After Uvalde shooting, tech companies tout their solutions. But do they work?

After the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas , an all-too-familiar question emerged: how do we prevent such horror from happening again? A handful of companies have said they have tech solutions that could help.

They included the drone firm Axon , which promoted a remotely operated Taser device to be deployed in schools. EdTech companies, including Impero Software, said their student surveillance services could flag warning signs and help prevent the next attack.

The companies are part of a thriving school security industry, one that has been forecast to reach $3.1bn in 2021 from just $2.7bn in 2017, according to numbers from market firm Omdia. Its research found that the K-12 school security equipment market specifically was $1.5bn in 2018 and projected it to reach about $1.75bn in 2021.

The Security Industry Association, which counts more than 400 companies targeting kindergarten and elementary schools among its members, has spent nearly $2m on lobbying since 2010, according to OpenSecrets.org. Gun safety legislation passed by Congress last week included more than $300m to bolster the Stop School Violence Act, a federal grant program created after the Parkland shooting to fund school security that was endorsed by the industry group.

Impero Software, a company that pitched its own technology directly in response to the Uvalde news, promises to monitor kindergarten through 12th grade students and flag warning signs such as searching for information on weapons

Yet despite the growing adoption of security tools in schools across the US, the number mass shootings at schools has remained relatively constant throughout the past 30 years and reached an unprecedented high at secondary schools in the past five years.

Impero Software did not respond to a request for comment.

For many school safety and gun control advocates, the debate around hi-tech security obscures the issue at the core of the school shooting scourge: access to guns is the primary risk factor for such tragedy.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that the school security industry was $2.7bn in 2017, not $2.7m.