Lessons On School Security From Oregon

An interesting piece from Tactical Science entitled "The Lock Held. The Glass Didn't." It discusses how the active shooter at Silver Rail Elementary was still so easily able to gain entry despite the physical security measures. An excerpt:

Key points

• Early reports said the Silver Rail shooter shot his way through locked doors. That is not quite what happened. He fired into the glass panes of a locked set of exterior double doors and went through the opening. The lock held. The glass did not.

• We have seen this before, every time. Across 54 K-12 active shooter events from 2000 to 2025, every attacker who forced his way past a locked door did it through glass. Not one defeated the lock itself.

• Better hardware will not fix a glass problem. If a school's entry is mostly standard glass, the lock on it matters much less than we tend to assume.

And more detail:

    We coded every K-12 active shooter event in the FBI's data from 2000 to 2025, 54 events in all, and documented 66 doors that attackers interacted with. For each one we used records requests, after-action reports, and interviews with schools and agencies to work out what the door was made of, how it was locked, and what the attacker did to it.

    Attackers tried to force their way through a locked or barricaded door nine times and got through six times. All six went through glass. They shot out a glass panel in the door, a glass panel beside it, or a sidelight, and stepped or reached through the opening. Not one of them got past the lock itself.

    The three failed attempts point the same way. In each, the attacker shot at the door or the lock itself, and the door held. Solid doors with working locks were never breached.

    The 2023 attack at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, shows both halves in one building. The attacker got in by shooting through the glass entry doors, then went upstairs, fired at secured classroom doors, and couldn't get into any of those rooms.

    What this means for your school. When someone with a gun meets a locked door, the weak point hasn't been the lock. It's the glass in or beside the door. So the question to ask isn't only about hardware. If someone shoots out the adjoining glass, can they get in?

 Something you should also consider as you look at your home security measures.