Biden set to add new guidelines for active shooter drills, how this could affect El Paso schools

EL PASO, TX (KVIA) -- The Biden administration is set to introduce and sign a new executive order aimed at enhancing school safety and cracking down dangerous firearm modifications.

The executive order will ask federal government parters to go through and research how active shooter drills are conducted in schools. White House officials say this is in effort to minimize the negative impacts and trauma students and teachers experience from the drills. 

ABC-7 spoke to Greg Jackson, Deputy Director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, who says they hope that the research will outline challenges that are currently faced, “One thing that we're excited to look into is what level of preparedness should be focused on teachers and school officials versus the students. And what is the proper balance of how we approach it?” said Jackson. “Also how do we minimize the information from getting into the hands of those who could be a threat.”

The administration is also targeting emerging threats posed by firearms that have been modified to be more dangerous. This includes increased regulation and enforcement on machinegun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms. 

Machinegun conversion devices, often called “glock switches” can turn a legal firearm into a fully automatic weapon, allowing a shooter to fire a huge number of rounds in a short amount of time. The new executive order includes a crackdown on the production, sale and import of these devices. 

Jackson says they are also working to address 3D printed firearms, which can be made with readily available materials, bypassing traditional gun control laws. These devices can be made to be undetectable by magnetometers that are used to secure airports, courthouses and event spaces, according to officials. 

“There are restrictions on what can be, printed and produced on 3D printers, and there are ways to make sure that the printer itself, will stick to it from printing certain types of files and content,” said Jackson. “We want to start there with what can we do to make sure that we at least have the basic regulations in place, and then start to think about how do we address kind of the dark market and, some of the loopholes that we know exist.”

Both Biden and Harris are set to speak about the scourge of gun violence during an afternoon event in the Rose Garden.