In the past few years, the United States has seen mass shooting incidents. In one of the incidents, the country saw the deaths of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. And this was the tipping point.
The survivors of the shooting have co-founded an organization called Never Again MSD.
For 20 years, Todd Drummond of Hancock County, Mississippi fulfilled various duties as a police officer.
Two years later, the events of the Parkland shooting inspired him to find a new way to prevent any further school tragedies.
As he told WLOX, “Using the Parkland shooting as an example, children didn’t have a defense. And an idea popped into my head to provide the child a static desk that would able them to defend themselves by ducking behind it.”
The final product weighs about 130 pounds and is shielded all the way around by ballistic materials.
“Ballistic materials are like a net, it’s like a catchall of a bullet. It is designed to withstand the impact of similar to like a bowling ball hitting it at 55 miles an hour.”
In the event of a shooting, a child would climb inside the desk and close the hatch we see here.
“There’s a handle to close the desk and there’s a handle above their head, the two handles are dual purpose. One of course to close it, but also to prevent any action to open it. It would take a tremendous force to open it.”
Drummond is also aware that many schools aren’t in the right funding position to afford these desks so his organization seeks to provide them free of charge through donations.
View this post on Instagram
“These are $1,800 pieces and we do not want to put a price on a child’s life. We’ve lost so many lives and we don’t have any idea what those children would’ve done for us. I can say that we’ve lost a lot, enough already. Enough is enough.”
