Ep 62: A Teenager's Perspective on Active Shooter Events
Episode 62
Published Dec 18, 2023
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 27:35
Episode Summary
Today, we hear what high school students think about Active Shooter Events. Meet Ryan, a 16 year-old sophomore who gives us his no-holds-barred take on how he and his friends think and feel on this topic. Do NOT miss this episode!
Episode Notes
This episode gives us unique insight to the minds of high school students on the topic of Active Shooter Events, what they think about preparedness and procedures schools follow, and discussion of surprisingly insightful tactical thoughts.
Ryan also shares a very up close and personal experience with an incident that happened to him at his school. It was a surprising revelation in the discussion as he did not mention it during pre-interview. Importantly, he shares the raw emotional reaction he and some of his friends experienced.
Do NOT miss this episode!
P.S. This episode is safe for kids. Nothing gory. Just an unvarnished discussion with a 16 year-old high school sophomore about a difficult topic. If you're a parent, we encourage you to sit and watch it with your teenager.
Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/_fGScoFWaCE
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:We're all concerned about active shooter events, but what we worry about is school shootings. And as responders, we're all adults trying to figure out: How do we handle those the best way possible? I thought it might be an interesting take to hear from a high school student themselves how they feel and how much they worry about active shooter events. Coming up today, joined by high school student Ryan, 16 years old, sophomore, stick around, coming up. Welcome to the "Active Shooter Incident Management" podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to Ryan. He's a 16-year-old sophomore at a school nearby. Ryan actually came in to interview me today about a project he's working on in relation to gun violence. And I thought it might be really interesting to hear his take on how high school students think about this stuff. And so Ryan, first of all, thank you for coming in and agreeing to do this.
Ryan:
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, sure. So hopefully this'll be fun and we pick up a few tidbits. But how much do you as a high school student, you and your friends, how much do you guys think about the current environment and worrying about active shooter events at a high school and gun violence and things like that? What?
Ryan:
So obviously, we're kids. We don't think much about it. We're never like, "It's not gonna happen to us." Like yeah, it's a terrible thing, but we're like, "It's never gonna happen to us." We have lockdown drills. We have all these things. We all think, "Great, another lockdown drill. At least we're missing five minutes of class." But the thing is, we never take it seriously. And what happens if it does happen to us? Like, no one thinks about it, 'cause you don't want it to happen to us. But it, of course, can happen to you. Just no one wants it to, no one thinks about it at our school at least.
Bill Godfrey:
So tell me what your lockdown drills are like.
Ryan:
So our lockdown drills is the announcements go on, "Oh, this is lockdown drill." Teacher turns off the lights. We have little flaps that go over the door window. And we just stay silent. That's all we do. We go into a little corner. But honestly, like, how much will that really help us? Obviously, if a shooter comes into a school, he's not gonna look at all these doors and then, "Man, no one's here. Out of the whole school, no one's here." Obviously, they're gonna know we're in the safest corner, we're somewhere. Like, does it really help us?
Bill Godfrey:
It's a really interesting question. So when they do the lockdown drills and the teachers put the flap over the window on the door, do they also lock the doors? Are the doors locked?
Ryan:
Yeah, of course. Of course, the doors are supposed to be locked out throughout the day no matter what, another thing that's just supposed to help us.
Bill Godfrey:
As I say, are they?
Ryan:
Most of 'em are not. Most of them don't lock the doors 'cause they don't wanna have a kid getting a disruption in class to go open the door every two minutes for the kid that wants to skip class in the bathroom. So they just leave the door open and unlocked. So anybody could walk in.
Bill Godfrey:
And for those teachers that, you know, have their doors typically unlocked, when you guys do have these lockdown drills, do they make an effort to lock 'em?
Ryan:
Yeah, of course, 'cause their entire thing is, they have to turn off the lights. They have to close the flap. They have to lock the door. It's their priority over us. So yeah
Bill Godfrey:
So have you ever noticed, does the teacher have to go outside to use the key to lock the door, or can they lock it from the inside?
Ryan:
They lock it in the inside.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay.
Ryan:
I don't think the school wants to jeopardize the teachers of getting hurt or anything.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, so do you ever talk to your friends about this when events have occurred? Does it, you know, you hear about it in the news, you go back to school the next day. Does it ever come up in conversation or?
