Katherine Schweit

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

The gun culture that we have has changed over time. When I started in the FBI, I was working counterintelligence and national security matters, but when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, then I was tagged to create what became the FBI's Active Shooter Program. My role was to create a team of people to train the 800,000 law enforcement to say, "What do you do when a shooting occurs?", to reduce the number of deaths if a shooting is underway. I think it's important to always step back and look at the facts. Sixty percent of the firearms deaths in the United States are suicides. It changes your perspective about the risk of having a firearm in your house.

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

When I started as a print journalist, it was everybody read their local newspaper, but now everybody gets their news from social media.

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

What occurred in the United States didn't go out all over the United States in social media, but now it does. So people now think that every corner has a murderer.

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

We're making progress. We have 25 years of data now. In the last two years, the number of these types of shootings has gone down two years in a row. And that's the first time in 25 years.

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

You know, I wrote a nice long book, and the only opinion that I have in the book that I say straight up, "This is my opinion, it's not based on fact," is I don't think teachers should carry guns. I think teachers have a very important job to do, and that's not a job they should worry about. But a gun in a school, from a security standpoint, should be based on a lot of factors.

KATHERINE SCHWEIT

When we first started doing active shooter drills in the United States, a lot of schools weren't doing them the right way, so to speak, and they were traumatizing people and adults. I think that now there's a recognition that even active shooter drills are really safety drills. Whether it's a fire, or a tornado, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a shooter, the five-year-old just needs to be trained to be quiet, to listen, to follow instructions. That's what the training should be. That's safety training.