People mourn for victims of a school mass shooting at Town Square in Uvalde, Texas, the United States, May 30, 2022. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)
There is no equivalent of rigorous and standard monitoring of whether a school employer is reasonably prepared for an active shooter. This regulatory netherworld, industry executives say, is partly the result of the nation's political paralysis over guns.
NEW YORK, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- Rising gun violence in U.S. schools is fueling not only the debate over gun control but also an industry of more than 3 billion U.S. dollars for companies working to protect children or employees against mass murder, reported The New York Times on Friday.
The offerings are numerous: automatically locking doors, bullet-resistant tables, Kevlar backpacks, artificial intelligence that detects guns and countless types of training exercises, like breathing techniques to avoid panic during an attack or strategies for how to use a pencil to pierce a shooter's eyes.
"But even as Congress increases funding for school security measures -- including 300 million dollars to help schools 'prevent and respond to violence' as part of a bipartisan gun control compromise -- the effectiveness of the school security industry's products and services remains largely unproven," said the report.
There is no equivalent of rigorous and standard monitoring of whether a school employer is reasonably prepared for an active shooter. This regulatory netherworld, industry executives say, is partly the result of the nation's political paralysis over guns, according to the report.
"Creating standards for school security against guns, some believe, would be seen as giving in to the notion that mass shootings are a part of American life, that they can be defended against but not eliminated," noted the report. ■