Ryan:
I don't think the school wants to jeopardize the teachers of getting hurt or anything.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, so do you ever talk to your friends about this when events have occurred? Does it, you know, you hear about it in the news, you go back to school the next day. Does it ever come up in conversation or?
Ryan:
Sometimes with like certain teachers, like they'll say, "Oh, did you guys see what happened on the news?" And then, the entire class, instead of doing a math paper, you're talking about the next school that just got shot up. And like, we never really talk about, well, are we ready for that? Are our procedures enough for that? We never talk about that. We just say, "Yeah, it's scary." And one kid will obviously, of course, say, "Are we doing enough?" And teachers, I don't know what they think when they say that.
Bill Godfrey:
Interesting. So in your lockdown drills, you guys obviously lock the doors, cover the windows, you go to a corner. Do they ever practice evacuation or talk to you about what to do? Do you guys ever talk about what you would do if somebody came into the room?
Ryan:
They say if someone were to come into the room, you grab the heaviest thing and you throw it at 'em. That's all they say. So if that's like a book, your computer, just your entire bag. If someone can lift it, their desk. They say just, "If you see someone walk in you don't know and they look dangerous, start throwing stuff at them."
Bill Godfrey:
How does that make you feel?
Ryan:
I feel like, really, you want us to throw a book at them? Is a book really gonna do something? 'Cause a person could just get back up. And then what are you doing when you have no books? You're done.
Bill Godfrey:
So you feel like you might need a little more-
Ryan:
I guess so.
Bill Godfrey:
Flushing out of the plan?
Ryan:
There's gotta be something at least. I mean, some of the rooms at our campus have a back door that leads to just the courtyard. But the courtyard's the most unsafe place on the campus.
Bill Godfrey:
Why do you say that?
Ryan:
It's just way too open. So if someone were to come to your school, I'd rather stay in that room than run out in the courtyard and risk being seen from like 100 feet away across campus. And then now you got a guy chasing after you, and you may not even know it.
Bill Godfrey:
Interesting. Have you ever been in the hallway when they've done a lockdown drill or seen? What happened, let me rephrase that. What happens when students are in the hallway? Do they do a lockdown drill in the middle of changing classes or things like that?
Ryan:
Now, personally, during the drills, we've never said anything like, "Well, what if we're in the hallway?" I think I've heard one say, "Oh, go in the bathroom. That's your safest place." But again, if you're in the bathroom, where you gonna go out to, just back into the hallway? There was a time last year, so it would be my freshman year, where everyone was changing classes. No one knew what was going on. And the teachers are screaming, "Get back to class. Get back to class. We're in a lockdown drill." And no one knew we were in a lockdown drill 'cause they didn't announce it. So like we all get to class and we're like, "What's going on?" And then, we later find out there was someone on campus that wasn't supposed to be on campus. And so we were in lockdown for at least 25 minutes having no clue what's going on. So that's the only time I remember going from class to class telling us. They just were screaming, "We're on lockdown. We're on lockdown." So everyone was running back to class.
Bill Godfrey:
So do they have any kind of like bell or alarm that gets sounded when there's a lockdown, or is it just an announcement on the PA?
Ryan:
If it's a drill, they always say, "This is a drill, nothing's bad." But never have they said like, "Yeah, this is happening." Because there was one time where, at my school, in my class, so this was probably like the most chill teacher you could ever think of. Didn't care what you did. One day we all walk into class, he's like, "Hey, principal's doing an inspection, so if you hear the door open, put your phone away." We're all chilling on our phones. We hear the door start to open. Everyone's shoving their phone in their pocket, closing like the games on their computer. It wasn't the principal. It was a police officer. Walks in, looks around, sees a kid, goes towards him, grabs him and just takes him outta the class. We're all sitting here like, "What on earth just happened?" And kids next to him were like, "He had a gun in his bag." And we're all like, "What?" They're like, "He had a gun in his bag." And I was like, "Oh my god, a kid that was probably 13 feet away from me had a gun in his bag." I was terrified when I found out about that. I was like, "One wrong thing that we did, it wouldn't have been what he was planning to use it. It could have been us." Now, the news came out and it said he only had three of four bullets in it. They said he planned to use it afterschool, totally off-campus, but still, that is terrifying as a 15-year-old kid who has no idea what's going on.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, that's a tough experience. Did you talk to your parents about it?
