American school children doing a gun drill
Credit: YouTube
“Are you kids good at running and screaming?” a police officer asks a class of elementary school kids in Akron, Ohio.
His friendly tone then turns serious.
“What I don’t want you to do is hide in the corner if a bad guy comes in the room,” he says. “You gotta get moving.”
This training session — shared online by the ALICE Training Institute, a civilian safety training company — reflects the new normal at American public schools. As armed shooters continue their deadly rampages, and while Washington remains stuck on gun control, a new generation of American students have learned to lock and barricade their classroom doors the same way they learn to drop and roll in case of a fire.
The training session is a stark reminder of how American schools have changed since the 1999 Columbine school shooting. School administrators and state lawmakers have realized that a mass shooting can happen in any community, in any school, at any time, […]
Since public schools already resemble prisons both for body and mind, a few extra drills should not be much of a burden. The statistical chance of something happening to any given individual is extremely low. Not that this is any consolation to those that are affected.