Teacher's Union Calls For The End of Active Shooter Drills?

February 13, 2020 

Hi friends: 

I know it’s the day before Valentine’s Day and the beginning of a long weekend, but I wanted to reach out and comment on a lead story that I read and saw last evening on CNN.  

 Nation's largest teachers unions call to end active shooter drills over fears they're traumatizing students 

“The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, a coalition working to end gun violence, to publicly condemn active shooter drills in schools. 

‘Given growing concern among parents, students, educators, and medical professionals about the impact that active shooter drills can have on student development, Everytown, AFT, and NEA do not recommend these drills for students,’ they wrote in the report, ‘and believe schools should carefully consider these impacts before conducting live drills that involve students and educators.’ " 

 As the owner of Situational Awareness Institute, Inc., a Law Enforcement Officer, the husband of a teacher, and a parent to boot, I think I have some strong insight and an experienced response to the premise conveyed in the article. While I appreciate the concern of some educators, some medical professionals, and some parents, the studies cited are far from conclusive. My parent’s generation grew up with frequent school drills, and my older sister recalls practice drills hiding under her desk on a weekly basis for several years in preparation for a Russian nuclear attack. Granted my sister is a little crazy, but I can’t attribute it to school drills as an adolescent. I recall frequent fire drills during my early education which one prayed for during pop quizzes. In other words, humor aside, school drills for potential disasters have been going on for generations to minimize vulnerability and liability and maximize safety and survivability.  

The concept of ending school drills as a way to mitigate the trauma to students is simply not an effective solution to the overall picture. Active killer situations don’t just occur in schools; they occur in churches, malls, theaters, concerts – anywhere there is the combination of two or more human beings and one of those human beings has a desire to harm others in a mass and random fashion. The same applies to adults in the work-place - and all people of all ages and in all environments – education and training deliver life skills that have been proven to save lives. 

Children are subjected to violence everyday in the video-games they play, the YouTube videos they view, and the television shows they watch… and let’s not forget the news playing in the home. From my last missive, you may recall there were more mass shootings last year than there were days in the year. Our children know it’s out there. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that by stopping life-saving drills in our schools that the active killer situations will somehow stop. 

In the coming weeks, I will be traveling working with a large hospital system in the southeast educating staff how to best respond to an active killer situation and then on to New Mexico to work with an association of churches to make worship services safer and develop response strategies to an active killer scenario. I’m always available via email or phone for questions and consultations. I will close with one of my favorite quotes. It’s by Louis Pasteur, the 19th century scientist to describe his remarkable ability to innovate across a complex set of problems. “Chance favors the prepared mind.” In my line of work, I see the ‘chance’ as a negative active killer situation, and ‘prepared mind’ as one who has received training on how to minimize vulnerability and maximize survivability. Let’s never stop educating ourselves. 

      Best wishes, 

     Phil 

Written content by Phoelaz Writing Services www.phoelaz.com 

 Philip Ball in Parkland, Florida where he was hired as an outside consultant for Active Shooter Training after the tragedy