school shootings in america essay

June 17, 2022

Why do school shootings keep happening in the United States?

Vcu homeland security expert william v. pelfrey jr. answers this question and more., share this story.

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By Joan Tupponce

The first thought that raced through William Pelfrey Jr.’s mind when he heard the breaking news about the school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was typical of any parent with young kids.

“It made me want to get into my vehicle and drive to their schools,” said Pelfrey, Ph.D., an expert in the field of homeland security, terrorism and radicalization and a professor of homeland security/emergency preparedness and criminal justice in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. “From a professional perspective, it reminded me there are too many people with guns, the wrong people with guns and that nothing is going to change.”

Guns are now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No other developed economy has as many violent firearm deaths as the U.S., according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“School shootings happen in the U.S. at an alarming rate, but they rarely happen elsewhere in the world. Eighty or 90 percent of all the school shootings in the world happen in the U.S. They are concentrated here,” Pelfrey said.

How did the U.S. get to this point and what can be done? Pelfrey fields those questions and more with VCU News.

Why does this keep happening?

It’s a simple question, but the answers are extremely complicated. There are some political overtones to it. Guns are ubiquitous in the U.S. There are more guns than people. The U.S. population is about 334 million and the number of guns in the U.S. is more than 390 million (according to a report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization). We have the highest civilian gun ownership in the world by a huge margin. That’s an extraordinary number relative to the rest of the world. The next countries that have as many guns are war-torn countries like Serbia or Yemen.

Another element is school safety is not as high as it should be. It’s easy to maintain basic school safety but not everybody does a good job of that.

A third element is social media, a component that revolves around how people make it OK on social media to act on violence. There is a faction of government, particularly a right-wing government element, that condones or encourages violence. They do so in an oblique way saying something like, “Our country is under threat. We have to stand up and protect our country. We need to take up arms to defend our country, our way of life.” When you do that, you are condoning acts that are dangerous. The U.S. border is populated by a lot of citizens who have dubbed themselves border protection and they stand at the border with guns waiting for someone to illegally cross the border and they take them into custody even though they are not law enforcement.

How do you categorize mass shootings?

Some are artifacts of bullying. A victim of bullying decides they are going to respond with extreme violence, and it’s usually not against their perpetrators. It’s a show of force to demonstrate they won’t be bullied again. They can stand up for themselves. That describes Sandy Hook and Columbine and some other shootings.

The second category of mass shootings is domestic terrorism. Those people had been self-radicalized on social media and believe their actions represent a higher good. What they are doing is for a bigger purpose than themselves. They are willing to die, almost like a suicide terrorist, to further the goals of the theology they support.

A lot of people don’t fit into either category. The mass shooting era began with Charles Whitman in 1966 when he climbed a bell tower at the University of Texas and started shooting people. He did that because he had a tumor in his brain. There was no kind of pattern, but it created a behavioral matrix that has been followed by any number of people in the U.S.

How easy is it to buy a gun?

In the U.S., you can walk into a gun store and buy as many assault rifles as you want if you have cash and are over 18 and you meet just a couple of other loose criteria. Guns are so easily obtained that it’s easy to commit violent crime. We don’t do a good job in our criminal justice system of prohibiting people that probably shouldn’t have them from securing guns.

In most countries there are tests you have to take. You have to demonstrate you need a gun for a specific reason. You have to pass a gun ownership exam to show you can use it safely. You have to maintain license requirements. We don’t do any of that in the U.S. We are going the other way. Texas last year made it easier for people to get a gun in what was already an incredibly permissive state.

What types of guns are especially dangerous to own?

Assault weapons — assault rifles and assault pistols. We don’t track who buys them. You go into a gun store and buy a gun. A criminal background check is run, but no one keeps track of what you bought or how much you paid for it or what you do with it when you walk out the door. You could buy 20 assault rifles, drive to Washington, D.C., and sell them and nobody knows it because there is no reporting mechanism to identify that you sold the guns.

It is a crime to sell a gun to a convicted felon or to take them out of state to sell. But our penalties are so lax that it’s not a deterrent. A straw buyer is a person who buys guns legally and then illegally sells them for profit. There are a small number of gun stores that welcome straw buyers and subsequently represent easy funnels for guns in illegal locations. Straw buyers go to stores where they know they can walk in with $30,000 or $40,000 in cash and walk out with a bunch of pistols and assault rifles and go back to the streets and sell those guns, especially in cities with restrictive gun laws. That’s one of the cheap mechanisms for guns getting into the hands of criminals.

