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For more than a decade, the United States has responded to school shootings by building an economy around fear. In the absence of political action, a parallel marketplace has taken shape — one that promises safety, sells security, and distracts from the strategies that actually reduce violence. Rather than investing in evidence-based interventions, we have normalized a model of protection defined by drills, hardware, and surveillance systems that project authority but rarely produce meaningful safety.
This market is no longer a fringe corner of the security world; it is now a multibillion dollar industry with its own trade shows, lobbying networks, and growth projections. Analysts estimate the school security sector to be worth as much as four billion dollars, driven not by a single technology but by the steady expansion of an entire ecosystem. Expo halls at national conferences now feature panic buttons, facial recognition software, ballistic whiteboards, trauma kits, threat-assessment platforms, drone systems designed to incapacitate shooters, and augmented-reality simulators for police. Vendors pitch these tools with the urgency of a life-or-death sales cycle, and school districts — under immense public pressure — are encouraged to adopt expensive, multi-year contracts for technologies that often have little or no evidence behind them. What began as a narrow set of interventions has matured into a sprawling marketplace that grows after every tragedy, regardless of whether its products actually keep students safe.
The logic that drives this growth is simple: the more terrifying the scenario, the more compelling the solution appears. But fear is not the same as effectiveness. Many of the most visible security measures, such as metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and aggressive lockdown drills, offer an illusion of protection without addressing the root causes of violence. Research has long shown that these approaches do little to prevent shootings and can even heighten anxiety or harm school climate. Yet the industry continues to innovate in ways that feel increasingly dystopian, marketing AI-driven behavior detection systems and invasive monitoring software as if they were proven tools rather than speculative answers to a national crisis.
This pattern persists in part because the political system has left a void. When lawmakers refuse to act, they do not simply leave communities unprotected; they create conditions in which private companies can step in and position themselves as the only available line of defense. Every unpassed bill becomes a business opportunity. Every tragedy becomes a catalyst for new product lines. The incentives are clear: the industry thrives whether or not its tools work, because it is selling reassurance in a landscape where reassurance is scarce.
The cost of this approach is borne by young people. School districts, desperate to appear prepared, divert millions toward equipment that soothes adult fears while neglecting the supports that actually reduce violence. Meanwhile, the interventions with the strongest evidence behind them consistently struggle for funding. Researchers who interview would-be shooters often describe two common inflection points: the inability to access a firearm and the presence of someone who helped them find hope in crisis. In other words, policies like safe storage and investments in mental health services are far more consequential than any piece of hardware. Yet they receive only a fraction of the attention and resources that flow effortlessly toward the school security marketplace.
Genuine safety does not come from militarizing classrooms, nor from treating children as potential threats to be monitored, scanned, and contained. It emerges from communities where students feel seen, supported, and able to ask for help. It emerges from policy decisions that make firearms less accessible to those in crisis and that strengthen the social fabric long before someone arrives at a school door with violent intent.
Young people understand this reality not in the abstract but through lived experience. We have spent years participating in drills, navigating the anxiety they create, and watching schools invest in tools that promise deterrence while overlooking the deeper conditions that make campuses vulnerable. These experiences have made the gap between performative action and meaningful prevention impossible to ignore.
The business of fear persists when its assumptions go unchallenged. But the rising generation is no longer willing to accept the illusion that the most visible measures are the most effective. We expect investment in the strategies that work, not in the products that merely signal action.
We are not asking for more cameras, scanners, or devices that manage the consequences of inaction. We are asking for evidence-based approaches that prevent violence in the first place. And we will continue pushing for a country willing to choose substance over spectacle.
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