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Comment by corrral | Hacker News Reader

It's both insane that we have so many school shootings, and insane that we've spent so much money fortifying schools and traumatizing teachers and kids (find some teachers and ask them how people react even to pre-announced active shooter drills—people break down shaking and crying, have actual fight-or-flight responses kick in, et c., when those fake gunshots start, and that's the adults) in response.

The former is part of a broader sickness with our country, and the latter is part of an entirely different sickness in our country (must "do something", even if it's not justifiable and is net-harmful)

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I'm sorry, there are fake gun shots in active shooter drills? What the fucking fuck? That is insane. What possible benefit could there be to that bit of simulation that would outweigh the additional trauma that would cause?

Not to mention all the survivors of school shootings who presumably have the dubious pleasure of being retraumatised on an annual basis. Fuck.

You're right on "do something". But fuck. I never guessed anyone would make it deliberately more traumatic.

I will not argue the efficacy of the drills. I don't support them, I don't know the data, etc.

But, if you're going to do a drill, and it's known to be a drill, practice like you play the game; if loud gunshot sounds freeze your escapees or their teachers to the point where they're not preserving themselves, the drill was for nothing.

I worked in a public school about 10 years ago.

They wouldn't tell any of us that the drills were coming. Everyone had to take cover in the classrooms and barricade the doors as the "Intruder Alert" message blared over the loudspeakers. Then someone would come through the halls and bang on every door. It's beyond insane.

Different schools do it different ways, often in cooperation with local law enforcement. Some do things like playing gunshots over a speaker somewhere in the building, others do different things. Most are the kind of activity that can mess people up in perhaps-unexpected ways—and again, that's the adults, let alone kids. There have been some cases of schools & police going way overboard with these things and doing much worse than playing some fake gunshot noises, and those have gotten some press (I think some are on YouTube?) but I don't think that's common. Regardless, even the more "normal" versions are pretty bad.

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