Why is screening a person who wants to buy a gun so important?

There are people who should have red flags that would preclude gun ownership, but we don’t have that in place. We could look over the past 20 or so years at some of the major school shootings like Parkwood (Florida); Newtown (Connecticut); Columbine (Colorado); Uvalde (Texas); even the shooting in Buffalo (New York). These were people that had a history of mental illness or a history of being bullied and were threatening to lash out. People don’t seem to connect the risk factors to gun ownership and the propensity for subsequent violence. And that is just a tragedy.

What is the role of social media in all of this?

It has a powerful role because of far-right extremism. The Buffalo shooter was a self-radicalized domestic terrorist. He had a strongly held belief about the infringement of races on the Caucasian race. He was an avid follower of far-right extremists’ diatribe and used some of what he found as rationalization to act and commit violence.

Not true for every shooter. In Columbine, Newtown, Uvaldi, these were bullied misfits. They didn’t fit in groups and had a history of being marginalized by their peers. They found a different path for getting even and that was through violence. But there is a different population and I believe it’s one of the most dangerous threats to the U.S. and that is far-right extremists, which inspired far-right violent extremists. Social media has a tremendous role in that. There is no single bad guy we can legitimize or take out. There are hundreds of podcasts and thousands of self-proclaimed thought leaders and they write really nasty, vicious stuff and have followers. Some of those people act on what they read. No government entity does a good job counter-messaging extremists.

How does bullying play into this?

Schools don’t do a great job with bullying prevention. One of my areas of research is bullying and cyberbullying. I’ve worked with schools, and we talk about bullying identification. Schools don’t do that until it’s too late. Schools need to adopt bullying and cyberbullying identification measures and then practice them. The best tactic I’ve seen is analogous to the “see something, say something” messaging that was rampant in New York after 9/11. That same logic can be applied in schools to enable citizens to get involved in terrorism prevention. Students can be empowered to identify bullies and then the school can come in to support fellow students.

Some people talk about arming teachers or school administrators. What do you think of that as a way of prevention?

Several years ago, Virginia considered doing that. I did a report for the Department of Criminal Justice Services in Virginia on the merits and risks of arming school personnel. Most high schools have an armed resource officer on scene, but most middle and elementary schools don’t. Arming teachers or school personnel is an incredibly dangerous enterprise that could lead to the death of that person because if police respond to a shooting and see someone with a gun, they are going to shoot them. Or, the teacher could accidentally shoot another staff member or police officer or, in the worst case, a student.

At Uvalde, there was a police resource officer on scene, at Columbine a school resource officer was on scene, at Parkland a school resource officer was on scene. If a trained police officer can’t prevent a school shooting, what are the chances that a teacher who is not well trained can prevent a school shooting? I think the odds are pretty low. I think the risk dramatically outweighs any potential benefits.

Can you talk about the opposite views we have in the U.S. about guns?

We live in a country with two competing paradigms. One thought paradigm is that everybody needs guns and then we will all be safe. The other is the exact opposite. Nobody should have guns and we will all be safe. Those two paradigms cannot coexist. They are diametrically opposed. But our political structure is such that they can’t be reconciled.

After the Sandy Hook shooting there was a huge motivation for gun control, limiting who could buy guns and the kind of guns people could buy. That faded away rapidly. I expect the same thing will happen here, and it’s depressing to say that, but I see very little political will to enact any meaningful changes.

Mass shootings are going to happen again. It’s a pattern. School shootings and mass shootings happen about every year or two in the U.S. and I guarantee that there is going to be another one in a year and another one after that and nothing is going to change until enough people develop a political will to support meaningful gun changes.

What predictions do you have for the future when it comes to gun laws?

I expect there will be some change in gun laws, but they won’t be substantial. It will provide political cover for some people to say we are doing things, we are making things safer, but they won’t make things safer. I expect gun sales will go up even more because people now feel like they have to protect themselves and their family members because the government isn’t doing that.

I also expect that there is going to be some investigation into police practices at Uvalde because police didn’t go into that school immediately. In fact, several police officers stood outside waiting for reinforcements to arrive. That is going to lead to internal investigation and also police policy changes, which I expect will become popular across the U.S. Many police departments implemented a policy suggesting officers need to go into a school and engage an active shooter no matter what. That didn’t happen in Uvalde. As a policing expert, I don’t know how that is possible.

Do people use mental health as a scapegoat for these shootings?