Ryan:
Yeah, I watched the news broadcast with them. They were like, "You were in his class?" I was like, "Yeah, me and my best friend, sitting right next to each other, we were playing games on our computers. We hear the door open." I'm like, "Yo, yo, close that real quick. Get back to work." And we look, 'cause I sat right next to the door. So I would hear it perfectly. I'm like, "He's here, he's here." And we're like, "Oh, that's not our principal. That's a police officer. Okay, what is he doing here?" Totally goes to the kid, grabs him, escorts him out, we're like, "What just happened?" Our teacher was sitting on his phone too and not paying attention. He hears the door, he gets up like ready, and he was silent after it happened. He was, "What is going on?" He thought it was an inspection from our principal. And after they left, they're just, "What is going on?" And I look at my phone again, and I see messages from my friends who are at the other campus. And they're like, "Oh yeah, we're on lockdown." I'm like, "Why are you guys on lockdown? The kid with the gun is at our school." So obviously that was probably, they probably didn't wanna say we were on lockdown so that kid wouldn't know, "Oh yeah, we know you have the gun."
Bill Godfrey:
Interesting. That's a difficult challenge. So you've been pretty close to this.
Ryan:
I have, yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
And in the days that followed, did you have conversations with your friends about it, you know, beyond the immediate shock or?
Ryan:
Well, obvious, the next day, some kids didn't come to school. 'Cause you know, like, they were scared or whatever. They didn't feel right. I went to school 'cause I was like, "It's just one thing. He's gone. He's expelled." So I went to school and my first period teacher, we didn't do anything in class. We just talked about what happened. And there was a kid in that class who was in my first period, and we were talking about it like, "Yeah, we were in that class. He didn't like hint at it. He didn't." A lot of kids were saying like he was showing it to people in other classes. So that's when he got caught. But like many classes would just drop whatever we were doing and we're talking about this now.
Bill Godfrey:
Wow. So let me change directions here a little bit. So you've talked about some things that you think don't make sense and are particular gaps in your school. What do you wish adults would do about this? What do you wish the adults would do differently as parents, teachers, school leaders, police officers, school resource officers?
Ryan:
That's a hard thing, 'cause like, it's not really what can they do. It's not what do you want them to do. It's what could we do. And in that situation, what can teachers really do? Yeah, they can lock the door, turn off the light, close the flap. But what do you do after that? Do you just sit in the corner silent? Or do you call 911 instead of thinking someone else is? So it's just like, what is there really to do in a classroom with books as your defense?
Bill Godfrey:
These are good questions. Let me share a couple things with you that I would suggest, just so you know, 'cause I don't wanna let the opportunity slide by. So turning off the lights and getting in a corner outta sight has proven to be, first of all, the locked door has proven to be a significant deterrent in keeping an attacker from coming into a particular room. It takes time to breach a lock, breach a door. You know, on TV shows and in the movies, they show somebody shooting the lock and coming right in. It doesn't work like that in real life. Most of the time, if you shoot a lock, you're gonna get a ricochet. And it's a 50/50 chance you're gonna hit yourself. So it just doesn't work like it does in the movies. So a locked door is an impediment. It's a time barrier. And most attackers will then move to a different target, either somebody that's in the hall or another door that's open. So a locked door is the biggest deterrent. There's mixed reality on whether closing the flap or leaving it open and being out of sight of it are good or bad. There's mixed schools on that. Obviously, lights off and being somewhere where you're outta sight, quiet does call into question: Is there anybody in this room? Are they at the lunchroom? Are they out on the, you know, on the PE field or whatever? Now, sitting tight, what I would say to you, you've heard the adage run, hide, fight? Have you ever heard that before?
Ryan:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay. Have you heard avoid, deny, defend?
