Most organizations do not fail to buy active shooter prevention because they ran out of money. They fail because nobody tells them how to buy it.

The budget usually exists. What does not exist is a clear path from the moment a superintendent, a facilities director or a contracting officer decides something has to change, to the moment a purchase order is signed. This page is that path, and the guide at the bottom is the long version.

Three steps, start to finish

1. Assess. ASPP™ walks your building and delivers findings prioritized by cost to fix against the cost of the day it fails. Nothing is specified before this, and anyone quoting you equipment before an assessment is selling inventory.
2. Confirm your contract vehicle. Most public agencies can already buy on at least one cooperative or federal contract. No new solicitation is required.
3. Order through Safeware. Safeware, Inc. holds the contracts, takes the purchase order, delivers and invoices.

Who can buy on these contracts

If your organization appears here, there is a contract already in place that can buy this. Registration, where it is required, is free.

• Public school districts, K-12. Qualify as local educational agencies under federal cooperative purchasing law.
• Public colleges and universities. Named in the same statute as institutions of higher education.
• Counties, cities and towns, including police, fire, EMS, facilities and emergency management.
• Special districts and authorities, including fire districts, transit, airports and port authorities.
• Federally recognized tribes, and their instrumentalities.
• State agencies, through the state participating addendum where one exists.
• Federal agencies, through the GSA Multiple Award Schedule.
• Public hospitals and health systems.
• Nonprofit organizations, named as an eligible category by several of the cooperative programs.
• Private K-12 schools, through the NACo Public Promise program, which names them among eligible agencies. Ask about this one by name.
• Everyone else. Private organizations contract with ASPP™ directly. The work is the same and only the paperwork changes.

Cooperative purchasing authority is a function of your own state and local law rather than of the cooperative. Ask us which vehicle fits your organization before you write a specification. It is a five minute conversation and it is often the difference between this fiscal year and the one after it.

What you are actually buying

The catalog is organized in five layers, authored for underwriter adoption by Major General David P. Glaser, U.S. Army (Retired). Every item belongs to one of them.

• Deter. Assessment, behavioral threat assessment programs, workplace violence prevention programs, training and prevention planning. This is where the standard lives, and it is the only layer that can tell you whether you need the other four.
• Detect. Weapons screening at the door, and AI detection running on the cameras you already own.
• Deny. Identity at the door, access policy and lockdown design.
• Delay. Bullet-resistant structures, ballistic glazing and retrofit panels that buy minutes with the building itself.
• Defend. Response protocols, command and control, drone response, and bleeding control training and supply.

Layers corroborate one another. A swatting call with no supporting signal on any layer is handled as what it is, and a real event is confirmed faster. Residual risk never reaches zero, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What is in the catalog, and who makes it

Everything below is acquired through Safeware, Inc. on contracts that have already been competed. We hold the standard and take no margin on partner hardware, which is the arrangement that lets us tell you plainly when a layer is not worth buying yet.

Deter

Assessment, training and prevention planning against the P.R.O. Model™, plus leadership decision simulation through Crisis Response Leader Training, which puts a command team inside a decision while the cost of getting it wrong is still zero.

Detect

Walk-through weapons screening from Garrett Metal Detectors, including the Paragon™ portal and the Garrett Guide hand-held. AI weapon and behavior detection from Scylla, running against cameras a building already owns rather than requiring a camera replacement; Scylla publishes its own performance data and we point buyers to scylla.ai and the public COCO leaderboard on CodaLab rather than characterizing it ourselves. Scylla also published our analysis of where weapon detection and AI video analytics still leave gaps, Closing the Gaps, on their own site. Indoor gunshot detection from Databuoy, whose SHOTPOINT® system does not simply report that a shot was fired but localizes where it came from, to a room and a floor, which is the difference between a responder arriving with a location and one arriving with an alarm.

Deny

Facial authentication access control from Alcatraz AI, retrofitted to existing door hardware, so there is no badge to lend, lose or clone. Access policy and lockdown design mapped against capability a building already has installed, because most organizations own more than they are using.

Delay

Bullet-resistant structures and safe learning spaces from SafeWood Designs, including SafeShutters™, which serve as a protective shield and as a whiteboard the rest of the time. Ballistic glazing and UL 752 rated retrofit panels from FutureVu Brands and BulletShield, which is usually the fastest way to harden an entry that was never designed to be hardened.

Defend

Drone as first responder from Brecourt Solutions, indoors and out, to put eyes on a developing situation before a person has to walk into it. Drone denial and counter-UAS from the same partner, for venues and campuses where the threat arrives from above rather than through a door; counter-UAS authority is tightly regulated and differs by site, so it is specified from the assessment and the legal posture together. Response protocols, command and control, and bleeding control training and supply.

