‘You Would All Be Dead’: Kid Tells Adults How To Avoid Shooter (Video)

NATIONAL CITY, CA — Often asked in these heart-crushing days following the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre — where 19 of the 21 people killed were 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds who will never get their driver's licenses, go on their first dates or participate in any of the rites of passage associated with growing up in America — is this question:

What are we doing to America’s children? Active shooter drills are as much a part of their lives as rehearsing for a school play — something like 95 percent of schools nationwide have implemented them, according to the gun control and gun violence prevention lobbying group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Today’s kids are so well versed in how to reduce the risk they’ll be killed in a mass shooting that one of them provided expert advice in a training session in National City, California, according to a video shared on social media. Patch reached out with city officials there for more context but did not immediately hear back. We’ll update with any relevant information we receive.

Measures to curb gun violence are political, and the people tweeting the video have their own agendas to advance. But the video itself is a stark reminder of the extent to which gun violence is robbing America’s children of their innocence.

“Every parent in America needs to watch this,” gun reform activist David Hogg tweeted. Hogg has been on a relentless campaign for gun reform since surviving the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“If there was an active shooter,” a blond-haired, brown-eyed adolescent said on the video, interrupting the chatter as she opened the training session, “you would all be dead.”

She was met with stunned silence.

“When you talk out loud,” she went on matter-of-factly, “the shooter can tell where you are, and where you’re hiding. Sometimes we play the game on who can stay quietest the longest, so we all remember … .”

She went on, describing step by step a routine drilled into kids’ heads so they can live to breathe another day.

“You can’t cry,” she noted. “It gives away your position, and your hiding spot.”

America’s children have learned to identify where gunfire is coming from by the sound of its pop. The shooter could be down the hall, the girl said, or “right outside your door.”

Instead of songs to jump rope by, this girl and her classmates remember one their teacher made up to help them remember the protocol in an active shooter threat:

“Lock down, lock down, let’s all hide,” she sang for the group. “Lock the doors and stay inside. Crouch on down, don’t make a sound, and don’t cry or you’ll be found.”

Watch the video on Twitter.

The video struck a nerve across the country.

“Watch this entire thing,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted. “This is what our kids are being taught in school because the adults refuse to enact commonsense laws that will protect them.”

“This is harrowing,” actor and television host Mike Hill tweeted. “If this doesn’t get to you, you’re emotionally dead.”

“We’d rather teach children this than do anything about the proliferation of guns in this country,” tweeted Jemele Hill, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a podcast host.

“If this video doesn’t make you want to make positive changes for our children, I don’t know what will,” Dr. Lynne Eldridge, a physician, writer and “mommy first” tweeted. “How heartbreaking that may of our children know what to do in the event of an active shooter [more] than we do. What are we teaching them about adults?”

“We owe our children more than this,” Rabbi Adam Michael Latz tweeted.

“It’s hard to watch this and not conclude we are a failed nation,” tweeted a user whose profile says he lives in Richmond, Virginia.

“How did we get here?” asked a user who describes himself as a “hopeful & resolute Democrat.”

“We had innocent little fire-drills when I was in school,” he tweeted.

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