For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.





In the wake of the nation’s many recent mass shootings, and in the absence of any meaningful gun control that might stem them, employers and schools have started training their staff to respond should a madman with a gun turn up on their doorsteps. “Active shooter” drills have become the norm in many school districts and downtown office buildings; in many schools, such drills are now mandated by the state. But it turns out that bringing SWAT teams into buildings to simulate an active shooter situation doesn’t always make people feel safer. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, such simulations have seriously traumatized and occasionally injured people, sparking a wave of lawsuits.

The Journal tells several amazing stories of people who were injured or utterly freaked out during such drills, which often weren’t announced ahead of time. One involves a Colorado nursing home employee whom a man forced at gunpoint into an empty room at work. The “shooter” was actually a local cop and the gun was fake, but the nurse was so scared that even when the “shooter” finally identified himself as a cop after she started crying and begging for her life, she wasn’t really sure he was telling the truth. She was so traumatized that she had to quit her job and has since filed a lawsuit against the nursing home.

Active shooter drills often feature scary looking shooters with realistic looking guns who shoot plastic bullets or blanks at participants, who are then supposed to attack the shooter or at least throw things at him. But apparently, far from creating an army of first responders, these drills often leave teachers and other participants hysterical. Critics told the Journal that the exercises have left school employees and others more terrified and ill-equipped to deal with a real shooting than they would have been otherwise:

Some experts, however, say recreating the chaos of a mass shooting is no way to prime for emergencies. “There ends up being zero learning going on because everyone is upset that you’ve scared the crap out of them,” said Greg Crane, a former SWAT officer with the North Richland Hills Police Department near Dallas who holds seminars to teach civilians different strategies to deal with mass-shooting scenarios.

Given the obvious potential for trauma in active shooter drills, schools and post offices and other institutions worried about active shooters might just want to tell everyone to hide under their desks until help arrives.