Ryan:
No.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay. So the first instinct really should be to run and get out of the area. It's interesting that schools have defaulted to the second thing, which is to hide. And there's reasons why that is kind of a sound strategy, but there's also gaps in that. And so, you know, what I taught Abby, my daughter who you know, what I taught Abby is, if you can run, run. And if you're forced into hiding, be prepared to fight at a moment's notice. Now, the books and throwing things at 'em is one thing. I think you've got a better weapon in every classroom, and that's the fire extinguisher. Somewhere near the door generally is gonna be a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. And usually it's a 10-pound fire extinguisher. And it's almost always metal. That's a very good weapon to hit somebody with, but you know what else is good? When you pull the pin and squeeze the handle and spray it in somebody's face, it sprays a powder foam that actually makes it a little bit challenging to breathe. It'll make you couch. It will get in your eyes. So if you have a fire extinguisher ready to go and somebody comes in the room, and you can shoot that from eight to 10 feet away, as you're moving up towards them to get 'em covered in the stuff. And then when you get closer to 'em, you hit 'em in the head with a 10-pound steel object. So I think that would be more effective than a book, which I would suggest to you. The windows in your classroom, 'cause every school has to have windows, are they low enough to the floor that if you guys broke the windows out, you could get out through the windows?
Ryan:
Now, the classes I have at my campus, there are no windows.
Bill Godfrey:
Really?
Ryan:
No. I think the only ones with windows are the ones upstairs where we are not by the ground. So obviously, that would not be. But instead of that, they have a storage closet, which leads to a different classroom. So that is kinda like their escape route.
Bill Godfrey:
The second way out-
Ryan:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Is through the storage closet. And can you actually get through the storage closet or is there so much crap in the storage closet?
Ryan:
No, this one, the one that I have at least, yeah, you can. My teacher is very, he's very organized with it. And just, you could easily just run right through to the other class. Of if you needed to, just run to the back of it and then hide there.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. Well, the other thing you can do would be, if you do have a window, is break out the window to escape. Now, the thing that most people, so again, the fire extinguisher, great tool for that. Use the butt of the fire extinguisher against the window and break it. But then, before you try to go through, use the fire extinguisher to go around the frame to knock out all the little pieces of glass so that you can try to avoid cutting. If you have time and there's a blanket or a cloth or something like that to lay over the frame so that as you're going through it, people don't get cut. But if you hear a gunman coming and you have a window to exit out of, I wouldn't hesitate to break out that window, rake the frame is what we call it. And you can use the fire extinguisher, use a stick. You know, you could use a book. You could use the edge of a book to rake out that frame and get the glass and get outta the window. Even if it's a second-story window, okay, that isn't gonna be fun, but if you're able to get out the window and hang and drop, you're actually only dropping about eight to 10 feet. Now, in my case, I'd end up in the hospital if I dropped 10 feet, but you're young kids. You're gonna typically be able to drop eight to 10 feet, probably land on your feet, and run away. You might have a few people that twist an ankle. You might even have somebody that breaks a bone. That'll heal a whole lot better than a bullet wound would.
Ryan:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
So you know, those are things that you can do. How does that make you feel talking about that?
Ryan:
I mean, I've talked about it before with my parents, friends, people at school, teachers. So it doesn't bother me at all.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, get away. Now, how much do you know, if anything, about how to help somebody that's been shot? Have they don't anything to teach you about bleeding control or anything like that?
Ryan:
I mean, I'm sure they have, 'cause they have what are called Hope classes. And that's, for start, it's mainly known for like PE, but then it also has like CPR and health things. So I'm sure those classes would be much more helpful in that situation.
Bill Godfrey:
Sure. So with gunshot wounds, there's kind of limited options on what you can do to really help somebody. The number one thing is to control the bleeding. Get the bleeding stopped if you can, but if you can't get it stopped, get it slowed down. The best option there is what we call direct pressure. You could take, you know, any cloth, a towel, a rag if it's not filthy, a shirt, you know, anything, a handkerchief, anything you have, put it right on the wound and hold pressure on it to try to slow down the bleeding. And even though the blood is gonna come out and gonna fill the garment, that blood may, so like let's say you put a towel on it, and it was bleeding pretty bad into the towel. Still hold the towel on and hold pressure on, because it may clot. That blood that's in the towel may help clot and at the very least is gonna help slow it down. If somebody gets shot in the chest, so they're shot up in where your lungs are and they're having trouble breathing, put a piece of plastic over the hole so that they don't suck air in.
