At a Fresno County elementary school, a masked man with a fake gun carried out an active-shooter drill without most of the teachers and parents being informed ahead of time. At San Marino High School, police officers planned to fire blanks to mimic the sound of gunfire, but the drill was ultimately canceled over concerns of traumatizing students. More recently, a principal at a San Gabriel elementary school was placed on a leave of absence after allegedly using her fingers to mime holding a gun and pretending to shoot kids, telling them, "Boom. The rise in active-shooter drills at American schools has coincided with the growing phenomenon of mass shootings in the U.S., as well as media coverage focused on school massacres including Columbine, Sandy Hook and Uvalde. These drills have taken place at 95% of U.S. public schools as of the 2015-16 school year, according to the Education Department's National Center for Education statistics.

This article was copublished with The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good. Less than 10 days after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022, Axon Enterprises CEO Rick Smith announced the company had formally started developing Taser-equipped drones. The technology, Smith argued, could potentially save lives during mass shootings by incapacitating active shooters within seconds. For Axon, which changed its name from Taser in 2017, the concept seemed a sensible next step for stakeholders who share Axon's public safety mission, Smith said on the company's site. "In brief," he wrote, "non-lethal drones can be installed in schools and other venues and play the same role that sprinklers and other fire suppression tools do for firefighters: Preventing a catastrophic event, or at least mitigating its worst effects."

Joe Levy is working hard to help avoid another mass school shooting tragedy. He says his technology, designed to spot a gun using existing CCTV cameras, could make a critical difference in future life-or-death situations. Seventeen people died in 2018 when a 19-year-old student opened fire at Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, USA. Fifteen died in the Columbine High School massacre, near Denver, Colorado, in 1999 when a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old shot fellow students. And 22 people died in May of this year when an 18-year-old rampaged through the Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas – one of the worst school shootings in US history.

After the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, an all-too-familiar question emerged: how do we prevent such horror from happening again? A handful of companies have said they have tech solutions that could help. They included Drone firm Axon, which promoted a remotely-operated Taser device to be deployed in schools. EdTech companies, including Impero Software, said their student surveillance services could flag warning signs and help prevent the next attack. The companies are part of a thriving school security industry, one that has grown to $3.1bn in 2021 from just $2.7m in 2017, according to market research firm Omdia.

Armed police couldn't stop the shooters in Buffalo and in Uvalde. But perhaps a very small drone equipped with a Taser could. Specifically, Axon CEO Rick Smith said in a Thursday announcement, "non-lethal drones capable of incapacitating an active shooter in less than 60 seconds" (or so the press release goes), which would be stationed inside of schools. At the push of a panic button, a trained human pilot at a control center elsewhere in the country would launch a drone. With the help of a network of security cameras, they would try to target the drone's onboard Taser probes into the shooter's flesh, in the hope of keeping them down until police could arrive on the scene.

From the company that brought you Taser stun guns, comes an AI weapon so dangerous it was rejected by the company's own Artificial Intelligence ethics advisory board. But that didn't stop the CEO from announcing the weapon as a response to the May 24 Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting, like some misguided white horse hoping to tase our nation to safety. According to the BBC, Axon (formerly known, terrifyingly, as Taser International), has announced plans to produce a lightweight taser that can be deployed on a drone or robot and operated remotely via "targeting algorithms." The operator, a human (for now), will have "agreed to take on legal and moral responsibility for any action that takes place." This is how they hope to help stop school shootings.

This photo provided by Axon Enterprise depicts a conceptual design through a computer-generated rendering of a taser drone. Axon Enterprise, Inc. via AP hide caption This photo provided by Axon Enterprise depicts a conceptual design through a computer-generated rendering of a taser drone. Taser developer Axon said this week it is working to build drones armed with the electric stunning weapons that could fly in schools and "help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook, or Columbine." But its own technology advisers quickly panned the idea as a dangerous fantasy. The publicly traded company, which sells Tasers and police body cameras, floated the idea of a new police drone product last year to its artificial intelligence ethics board, a group of well-respected experts in technology, policing and privacy. Some of them expressed reservations about weaponizing drones in over-policed communities of color.

We aren't saying that the massacre didn't happen in Texas and in no way would ever be able to write words that would ease the pain of those parents and family members of the slain children in the Texas Massacre. What is wrong with the narrative is something you probably hadn't heard yet despite the relentless media coverage of the massacre. What would you think If you learned that the school district that the shooting occurred in had Artificial Intelligence Software, that is sold commercially, that is meant to monitor social media for threats of violence against schools and the students. That is exactly what was in place in Uvalde, Texas when the shooting occurred. Worse yet, the software company lists threats of school shootings as one of the features the artificial intelligence is designed to catch before a mass shooting has occurred. In theory, the software catches these threats and reports them to law enforcement so they can respond in time to prevent the tragedy or at least help save as many lives as possible.

Clearview AI, the surveillance firm notoriously known for harvesting some 20 billion face scans off of public social media searches, said it may bring its technology to schools and other private businesses. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the company revealed it's working with a U.S. company selling visitor management systems to schools. That reveal came around the same time as a horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that tragically left 19 children and two teachers dead. Though Clearview wouldn't provide more details about the education-linked companies to Gizmodo, other facial recognition competitors have spent years trying to bring the tech to schools with varying levels of success and pushback. New York state even moved to ban facial recognition in schools two years ago.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in Southwest Texas has been arrested and charged with assaulting and mistreating a juvenile in custody, the agency said Friday. The agent based in the Del Rio area along the border with Mexico was arrested Monday by Texas Rangers, CBP said in a statement. A warrant was issued "following an indictment on a charge of official oppression," the agency said.