The School Shooting Industry Is Worth Billions - and It Keeps Growing: NPR

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NPR/National Public Radio, Sept. 8, 2025.

On a sunny day in Grapevine, Texas, three drones are buzzing around the head of a test dummy balanced on a pedestal. It's part of a demonstration outside the National School Safety Conference. "We use drones to stop school shootings," says Justin Marston, the CEO of Campus Guardian Angel, the company selling the drones. In the event of a shooting, remote pilots fly the drones, housed at the school, at the shooter. They shoot pepper balls and run the drones into the shooter to debilitate them.

The technology is one example on a long list of products schools can buy to deter a shooter.

There have been more than 400 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The latest was last month, when a former student opened fire at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. Two students were killed and at least 18 others were wounded. In the wake of those shootings, an industry has emerged to try to protect schools — and business is booming.

According to the market research firm Omdia, the school security industry is now worth as much as $4 billion, and it's projected to keep growing.

The school safety and security industry has grown rapidly over the past decade," says Sonali Rajan, senior director with the research arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun control. "The challenge right now is that these school safety products, the vast majority, have absolutely no evidence guiding their effectiveness." What's for sale: Inside the school safety conference, vendors in an expo hall showcase panic buttons, bullet-resistant whiteboards, facial recognition technology, training simulators, body armor, guns and tasers.

Tom McDermott, with the metal detector manufacturer CEIA USA, says schools used to be a small fraction of their U.S. business. Now they're the majority. "It's not right. We need to solve this problem. It's good for business, but we don't need to be selling to schools," McDermott says. Sarah McNeeley, a sales manager with SAM Medical, is selling trauma kits, which include tourniquets, clotting agents and chest seals. She says their customers are traditionally EMTs, fire departments, and military medics, but increasingly, school districts...

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https://www.npr.org/2025/09/08/nx-s1-5317647/school-shooting-industry