precocious of these few might get a “conversation” going among their classmates.
      Might take a while. Maybe in 10 years we will have some more NRA members.

    • +1. Using this ‘educators’ logic, we should not only stop
      fire drills but refuse to teach Stop, Drop and Roll
      solely because kids may actually understand what
      happens if they are caught in a fire.

  14. I think those drills are not acceptable when children are involved. Only the police and school faculty should take part. Leave the children out of it. Let the children enjoy life without people planting the idea that they could be killed every time they go to school.

      • It’s one thing to force children to roll play their deaths so police can practice. There is a lock down drill that schools already practice. More than that could hurt the mental state of a child. It’s like drug and suicide prevention programs in school — they have kids thinking about drugs and suicide before they would ever.

        • Yeah, how does that go again? “If it saves one child?” They looked pretty disturbed by the “drill.” That leaves a lasting impression.

          Life can suck. There’s no need to rub it in.

    • We have them participate in fire drills. Which way to die is scarier? I’d take the shooter rather than burning to death.

      And if there is no faculty member alive to help them, what are they supposed to do, especially when there are only a few simple things they would need to know to drastically increase their chances of survival. I’d rather have my kid seeing a shrink than a trauma surgeon or a mortician.

      I think a lot of these “drills” are for PC purposes. If someone really believed their kids were in danger from shooters, they would be jamming their school board meetings demanding action. They would not take “no” for an answer and they would not take, “It’s the fault of all the gun owners” for an answer no matter what side of the gun issue they were on. They would demand effective security, as well they should.

      • I think the majority of these drills are also run to give the cops a feeling that they might be able to do something on the off chance they actually arrive in time to make a difference in the outcome.

        Whenever they do arrive, it will be too late for someone on scene. I think they’re subconsciously praying that it’s not their child, or a friend’s child.

        • These drills do have an affect that most everyone is overlooking. By conducting them, not only the LEOs and 1st responders but more importantly the schools and community at large are forced to accept the possibility of an attack. That ‘it-will-never-happen-here’ attitude is a hard feeling to overcome. At the very least that little nagging doubt can make one better off. Look at any incident that caused death and/or mass casualties and there’s a pretty good chance that those who survived had training or at least addressed the worst case scenario.

    • Nor should we teach them to look both ways before crossing the street. Let the children enjoy life without people planting the idea that they could be killed every time they cross the street.

      • There is a major difference from a lock down drill and some of these active shooter drills. Roll playing your death is very different… It’s manipulation of the youth by the government, just as the video shows here about the “cold war” BS. Indoctrinate these kids to hate guns before they can even buy one themselves. Make them irrationally afraid…

        Some of the people around here have taken part of these active shooter drills willfully to help the police practice. They were not forced and they understand the situation. Also they are not under the age of 18.

        Having a 12 year old roll play their death is ridiculous (to say the least).

    • At what point in their lives do you advocate we start teaching “children” about the realities of existence?

      Do you realize how ridiculous what you said sounds? Middle school aged “boys” used to be Junior Officers on warships, for crying out loud.

      You do no one a favor “in life” by trying to shelter them. I blame “urban civilization” in this thinking…that insulation from real life is somehow “better.”

      • How is a child role playing their death teaching? Role playing is a psychological tool for manipulation/indoctrination. Only adults should take part of these active shooter drills. By they way teachers should be taught how to use guns in these drills.

        If you want to teach your own child about these things who is to stop you? Do it when ever you think they are ready for it. That is your responsibility as a parent.

        I don’t think it is correct to force a child into participating in an active shooter exercise. Imagine if they had role playing scenarios of child rape. Does anyone think it’s a good idea to let a child role play being raped?

        • What?

          Training for a response is part of SURVIVAL, not training for their “death.” Getting people, even young people, involved in the process is generally empowering.

          Your comment is all over the map…conflating a lot of different issues.

          I recall having local ‘disaster’ training for airplane crashes and stuff, and for volunteer “victims,” these exercises used volunteers from the high school. They had to wear prosthetics and some simulated “corpses.”

          You know what? They loved it. They loved being part of the training, interacting with the firefighters and cops and … GASP…actually learning what doing those jobs was like.

          “Children” are not made of spun glass. They are not fragile little snowflakes that need to be “protected” from life. It is our job, as parents and in case of the lady that wrote that drivel, to PREPARE them for life.

          That would be REAL life, by the way. Not some fantasy world where just because we tell them bad things don’t happen and they will never bleed that its true.

