For decades, our schools have conducted safety drills to help our children and teachers prepare for what to do in case of emergencies such as an oncoming tornado or fire. But now in the wake of school shootings laws in many states are requiring “lock down” drills. These drills train teachers how to protect their students in the classroom should a shooting incident occur in their school. While it does bring concern, we believe America’s children are at such risk, that these drills are necessary. At least the “lock down” drill is about protecting them from danger. These are good.

But, last year schools across our nation started participating in terror/shooter drills and our children played the roles of dead and injured victims. Funded by President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security these drills are not meant to be drills that protect our children, they are actually training for the local police department so they have a ready response to a tragedy after our children have been killed or injured following a mass school shooting event. 

The video of these drills above, gives you an idea of the reality of the experience we are putting our children through. Some students tell of the fear they experience during the drill. After seeing how much effort is put into making these scenarios as close to the actual event as possible, do you suppose there might be at least one student that could have nightmares after participating? Good grief, 40 years after graduation, I still have nightmares about forgetting my locker combination!

What the videos didn’t show is that often these drills include loading the children into school buses and driving them to “undisclosed locations.” Undisclosed even to parents. The children are taken away to these locations for their “safety.” Parents then must come to the “reunification” area to reclaim their children from the government officials who have taken them into their custody. The video below from Atlanta shows parents being reunited with their children after a real school shooting there. The parents are anxious and the children are terrified. Rightfully so.

When I first learned about these drills, one question that came to mind is “why would any parent continue to send their child to a facility where our local police and school administrators believe the likelihood of a shooting event is so high that they feel it important to train for response?”