There have been 119 school shootings in the U.S.
since 2018, resulting in 88 victims' deaths.
After the high profile mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas,
where 19 students and two teachers were killed, many
politicians who are opposed to stricter gun laws have
been calling for an alternative.
So why don't we harden the school?
Harden our schools.
To harden our schools.
The private security industry that focuses
specifically on the education sector had a
projected revenue of $3.1 billion in 2021 and is
expected to grow by more than 8% annually on average.
Those figures don't even include companies that
manufacture fortification options, such as bulletproof
doors and backpacks.
My two boys have a bulletproof backpack because
I just feel like at the end of the day, if all else
fails, then they will have that to possibly protect
them. For me as a mom, it was something that I could
control.
If you have a bulletproof backpack, you're just
increasing your odds of being in better shape than
not having a bulletproof backpack.
If they just couldn't have got through the door, they
couldn't have got to the kids.
President Biden signed a new gun control law that
provides $1 billion in funding for schools to,
quote, create safe and healthy learning
environments for all students, as well as $300
million for training and equipment.
But there's a question of how much these hardening
measures can help in the event of a school shooting.
Many of the best things that make schools safer are
actually invisible.
We really got to be able to evolve and to extend
long-term solutions around mass shootings in this
country.
While the country's clash over gun regulation
continues, here's how administrators, teachers,
and parents are securing schools and how much it
costs.
Because it's so difficult to save lives once a shooter is
in the building, the most common measures schools
implement are meant to prevent the would-be shooter
from gaining access to the building.
These include limiting the number of entry points to a
building, security cameras, and requiring faculty and
staff to wear badges or photo IDs.
We know that the first and best line of defense is a
well-trained, highly alert staff and student body.
The number one way we find out about weapons, plots,
kids who are going to cause self harm is by kids who
come forward and tell an adult that they trust.
There are also equipment and protocols that would alert
police in the event a shooter does make it into
the building.
You have to be able to create those layers of
school safety, protection, from fencing and the
perimeter of a school, single point of entry,
locking doors, cameras, panic buttons so you can
communicate in mass, notification.
If all other measures fail and someone with a firearm
does enter the school, security experts say that
the schools should have a solid plan in place.
More than two decades ago, after Columbine, the law
enforcement tactics shifted from having a perimeter set
up and waiting from the SWAT team to today, where
the first officer on scene, single officer entry, goes
in to neutralize the shooters.
The whole idea here is to be able to move that gunfire
away from those who are innocent, and that gunfire
is directed towards police who are far better
positioned to terminate that threat.
There's a gap right in the middle where when someone
truly decides they're going to do this and they start
walking down the hallway with a loaded rifle, we do
nothing. There is nothing in place during that roughly
10 minutes, according to FBI data, from start to when
the police come and end this, there's nothing being
done.
The Uvalde Police Department is being criticized for its
slow response to the active shooter situation.
With the benefit of hindsight, where I'm sitting
now, of course it was not the right decision, it was
the wrong decision. Period.
The Uvalde Police Department was unable to respond in
time for publication.
We know these incidents unfold in seconds and
minutes and that every minute lost can also result
in a number of lives lost.
Even when the police react quickly, the death toll can
still be catastrophic.
During the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting,
the first officer entered the school within six
minutes of arriving at the scene, but the gunman still
killed 20 children and six adults.
We had issues at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School, where our SRO stood outside the school as a
coward and did not go in and engage the threat as 17
people were being shot and killed.
Scot Peterson was the student resource officer,
known as an SRO, on duty during the Parkland
shooting. He has pleaded not guilty to criminal
charges brought against him for failing to confront the
gunman. His lawyer told CNBC, Our hearts go out to
all the families who experienced tragedies as a
result of the abhorrent massacre committed by the
sole person responsible, Nikolas Cruz.
My client now faces a potential life sentence in
spite of doing everything he could to zealously serve
and protect the Parkland students.
So I don't think it's a bad idea to put in bulletproof
glass and a door.
I think it is a good idea because like in Parkland,
that would have saved my daughter's life because he
broke the glass and shot right through there and shot
directly at her.
Kirk Ferguson is the chief of staff at R2P Innovations,
which makes bulletproof doors that are specifically
designed with schools in mind.
The company itself was born directly out of Sandy Hook.
We just kept hearing over and over from parents in
that tragedy, If they just couldn't have got through
the door, they couldn't have got to the kids.
R2P doors are made to withstand assault rifle
rounds.
It's one of the questions we've always posed as a
company is, you know, your child is sitting in a
classroom right now and someone has just exited
their car and locked and loaded an assault rifle and
they have walked through the door of your child's
school. What do you want?