          In fact, telling them that garbage can only hurt them in the long run, because it simply is not true.

          And besides, there’s no way those “kids” play-acting parts in training don’t have exposure to that much, or more, simulated violence in the form of movies and games. That teacher is a liar and the worst form of adult “mentor” those kids could have.

          Those kids should go hunting, see terminal ballistics first hand and butcher their own meat for food, not be coddled behind some ridiculous claims that they are “too innocent” to learn the realities of life and what it can be like.

          Nothing is gained by advocating weakness.

  15. Let me tell you, if I were a middle-schooler, that moment when I realized all the “proper authorities” entrusted with my safety and education had no better plan than to throw books and water bottles at an armed man, would be pretty shocking, even traumatizing.

    • Same thing when you (as an adult) realize just how defenseless you actually are if you don’t own a gun. Like when you are at home and something happens — all you can do is hope you can run away, hide or the police will come before something happens to you. As a child that has to feel even worse because you cannot arm yourself; you are totally dependent on the adults around you.

      • The typical household has all sorts of deadly weapons – axes, chainsaws, kitchen knives, bats, machetes, etc. It’s especially apparent when you respond to a domestic violence call.

  17. I generally hesitate to reveal my age on the internet, but for the sake of argument here, I’ll mention that I’m attending high school. There is one major problem with our drills, and this holds true for every school I’ve ever been in: You only practice for one scenario, and it’s the best possible scenario; during a class period when all the doors are locked and all the students are inside.
    Looking at this from a shooter’s perspective, it seems a simple matter to, say, start shooting during lunch, or in the library, or during a passing period. There is no planned response; the halls are tight enough that every shot would be assured to hit someone. Our one “school resource officer” couldn’t get through the crowd fast enough to confront the shooter, not unless he was only meters away when the shooting began. The only available shelter would be in escape through the school exits.
    Essentially, the only way our school’s drills work, is if the madman in the school meekly complies with assumptions the administration has already made.

    • Well said, Noah. This is the primary problem with all drills done in schools. They are always based ob the best possible scenario. My so is a High School Chemistry teacher and he has drilled his students to go out the windows in the event of a shooter in the school. He feels that the only drawback to his plan is a second shooter outside. In most cases, he feels he would be able to save the maximum number of his students. His only better scenario would be if he could carry his Glock 26 in class.

      • What happens if someone pulls the fire alarm before they start shooting? The drill is to exit the class room to a specific area. So a shooter can pull the alarm and wait for the kids to come out. Only major draw back for the shooter/s is the response from the fire department.

        In another words. Teachers need to be armed and willing.

      • If your SO is a chem teacher he should drill his kids on making a chlorine gas grenade (simple to do with available materials in a HS chem lab) and lob it at the shooter as they leave the room. Shooter would have a pretty hard time concentrating and breathing after that.

  18. As someone who has functioned as the primary emergency exercise planner for a large DoD installation (3k+dependents), I can verify that kids make GREAT role-players. As long as they don’t get bored, that is. Emotionally scarred by pretending to get shot? Please. If they have water or nerf guns, they already do that.

    The only reason to have them function as sim casualties, however, is to train your emergency responders to deal with wounded. If your training is for the children, simulated casualties make no sense.

    There is a right way to do emergency response training. Lockdown and Active shooter training only makes sense if you are training cops & responders. Proper bystander reaction can be taught with simple instruction and perhaps part-task walkthrough. If you are doing full-on drills for the kids, you are already doing it wrong.

    • Correct.

      BTW, DoD kids are different than civvie kids. DoD kids know that mommy or daddy may go to work one morning and come back in a bag. Civvie kids don’t think that way.

      • Actually, the kids that know their parents might not come home are the children of roofers and fisherman, among others. Most DoD employees will never see a battlefield. That fighting stuff is mostly for the young Dixie Cups, most of whom don’t have kids, and who are outnumbered at least twenty-to-one by civilian and rear-echelon employees.

        Military base security and active-shooter planning is terrific. Ft. Hood seems to have it down.

        Color me cynical with the DoD heroism stuff, aside from the small number of front-line types. Been there. Seen it. It’s more dangerous to cut timber in Montana. When young and reckless, I put in hard time. The guys ordering and planning the missions? Most of them never saw a battlefield in their lives. And it showed.

    • “I can verify that kids make GREAT role-players.”

      Agreed.

