Opinion: Stop traumatizing children with active shooter drills

Earlier this month, parents in Texas sent their children to the first day of school dressed in maroon to memorialize the 19 students and 2 teachers killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in May. This week, my daughter’s second grade teacher told us that they would be doing their first ‘Run, Hide, Defend’ Active Shooter training in a few days.  While I understand that school officials want to protect students and staff, we need to stop traumatizing our children with ineffective drills and start focusing on things that will actually help prevent school shootings and gun violence.

Conducting active-shooter drills at schools allows us to believe that we are doing something to keep our children safe. But there is no actual evidence that these drills are effective at increasing safety during an active-shooter event. As a college professor, I’ve attended a ‘Run, Hide, Defend’ training geared towards adults, and while it was marginally useful to hear some safety tips, I have no idea whether I could use that knowledge in the stress and confusion of an actual active-shooter event. If trained police officers freeze during active-shooter situations as we saw in both Uvalde and Parkland, it seems absurd to think that occasional active-shooter drills for kids as young as elementary age could be effective.

While there is no evidence that active-shooter drills save lives, many parents and teachers can tell you that they are traumatizing and make school seem like an unsafe place. A friend’s elementary-school-aged son, when asked whether he liked his new class, said that he preferred his old classroom because there were more places to hide. Social media posts are filled with parents reporting kids having conversations about who would sacrifice themselves to try to defend their class against a shooter. The fact that our children feel as if they have to come up with a plan to defend themselves against weapons of war is a stunning indictment of our failure as the only wealthy country where firearms are the No. 1 cause of death for children.

This anecdotal evidence of mental-health concerns after active-shooter drills is supported by a recent study conducted by Georgia Tech University and Everytown for Gun Safety. Using validated methods to analyze social media conversations before and after active shooter drills, the researchers found a sharp increase in evidence of depression, stress and anxiety and fears of death from children, parents and teachers following the drills. The potential long-term consequences of these active-shooter drills are unknown. Why are we risking our children’s mental health for the possible, but unproven, benefits of active-shooter drills?

There is no doubt that gun violence is a huge threat to our children, even if the risk of an active shooter at their particular school is very low. But we need to focus our time and resources on evidence-based strategies to prevent gun violence instead of active-shooter drills that almost certainly do more harm than good. Increasing access to mental health resources and social support, developing robust threat assessment programs and educating parents on their responsibility to safely store their guns to ensure they do not end up in the hands of children are strategies with plenty of evidence supporting their effectiveness, unlike active-shooter drills. Join me in contacting your schools and school boards and asking them to stop conducting active-shooter drills and start focusing their time and resources on evidence-based strategies to reduce gun violence.

Katherine A. Wilkinson is a professor of biological sciences at San Jose State University.