Over the last two years, Florida has invested over $1 million into a pilot program that installs the ‘Campus Guardian Angel’ drones in schools. Broward County Public Schools, where the worst school shooting in the state’s history took place, is one of three school districts participating in the first round of the pilot program.
— from a story by Amanda Rosa, “Can Drones Stop a School Shooter? Florida Wants to Find Out” in the Miami Herald, August 6, 2026.
Reportedly, the ‘Campus Guardian Angel’ drones are built to zip through the school hallways at 60 miles per hour, “buzzing loudly like a swarm of bees”, honking and flashing strobe lights, and armed with enough pepper spray to incapacitate a bull elephant.
Theoretically, this happens within moments after a school shooter makes himself or herself known. (Usually, ‘himself’, but gender definitions aren’t what they used to be, these days.)
Reportedly, this will be a great improvement over police officers, who have been known to hesitate in such dangerous situations. In 2022, for example, police officers waited for over an hour before they entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where a shooter killed 19 students and two teachers.
By comparison, the ‘Campus Guardian Angel’ drones will be up and flying within 15 seconds of a reported threat.
For a certain fee.
The drones themselves work for free, of course. They just need to have their batteries charged now and then.
It’s the company that makes them that charges a pretty penny. In the case of the Florida schools, an Austin, Texas-based company will be charging $1.2 million to install their drones — as a pilot project — in three Florida schools. That comes to about $400,000 per school.
An elite, on-site safety response capability that works alongside school safety teams, confronting any active shooter threat in seconds to save lives…
But apparently, a bit more expensive than school safety teams? There are about 15,820 schools in Florida, give or take. So we’re looking at a potential cost of $6.3 billion, just to cover Florida.
We understand that government leaders like to spend money. It’s what they’re good at. Stopping school violence? Not so good.
I found the Campus Guardian Angel website here, and not surprisingly, it’s full of drone-created video footage, which I’ve always enjoyed watching.
I did notice something curious about the drones, however, that might need to be addressed at some point. The drones can’t open doors.
The schools I’ve been in, have interior doors, and often those doors are closed. So maybe that’s a bit of a problem?
If Campus Guardian Angel can’t solve the “closed doors” problem, maybe they will shift gears, because I can think of a lot of places where a pepper-spray-emitting, strobe-light-flashing, horn-honking drone would be useful.
Here in Colorado, for example, who wouldn’t be tickled to own a drone that can scare away the bear who keeps breaking into my trash can and spreading my garbage up and down the street?
Or the goddamn guy who’s been letting his dog poop on my front lawn.
Not that I have $400,000 to spend on drones, of course. But it’s comforting just to imagine that guy and his dog getting a dose of pepper spray.
Anyway, getting back to the Florida schools pilot program. One of the claims made by supporters of the program is that prospective school shooters will be frightened by the mere thought of getting pepper-sprayed by drones, so maybe they will just stay home and watch TikTok videos instead.
I can understand that Florida politicians and school officials want to find out if drones in school hallways can prevent injury and death. I hope they have a lot of patience.
There are about 133,000 schools in the U.S. and there have been about 417 active shooter events in those schools since 1999. That’s about 17 events per year. So, statistically, the chances that a school shooter will appear in one of the three pilot schools in Florida, next year, is pretty darn slim — even without any drones installed. About one chance in 7,800.
To put it another way, it could take 7,800 years before an active shooter actually appears in one of these three pilot schools. Statistically speaking.
To put it yet another way, it could take 7,800 years to find out if the drones actually work as promised.
Maybe, in that amount of time, the Campus Guardian Angel company can figure out the “closed door” problem.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.