      As mentioned above, I’ve seen local agency disaster training where high school aged kids were the ‘victims,’ and not only did they do wonderfully at their parts, but they loved being part of it.

      It’s kind of hard to even imagine a kid balking at SIMULATED violence and gore and stuff…don’t they kind of live for that sort of thing?

  19. What an awful cover photo.

    While a bunch of second graders could theoretically bum rush a madman like a bunch of piranhas on a water buffalo, training them to do it is stupid. They have a much better chance of getting struck by lightning, all of them at once, than getting caught in such a situation. Grownups protect children. When children grow up, they protect their children. That’s how its done.

    Why do some insist on transposing their irrational fears on children? There are kids all over the country who think a madman is about to enter the school at any moment. All because their parents are scared that it could happen, and can’t keep their mouths shut and deal with this on their own.

    Prepare for this stuff, adults, but be a grownup and bear this burden on your own. Don’t scare the kids.

    • I agree about the cover still. That must have been one hellacious zit she popped. No wonder she looks so traumatized.

  20. C’mon, we all know that these pretend gunmen are using blanks, while the ‘defenders’ are using real water bottles, backpacks, and textbooks (and vomit/urine), That tells everyone involved everything they need to know about the usefulness of the endeavor. We all know that the ‘defenders’ never subdue or ‘win’ against the attacker, at least, not without heavy ‘acceptable losses’. How Soviet we’ve become in our thinking. Ten bucks says the acting attackers never even get injured in these things.

    The real question is; is it really so much more psychologically damaging to admit that a worst-case shooter scenario is nearly certain death for those in the guy’s crosshairs, and that there’s not much a school kid can do about it? Or are we simply seeing how truly immature our Child Rearing Class adults have become?

    • Those immature Child Rearing Class adults are the “precious snowflake” progeny of the last generation. Dread the future.

    • “We” are trying to let the kids draw the conclusion that no one really needs a gun except the police. It just possibly may backfire, but if you look at the politics of the people that push for the drills, you’ll get the answer in a New York minute.

  22. I told my kids the following:

    If they are at school and something goes down, do not sit in place in the classroom like a dummy waiting to get shot.

    Get out of any hallway or stairwell ASAP if they are between classes.

    Observe the situation and if clear go out the nearest window or exit and haul ass off campus to one of two locations we have arranged.

    Don’t listen to any teacher that says we’re just going to sit here in this classroom with the lights off because they don’t know what the F is going on or what to do about it.

    If a teacher tries to physically stop you, don’t let them stop you. Whatever it takes.

    Get out and using cover, concealment and as much speed as possible put distance between themselves and whatever is going on.

    Do not get brain lock. Observe, listen and move.

    I’ll deal with the detentions after the fact. No shits given for official procedure or the school’s official response “plan.”

    • Same here, and this goes for a mall or sporting event, too.

      Drop to ground, get to cover just long enough to find the immediate threat, then go the other way and dont stop. Jump the fence, keep running, break away from the herd* as soon as you can, and don’t stop, until you are home or at the closest police or fire station, and call me from there.

      * Another lesson learned from Beslan, where the terrorists funneled the crowd of kids into the fenced school yard and gym.

    • Good on ya. School is where kids learn the bullshit of reality while simulated adults impede learning. Let kids be real and they see through it all.

  23. I just hate, hate, hate MSNBC for its deliberately deceptive propagandizing on progressive causes.
    I feel sorry for the gal from NBC, who you can see is diplomatically trying to find a way not to contradict him, even when her own reporting shows the kids did fine. REMEMBER – these were all MIDDLE OR HIGH SCHOOL KIDS WHO VOLUNTEERED. Hayes makes it like every kid, in every school, is going to be traumatized.

    Hayes tells deliberate mistruths, blanket statements, “every school, across the country” when this story is about ONE STATE, JUST ONE, trying it out.

    I think the latest on number of states that have allowed teachers to CCW is up to 6 or 7.

    Just propaganda. And stupid at that. No wonder MSNBC has dropped off the cliff of viewers- there cant be that manyleft other than the rabid lefties from Kos, DU, MJ and RawStory.

    And the Moms Demand Action spinners who will invent something out of it, for the progtard circle jerk to feed upon, again.

  24. In the near future the Anti crowd is going to find that this “guns are evil” propaganda is going to backfire in a major way. In the same way that DARE slowly turned into the legalization of Marijuana in a couple states.

