There were 63 faculty shootings – that means any time there may be gunfire on a faculty campus – up to now in 2026.
They occur so ceaselessly that getting ready for one has turn into standard. Scholars as younger as 4 years previous automatically follow for the potential of a faculty capturing with lockdown drills – most often, hiding within the nook of a depressing study room, at the back of a locked door.
Pauls Valley Prime Faculty in Pauls, Oklahoma, went into lockdown on April 7, 2026, after an armed gunman fired photographs throughout the construction. Kirk Moore, the college’s foremost, tackled the gunman and were given shot within the leg.
The lockdown and Moore’s heroism obviously averted to any extent further violence on this uncommon faculty capturing state of affairs with a favorable finishing. However by means of and massive, do lockdowns most often paintings to stay scholars protected?
As a criminologist who research violence and mass shootings, I believe you will need to understand that there are not any federal necessities guiding how ceaselessly, and even how, lockdown drills must be carried out throughout colleges within the U.S.
Households of kids wait out of doors the college following experiences of an armed particular person at Brandeis Prime Faculty in New York Town.
Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu by means of Getty Photographs
Other approaches to lockdowns
Maximum states have some type of necessities for a minimal selection of lockdown drills a yr. In Minnesota, the quantity is 5. New York mandates 4, whilst Arizona regulation calls for 3.
There’s additionally a large number of variation in how colleges interpret the time period “lockdown drill.” In some puts, it’s used loosely to hide a variety of eventualities – the whole thing from a clinical emergency to an animal unfastened within the construction. However that broader utilization can difficult to understand what those drills are in reality designed for.
In follow, lockdown drills are synonymous with getting ready for an energetic shooter or in a similar fashion severe risk of violence. That’s why many of us discuss with them without delay as “active shooter drills.”
Steering from the I Love U Guys Basis reinforces this level. Its extensively followed Same old Reaction Protocol defines a lockdown as locking doorways, turning off lighting, staying out of sight and closing silent – measures supposed in particular to maximise time and distance from a violent intruder till first responders arrive.
In 2025, Minnesota, the place I are living, handed the primary regulation within the nation that defines an energetic shooter drill as a type of lockdown, and distinguishes it from an energetic shooter simulation.
A drill, on this regulation’s context, “means an emergency preparedness drill designed to teach students, teachers, school personnel, and staff how to respond in the event of an armed intruder on campus or an armed assailant in the immediate vicinity of the school.”
This is other from an energetic shooter simulation, which contains “sensorial components, activities, or elements mimicking a real life shooting.” The regulation says that scholars will also be mandated to take part within the former, however no longer in a simulation, the place you could have disaster actors concerned or the attractions and sounds of an actual tragedy.
According to my analysis, any drill will have to be carried out in a measured, age suitable and trauma-informed method, so kids don’t seem to be harmed by means of the practices. There’s a distinction between a instructor calming strolling scholars in the course of the process, as opposed to having a police officer in tactical tools pounding at the door or jiggling the take care of to test whether it is locked.
Unclear impact on children
Most colleges began doing lockdowns after the shootings at Sandy Hook Basic Faculty in Connecticut in 2012 and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Prime Faculty in Parkland, Florida in 2018. That is the primary technology of scholars who’ve practiced what to do if a faculty shooter involves kill them – and they have got been training since pre-Okay. We don’t but know what that does to an individual over a life-time.
To this point, the to be had analysis presentations blended proof on whether or not those drills lend a hand scholars really feel extra ready or whether or not they scare them. Research taking a look on the psychological, emotional and behavioral well being results of college energetic shooter drills let us know that there are momentary positive aspects of diminished concern when drills are moderately designed, and that they do construct procedural wisdom that may cut back panic. On the identical time, analysis has captured heightened concern, nervousness and different trauma responses to those drills, particularly amongst kids and personnel that have already got developmental disabilities or have trauma histories.
Academics and scholars are escorted out of Boulder Prime Faculty in Boulder, Colo., by means of police after a document of an individual with a gun throughout the construction in February 2023.
Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Team/The Denver Submit by means of Getty Photographs
Lockdown drills have limits
Most faculty shooters are present or former scholars on the faculty. They know the place children cover as a result of they themselves have been skilled in lockdown reaction. The shooter on the Annunciation Catholic Faculty in Minneapolis in 2025 even wrote of their magazine about how energetic shooter drills have been “useful” on account of the teachings they discovered from them.
Any other factor is that drills have a tendency to suppose a unmarried form of state of affairs, even supposing faculty shootings can spread in very alternative ways. Training for just one eventuality may just by accident put scholars in better hurt. The 2022 Uvalde Faculty capturing in Texas is a great instance. Youngsters have been positioned at the back of a locked door, however then the shooter used to be within the room with them and murdered all of them. The easier reaction, in hindsight, could be to evacuate the construction.
Greater than anything else, I believe there’s a chance that drills normalize faculty shootings. We’ve passed faculty protection to academics and scholars with the lighting off. Hiding presupposes a seeker. Even small children perceive the common sense of hide-and-seek (anyone is searching for you, and in the event that they to find you, you lose). Drills forged scholars as prey being hunted. That truth on my own is a tragedy for American society.
