Biden wants to make active shooter drills in schools less traumatic for students

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that aims to help schools create active shooter drills that are less traumatic for students yet still effective. The order also seeks to restrict new technologies that make guns easier to fire and obtain.

The president has promised he and his administration will work through the end of the term, focusing on the issues most important to him. Curbing gun violence has been at the top of the 81-year-old president's list.

He often says he has consoled too many victims and traveled to the scenes of too many mass shootings. He was instrumental in the passage of gun safety legislation and has sought to ban assault weapons, restrict gun use and help communities in the aftermath of violence. He set up the first office of gun violence prevention headed by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Both Biden and Harris were to speak about the scourge of gun violence during an afternoon event in the Rose Garden.

The new order directs his administration to research how active shooter drills may cause trauma to students and educators in an effort to help schools create drills that “maximize their effectiveness and limit any collateral harms they might cause,” said Stefanie Feldman, the director of Biden's office of gun violence prevention.

The order also establishes a task force to investigate the threats posed by machine-gun-conversion devices, which can turn a semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic firearm, and will look at the growing prevalence of 3D-printed guns, which are printed from an internet code, are easy to make and have no serial numbers so law enforcement can't track them. The task force has to report back in 90 days — not long before Biden is due to leave office.

Overall, stricter gun laws are desired by a majority of Americans, regardless of what the current gun laws are in their state. That desire could be tied to some Americans’ perceptions of what fewer guns could mean for the country — namely, fewer mass shootings.

Gun violence continues to plague the nation. Four people were killed and 17 others injured when multiple shooters opened fire Saturday at a popular nightlife spot in Birmingham, Alabama, in what police described as a targeted “hit” on one of the people killed.

As of Wednesday, there have been at least 31 mass killings in the U.S. so far in 2024, leaving at least 135 people dead, not including shooters who died, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

The order was praised by gun-control groups, but criticized by Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, who said the order was “just one more attempt by the Biden-Harris Administration to deflect attention from their soft-on-crime policies that have emboldened criminals in our country.”