Do you want a camera system with an AI brain hanging off
of it? Do you want a pistol armed SRO somewhere on
campus? Or do you want a bullet stopping door in your
kid's classroom?
My name is Yasir Sheikh, I'm the president and CEO of
Guard Dog Security. We manufacture and distribute
products like pepper spray, stun guns, bulletproof
backpacks, and other kind of daily essentials needed
for personal security. I am in favor of giving kids and
teachers some essential tools to keep them safe.
I kind of saw the practicality of having
protection integrated with your daily life, right?
So something that people would wear on a daily basis
or carry on a daily basis that also doubled as a
personal security mechanism.
The backpacks Guard Dog Security makes are level
IIIA, which means they can protect against most
handguns.
Most daily-carry bulletproof products will be level IIIA,
which, they're not rated for assault rifle
protection. The reason is that at that point, they
become very impractical for daily use.
Bulletproof backpacks are not a single-handed
solution, but it does provide a sense of security.
We hear that and we see it.
But in no way, shape, or form does it guarantee that
you will be safe in the event of a shooting.
But it does increase your chances.
The Department of Justice, Department of Education, and
the Department of Homeland Security at the federal
level, each have programs that provide grant money to
school districts for security upgrades.
Schools are limited to spending money on select
security measures based on the terms of the grant
program. For example, the Department of Justice's
grant program called the Stop School Violence Act
doesn't allow schools to use funds for, quote, target
hardening equipment.
But schools that receive funds under a different DOJ
grant program called the School Violence Prevention
Program are allowed to spend that money on
equipment, such as metal detectors, locks, lighting,
and technology that helps notify law enforcement
during an emergency.
The Department of Justice has awarded more than $410
million in grants through the programs created under
the Stop School Violence Act of 2018.
But grants can be an inconsistent form of
funding.
We've gone into schools where they've had a one-time
shot-in-the-arm funding through a grant or a school
board allocation for putting in additional
cameras, for example.
And we go in three or four years later, the cameras
aren't working. They have no budget at the school or
school district level for maintenance, repair, or
replacement. But yet there's this facade, this
security theater, that they've made schools safer.
And when in reality, a lot of the technology and
equipment is not being used.
On top of inconsistent funding for schools to buy
these services, the demand from parents and school
districts also tends to ebb and flow.
We do see an increase in demand after some sort of
shooting that's widely broadcast.
Sandy Hook was a catalyst to the demand.
This sporadic demand can affect industry growth.
When it comes to companies that provide security
equipment and services to control who can access the
building, the growth rates can vary from 5% to 15%,
depending on how many shootings took place in a
given year.
I worked through the aftermath of Columbine,
Sandy Hook, Parkland, now Uvalde, Texas.
And one thing is clear.
That while we have this overnight explosion of
experts, charlatans, gadgets, gurus, everyone
with these solutions, three years later, short of
another tragedy, those companies that have opened
up a new market to target pre-K through 12 schools are
out of business.
Despite this inconsistent demand, the sector is
growing.
The security and hardware and product industry has
been increasingly and more actively engaged in lobbying
state legislatures and Congress to get funds
released.
R2P's doors run about $6,000 each, including
installation.
What a lot of people don't realize is that the standard
door that you have on that classroom anyway, if it's a
heavy duty door with heavy duty locks and closures that
it should have for the abuse that a school door
goes through, you're looking at about a $2,000
door anyway. So while it is more expensive, most people
have an image of their mind that the door costs $150 at
Lowe's and $6,000 is this unimaginable number.
But the protection that it brings, it's not even
exponential cost.
But school security is a balancing act.
But schools are different entities.
The different climate and culture serves a different
purpose. They're community centers, they're used after
hours for athletics, performing arts, and other
functions on weekends, often tied to recreation
departments and programs out in the community.
As long as we have guns that are out in our environment,
and being that we are a gun society, that there's always
going to be the possibility that these guns are going to
get in the wrong hands of the wrong people.
The U.S. Congress passed rare bipartisan legislation
to address gun violence shortly after the Uvalde
shooting. President Biden signed it into law on June
25th, 2022.
The law provides $1 billion in funding for schools to,
quote, create safe and healthy learning
environments for all students, as well as an
additional $300 million to go toward training and
equipment that can help in the event of a threat of
violence. The bill also provides money to support
access to mental health care services and schools
and enhances background checks for anyone under 21
years old seeking to buy a firearm.
We need to continue to send our kids to school, and I
want to make sure that they're being sent in the
safest environment possible.
And it's not going to stop, sadly to say, until we as a
nation really find some new resolve and meet these new
challenges that are in front of us around these
issues and mass shootings in this country.