How Schools Are Being Designed to Minimize Carnage in a Mass Shooting

We already live in a world where children have to endure active shooter drills to prepare themselves for the very real possibility that at any moment, they could become the latest victims of gun violence — something that occurs in the U.S. at rate 25 times higher than other high-income countries — and now, as NBC News reports, schools are being designed specifically to minimize deaths in the event of a mass shooting.

The NBC segment focuses on one such school in particular, a new $48 million high school in Fruitport, Michigan. The school features impact-resistant film on its windows, curved walls to “cut down on the line of sight of an active shooter,” wing-walls for students to hide behind in case there’s a shooter in the hallway and a special system to lock down certain areas in the event of an armed intruder.

Rather than the traditional design of lockers lining the hallways, the school also has elected to have students use short lockers that are all located in one common area so that “teachers can see all 900 students at once.”

There have been 297 mass shootings in the United States this year, as of Aug. 31. You can check out the full NBC News segment below.

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Bonnie Stiernberg

Bonnie Stiernberg is InsideHook’s Managing Editor. She was Music Editor at Paste Magazine for seven years, and she has written about music and pop culture for Rolling Stone, Glamour, Billboard, Vice and more.