The layer that runs through all five

Indoor mapping and living digital twins put every sensor and node from every layer onto one map and keep it current as the building changes. Cameras, access readers, screening portals, gunshot sensors, door position switches and environmental nodes each become a node with a real location rather than another feed in another application. What that produces is a single pane of glass: one screen, one operator, and every layer reporting into the same picture of the same building.

Virtual training is delivered online alongside Shift HR, so the same curriculum reaches every employee in every location, on their own schedule, and produces the completion record a grant file, an insurance submission or a post incident review will ask for.

The standard this is built on

The P.R.O. Model™ stands for Prevention, Response, Options, in that order, and the order is the argument. Almost every program sold as active shooter preparedness is a response program wearing a prevention label, and it teaches people what to do once an attack has started.

The U.S. Department of Justice selected the P.R.O. Model™ as “A” national standard for the Assistant United States Attorneys and across the Department, across two consecutive cycles, 2022 to 2025 and again 2026 to 2030. The Department then commissioned, and ASPP™ delivered, the National Active Shooter Prevention Training Video built on it, written for the 10,700 Assistant United States Attorneys and carried on a learning portal serving roughly 115,000 Department personnel. It is also in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense, and ASPP™ created the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Program of Instruction for active shooter prevention.

Two selections, under two administrations, is the part that matters. A standard chosen once can be a relationship. A standard chosen twice, across a change of government, is a judgment about the work.

The fire code for violence

Nobody buys sprinklers because they expect a fire. They buy them because the code requires it and insurance underwrites it. Seventy years on, no child has died in a school fire in the United States. The P.R.O. Model™ is that same infrastructure applied to the human threat vector, which is why prevention maturity is written so an underwriter can price it.

What an assessment is worth before anything is installed

Most buyers treat the assessment as the cost that comes before the real spending. It is closer to the opposite. It tells you what not to buy, which is usually the largest number on the page, and it produces the documented, standard-based record a cooperative contract needs in order to be used without a new solicitation.

It is also, increasingly, the document an insurance carrier asks to see. A building that has documented its risk against a recognized standard and acted on the findings is a different underwriting proposition than one that has not, and carriers have begun to price that difference.

This is no longer theoretical. In 2026 a major league arena that is home to both an NBA and an NHL franchise retained the Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC. Its insurance carrier treated the completed assessment as an underwriting input, and remediation is being acquired through the same cooperative contract vehicles described on this page.

We will not put a premium figure next to that, because the carrier sets the number and only the carrier can speak to its own underwriting. What we will say is that reduced liability is not a side effect of prevention. It is one of the ways prevention pays for itself.

Who wrote it

Chris Grollnek, the architect of the P.R.O. Model™, is referred to across the field as an active shooter expert and is known for the position that prevention is a design problem rather than a drill. Former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal, he was personally present at an active shooter incident, which is the reason this work exists and the reason it is built around prevention rather than reaction. He has testified before the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, served as Active Shooter Prevention Coordinator for Super Bowl LVIII and LIX, and has conducted facility assessments across NBA and NHL venues.

More on his background is at Chris Grollnek, active shooter expert.

Why Safeware

ASPP™ spent years finding solutions that actually hold up in a building, and then needed a way for a school district or a county to buy them without starting a procurement from scratch. Safeware already held the paper.

Founded in 1982, Safeware is a national supplier of protective safety equipment and responder solutions, serving law enforcement, fire, EMS, hazmat, education, government and industry. Through national cooperative contracts including GSA, Safeware provides affordable access, faster delivery and reliable protection. The standard stays with ASPP™. The contract and the delivery stay with Safeware. Neither of us does the other’s job.

ASPP™ is not a party to these contracts. Safeware, Inc. is the contract holder and the ordering party. The current list is published at safewareinc.com/contracts.

Get the guide

The full Active Shooter Prevention Buyer’s Guide runs ten pages and carries the contract numbers, the eligibility detail by organization type, and the catalog layer by layer.

Request your copy of the Buyer’s Guide, and tell us whether you would also like the ASPP™ white paper. We will send both and add you to The Prevention Brief, which goes out twice a month and which you can leave at any time.

If you would rather just talk, that works too. Start an assessment conversation or see the resource library.

Chris Grollnek, the architect of the P.R.O. Model™, has written separately on why this purchase stalls even when the money exists: the budget was never the problem.

Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. UEI WY1KKBUALL95, CAGE 9FEA4, certified through the U.S. Small Business Administration and registered on SAM.gov. For contracting officers working a small business goal, that designation is the reason this conversation can move quickly.

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