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Personally, when I was in high school, I didn’t find these active shooter protocols merely emasculating, but just plain poorly-thought out. If the shooter is able to force his way through the door into the classroom, then he now has a line of sitting ducks to fire at. Far better to set up an ambush: a student or a few standing right beside the door, ready to smash the heaviest object present in the classroom right on the shooter’s head the second he enters, so that he collapses, stunned, and is promptly beaten to a pulp. Even if the ambush corps suffers casualties, it beats the probable massacre that would result if the shooter is able to enter the classroom with all the students neatly lined up for target practice.
Years after graduating high school, I talked about this with some friends, all of whom had attended different high schools around the country, who all said that they independently thought the same thing.
I’m now wondering what the efficacy of this approach would be. There’s gotta be a tactical flaw here somewhere, right?
You need to consider that the enemy isn't breaching and clearing- they're usually targeting specific people, then picking off targets of opportunity after that (the penalty for lateness is death and so it's no longer a deterrent). "Get everyone into the classrooms and lock the doors" is good enough and even arguably the best you can do; the reason it's made a whole big thing is purely for political reasons (that's what happens when you don't have an even gender/political distribution in education). There's zero reason to announce a lockdown over PA, just quietly send someone to go make sure the outside doors are closed; if shit is going down, you'll know.
It is still the case that schools are vulnerable to casual attackers just walking in the front door, it is still the case that efficiency in these crimes is not the goal, it is still the case that the countermeasures and drills will do nothing to stop a truly indiscriminate attacker, it is still the case that drilling against that scenario would be even worse (psychologically speaking), and it is still the case that attacks of that nature are incredibly rare.
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