A jaw-dropping statistic published last March in JAMA Open Network: One in 15 American adults has witnessed a mass shooting.
Fear of mass shootings drove American public schools to establish active-shooter drills after the 1999 Columbine massacre, when two high school seniors fatally shot 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. Data released by the Department of Education showed that almost 96 percent of U.S. public schools drilled students at least once during the 2021-2022 school year on lockdown procedures. The drills have become sophisticated; some include the use of pellet guns and fake blood.
Justin Heinze, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told me in a recent interview that some states run active-shooter drills as many as four times per school year, even though there is no data available to prove they work. A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2020 found that the majority of youth do not think such drills make schools safer, and suggested that drills do not prevent shootings.