The Philippine National Police and the Department of Education are using a postponement of nationwide school safety drills to strengthen the exercises, while the interior department pushes for a tougher gun law.
In a statement on Tuesday, PNP chief General Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said police units were working with education officials to refine how the drills are run so they are safe and appropriate for students. “All the safety measures that the PNP discussed and recommended to the DepEd are anchored on the welfare and interest of the learners,” he said, adding that it would be “a continuing and an evolving process with the end goal of making all schools safe and conducive to learning.”
The coordination follows the postponement of the nationwide drills, which came in the wake of a shooting at a university in Zamboanga earlier in the month. Alongside the review of the exercises, the Department of the Interior and Local Government is seeking stronger firearms regulation.
The pairing is telling. School drills prepare people to react when something goes wrong; gun regulation is aimed at making the underlying event less likely in the first place. Treating them together, rather than as separate responses, reflects a recognition that preparedness and prevention address different parts of the same problem.
How far the gun-law push goes will depend on politics, where firearms regulation is rarely straightforward. For now, the immediate work is practical: making sure that drills meant to protect students do not themselves alarm or endanger them, and that schools come out of the review safer than before.