That's one of the things that, and I won't bore you with all of the mechanics of how that goes wrong. But when you're shot in the chest, if you're breathing and you're sucking air in through the hole, that can cause you to die fairly quickly. But a little piece of plastic, so that, I mean, even like a Walmart shopping bag over the top of the thing will keep, it'll seal against the skin to where the air doesn't come in easily. Could save somebody's life. Rolling people up on their side. They've been shot, maybe they got shot in the chest or shot in the face, and they're bleeding. And they may or may not be conscious. Rolling them up on their side so that any blood that's in their mouth or in their airway drains out, so it doesn't block their airway could save somebody's life. So little things like that. And maybe those are things that we as adults oughta start talking to schools and school leadership about. Let me ask you this. How would you react as a kid or, you know, emotionally if one day you come into class and the teacher goes, "Okay, today we're not learning about math. Today we're gonna learn how to control bleeding if you get shot." Would that upset you? 'Cause you know, some kids are very emotional about that stuff.
Ryan:
So honestly, I would think some kids would think it's a relief we're not learning math. And other kids would be like, "Why do we need to learn this?" And then obviously, you have, I would think like, "Oh, this is great. I'm gonna need to know this eventually. 'Cause what if something happens?" It's always about what if. It's always: What if you get shot? What if someone else gets shot? Instead of standing there, go help them instead of thinking someone else will do it. And last year, we did have something similar, but with CPR. And it was always just take action and then go to somebody, you're like, "Call 911." And 'cause, and I've been told this by my dad. He's told me, "If anything ever happens and you know how to deal with it, you step in and then you point at someone and you say, 'You call 911.' 'Cause if you don't do that, they're gonna say, 'Oh, someone else is gonna call 911.'" But he was like, "If you tell someone to call 911, everyone knows that person is calling 911. And then even if they don't, just tell another person, 'Call 911.'"
Bill Godfrey:
It's very good advice and right on target. And I'll add on that to say, should you ever find yourself in one of these one day and you've got some injured that are with you in the classroom, don't assume that 911 knows that you have injured in your classroom. Somebody call 911 and say, "We're in classroom 118. There's 22 of us. We have five kids that are injured." And if you can provide some specific, like, "Two of 'em are bad, they're critical. Three of 'em are awake and talking, they're hurt, but two of 'em are really bad." Whatever kind of information you can provide to the 911 dispatcher about your location and the situation, whether there's a threat in the room with you or whether there's no threat but you've got injured, all of that can help the responding police, fire, and EMS personnel prioritize where they need to go and where they can get crews to you to rescue.The other thing that's probably really important to tell you. You mentioned that sometimes you've been on lockdowns for 20 or 25 minutes. In a real event, you will probably be on a lockdown with little to no information for an hour or more, especially if you don't have anybody injured in your room.
So let's say the shooting happened someplace else on the other side of campus, and you guys are in lockdown, but the violence didn't really come anywhere near you. The responders are gonna wanna take care of all the injured and start what we call clearing the campus, which is where we do a room-by-room search to make sure there's no threats. And in some cases, the school personnel don't get an opportunity to do an announcement on the PA. And you know, most cops and firefighters and paramedics, they don't know how to go to a school office and find the PA controls to put on an announcement. And so you're stuck in lockdown for what can be a very long time worrying. And of course, by that time, your cellphone's lit up with text messages from your friends. You know it's real. Everybody's gonna be scared. But here's the reality. 90% of active shooter events are over in 10 minutes or less. 90%, the killing is over in 10 minutes or less. So if you're sitting in lockdown in a real event on 20 minutes, whatever bad has happened is probably done. And if you guys are okay, then let people know that you're okay. And if you're not, get that called into 911. I don't know, is that helpful?
Ryan:
Yeah, that was great information.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, anything I didn't ask that you would wanna volunteer or talk directly to police officers, firefighters, EMTs?
Ryan:
No, I think I'm all caught up in what I need to know and if anything happens.
Bill Godfrey:
Ryan, thank you for doing this. It was a pleasure. I appreciate you coming in.
Ryan:
Thank you for having me.
Bill Godfrey:
Enjoy the couple years you have left of high school. If you were like me, you couldn't wait to get paroled outta there and get on to college life.
Ryan:
I'm just ready for it to be done.
Bill Godfrey:
I hear ya, I hear ya. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for tuning in. I hope you found this an interesting detour from our normal podcasts. We'll get it posted as soon as we can. I wanna say thank you to Karla Torres, our producer, for getting this put together so quickly. And until next time, stay safe.