    When you tell someone that something is bad and they can’t have it, then come up with stupid reasons why, you will end up with two kids of people. the majority will see the propaganda for what it is and give guns a try just for the heck of it. Hopefully many of these people may end up becoming gun owners.

    Then you will end up with a second smaller group that will buy the propaganda hook line and sinker. For these folks there is little hope unless they come across a life altering moment. but it’s also these folks who can be some of our best advocates post the life altering moment.

  25. I have been a student, a teacher and a student of self defense and school shootings. I don’t care for fire drills either but we still do them. That said training and preparedness is a step by step process. Step 1 – get the administrators and teachers to accept the reality of the risk; small but real. Step 2- train the teachers to react with out too much panic. Step 3 – have at least one school resource officer if possible. Step 4 – have a small group (3 to 10%) of undisclosed volunteer teachers, well trained and carrying concealed firearms to defend in the school environment if forced to.
    This would be a good start. It would have substantially reduced the death toll at Sandy Hook, Columbine or Virginia Tech. It would not save everybody. Sorry, the aggressor determines the time and place of the attack.

  26. Sometimes I think the people who come up with this stuff live in Dora the Explorer world.

    Shooter no shooting! Shooter no shooting! Shooter nooo shoooting.

    Aww man!

    We did it!

    • “Sometimes I think the people who come up with this stuff live in Dora the Explorer world.

      Shooter no shooting! Shooter no shooting! Shooter nooo shoooting. “

      That is probably the single most accurate description of a lot of the stuff we hear from anti’s…on many levels.

      Good job!

  27. The idea of teaching children and young people to throw water bottles, books, backpacks and whatever at a maniac/fanatic attacking them with a firearm sets a new low for stupid…even worse than criminally stupid. it proves that whoever thinks up this garbage is paying lip service expressing their “concerns” for Students’ Safety. The training scenarios they produce fundamentally make Students “cannon fodder” until the Police arrive, who we know will go through all kinds of “Officer Safety Protocols” before ever even getting eyes on the attacker. Meanwhile, how many Students get slaughtered?

    These “scenarios” deliberately and callously make Students expendable in the most despicable, cold-blooded way imaginable. Children in the Public Schools are from the Lower and Middle Classes and sacrificing them in the interest of advancing the statist agenda is acceptable. even necessary. Who is the greater danger to our children in their schools, the “gunman” or the School Administrators?

  28. Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. G.K. Chesterton

  30. I have nightmares too. My wife is a teacher and despite the best training Uncle Sam could buy for six years passed on to her through me, I know that if attacked she woul be unarmed against her attackers in school. That is my nightmare.

  31. Training students what to do during an attack? Absolutely. Just like doing tornado drills.

    But turning schools into the NTC sandbox, complete with costumes and fake blood/makeup? Completely inappropriate and unnecessary. It serves no purpose other than to give kids nightmares.

    Spend that time and money sending teachers with CCW permits and who are willing to carry while at school to force-on-force training conducted by licensed instructors.

  32. That’s smart, those of you with plans for your kids, should they be caught up in one of these events. The only things I would add would be:

    First, threat identification. Time is both your enemy and your savior. Use it, or lose it and your life. One of the common comments out of active shooter survivors is that they didn’t think it was really gunfire they were hearing, or that they couldn’t believe it was really happening, even after seeing people running or shot. Teach your family what gunfire sounds like, so they can identify what’s happening and act quickly.

    Second, a pre-determined rendezvous point with your child is great. There may not be a police/fire station within foot distance, though, especially if wounded by the attacker or otherwise injured in the escape. Whether pre-set or ad hoc, just make sure that the meetup location is far enough from the shooting scene to be outside of the inevitable police barrricades. Or else they won’t be able to get out and you won’t be able to get in to pick them up.

  33. I teach at a middle school in Houston, and we have “lock-down” drills. I have already told the teacher I work with that if anything really does happen, there is no way in hell I am lining my kids up against the wall (or even in a storage room), turning off the lights and shutting the door. Especially since we have an exit less than 20 feet down the hall. My kids are getting out as fast as possible, procedures be damned.

    I especially like at the end of the video, where the PMSNBC guy mocks people for making such a big deal about these drills, since the reality is they are incredibly unlikely to happen, yet this is the same man calling on gun bans because of said events. Hmmm… Love the consistency.

    • We need to everything humanly possible to protect our school children!

      Arm teachers and administrators, then teach them to fight back? You’ve got to be crazy!

      Let’s reduce magazine capacity instead.

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