Fighting Chance Solutions develops ‘The Sleeve’ to protect children and teachers against school shootings

IN A world where military-style lockdowns are a reality, a group of people have come up with something that could save hundreds of lives.

IT’S the stuff nightmares are made of.

A classroom full of children and bangs in the corridor that set your heart thumping. Is a shooter on the loose outside?

That’s the reality for Daniel Nietzel, a sixth and seventh grade teacher in the US, who lives in constant fear of a school massacre.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t walk in and wonder is this going to be the day? And that’s scary” Mr Nietzel told news.com.au over the phone while barbecuing in the small, mid-west town where he lives.

“It was on the teachers’ minds when a locker slammed ‘was that a gunshot?” Typically the students wouldn’t notice that [but now] they stop as well. They look to you. That’s the saddest part you’re starting to see 10, 11 and 12 year olds [being scared]. “No one should have to go to school and wonder if they’re going to come out alive.”

His comments come amid a spate of shootings in the US, with 74 recorded since the tragedy at Sandy Hook in December 2012, when gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults.

Since then, shootings have been recorded across the country from Florida, to North Carolina and Texas and Mr Nietzel said no one should consider themselves immune.

“[I live in] a laid back, Mark Twain, old-school river town. A place you would call classic America but you’ve seen these incidents happen in the same town I just described.”

But with military-style school lockdowns becoming a reality in Muscatine, Iowa, where he lives and teachers being given very little help to deal with them, Mr Neitzel decided something needed to change.

“We wanted to do something. I was getting sick and tired of acknowledging we had a problem. It’s easy to sit and complain but it’s the people that acknowledge that who are going to be successful. It kind of hit me that I can practise what I preach.”

The result is Fighting Chance Solutions, a company he formed with fellow teachers and administrators who produced a carbon steel sleeve that can be fitted over doors from the inside to stop them opening, protecting the lives of the students and teachers within.

The group was inspired after learning one of the teachers at Sandy Hook was shot in the corridor while trying to protect her students by locking the door from the outside.

“We’ve been told you can’t be in the hallway. If you’ve been shot you’ve doubly exposed your kids,” Mr Nietzel said.

However despite this fact, the best advice they were given in a shooting situation was to tie an internet cable around the door and hope for the best.

“It takes about two minutes to do correctly by the time you get the tools you need. In training the cords were snapping in half, the trainer was able to break the classroom with one or two tugs and came in and [pretend] shot us. He goes ‘you’re dead, you’re dead’.”

It also needed to work fast, as Mr Nietzel’s wife teaches in a classroom with three doors she would never be able to secure in time.

“[Shootings] happen so fast. It’s four to five minutes and they’re over. You just have to try and stay alive. My wife is going to take four to five minutes to secure her doors and she hasn’t even talked to her kids at that point,” he said.

Since its release just weeks ago The Sleeve has gained a huge amount of attention across the US. It’s made from local products and is being sold direct to teachers online for $55 as a simple and effective way to potentially save lives.

It’s one of the few ways teachers can protect themselves from gun violence after efforts to clamp down on gun control have failed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. One year on from the tragedy a bipartisan bill calling for background checks failed in the Senate, while more laws to expand gun rights have been passed than ones attempting to restrict them, the Guardian reports.

Mr Neitzel owns a gun himself and said he doesn’t expect the sleeve to reduce shootings, but hopes it will give teachers peace of mind.

“It’s happening more and more. That’s frustrating and the scary thing is I don’t see this decreasing anytime soon. If anything it’s increasing yet we still have school districts saying they’re going to do something about it and they don’t.”

Originally published as Fighting Chance Solutions develops ‘The Sleeve’ to protect children and teachers against school shootings