Yes, it’s an easy target. A lot of people point to mental health and say the U.S. needs more mental health funding. They disregard there was a gun that shot these people. Only a small percentage of these shootings were people that had been diagnosed with a mental illness. We want to rationalize this type of behavior. We want to understand it. We presume that the people who commit these vile acts are disturbed, that they are mentally ill, otherwise they are like us and that’s untenable.

It creates an easy political target that allows politicians to rationalize their failure to enact reasonable gun laws. We have laws about who can buy guns — you have to be 18, you can’t be a convicted felon. There are guns that are restrictive. It’s not legal to sell fully automatic weapons. You can’t buy a tank. But whenever reasonable gun restrictions are opposed or discussed, there is a small faction of citizens and politicians that go crazy, and that’s a tragedy.

Over the past 50 years there has only been one meaningful law passed limiting guns — the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed under President Bill Clinton. That expired 10 years later under a Republican president. When that expired, people began buying guns at a substantially higher rate than ever before. They presumed that under another Democratic president or Congress gun sales would be limited again. So assault rifles, which had been a small portion of gun purchases prior to the ban, became a big part of gun sales.

Estimates are that a quarter to a third of all guns sold now in the U.S. are assault rifle platforms. That is a big number. Seven years after the ban expired, guns sales had doubled. A few years later they doubled again. It’s amazing that the ban had a counter-productive effect, which is it dramatically increased gun sales and people’s motivations to buy guns, particularly assault rifles.

As a policing expert, there is no reason anyone who is not military or law enforcement should ever have an assault rifle. I come from a family of hunters. Every year we would go hunting. I know rifles and shotguns. An assault rifle is a vastly inferior tool for anything other than shooting people. It’s not good for hunting or self-defense. A shotgun or a pistol is more effective. There is no reason for a civilian to have an assault rifle, but they do.

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An Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017–2022: Findings and Implications

Antonis katsiyannis.

1 Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room 407 C, Clemson, SC 29634 USA

Luke J. Rapa

2 Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room 409 F, Clemson, SC 29634 USA

Denise K. Whitford

3 Steven C. Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Purdue University, 100 N. University Street, BRNG 5154, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098 USA

Samantha N. Scott

4 Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room G01A, Clemson, SC 29634 USA

Gun violence in the USA is a pressing social and public health issue. As rates of gun violence continue to rise, deaths resulting from such violence rise as well. School shootings, in particular, are at their highest recorded levels. In this study, we examined rates of intentional firearm deaths, mass shootings, and school mass shootings in the USA using data from the past 5 years, 2017–2022, to assess trends and reappraise prior examination of this issue.

Extant data regarding shooting deaths from 2017 through 2020 were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the web-based injury statistics query and reporting system (WISQARS), and, for school shootings in particular (2017–2022), from Everytown Research & Policy.

The number of intentional firearm deaths and the crude death rates increased from 2017 to 2020 in all age categories; crude death rates rose from 4.47 in 2017 to 5.88 in 2020. School shootings made a sharp decline in 2020—understandably so, given the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government or locally mandated school shutdowns—but rose again sharply in 2021.

Conclusions

Recent data suggest continued upward trends in school shootings, school mass shootings, and related deaths over the past 5 years. Notably, gun violence disproportionately affects boys, especially Black boys, with much higher gun deaths per capita for this group than for any other group of youth. Implications for policy and practice are provided.

On May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old man killed 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 individuals at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, using an AR-15-style rifle. Outside the school, he fired shots for about 5 min before entering the school through an unlocked side door and locked himself inside two adjoining classrooms killing 19 students and two teachers. He was in the school for over an hour (78 min) before being shot dead by the US Border Patrol Tactical Unit, though police officers were on the school premises (Sandoval, 2022 ).

The Robb Elementary School mass shooting, the second deadliest school mass shooting in American history, is the latest calamity in a long list of tragedies occurring on public school campuses in the USA. Regrettably, these tragedies are both a reflection and an outgrowth of the broader reality of gun violence in this country. In 2021, gun violence claimed 45,027 lives (including 20,937 suicides), with 313 children aged 0–11 killed and 750 injured, along with 1247 youth aged 12–17 killed and 3385 injured (Gun Violence Archive, 2022a ). Mass shootings in the USA have steadily increased in recent years, rising from 269 in 2013 to 611 in 2020. Mass shootings are typically defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed (Katsiyannis et al., 2018a ). However, the Gun Violence Archive considers mass shootings to be incidents in which four or more people are injured (Gun Violence Archive, 2022b ). Regardless of these distinctions in definition, in 2020, there were 19,384 gun murders, representing a 34% increase from the year before, a 49% increase over a 5-year period, and a 75% increase over a 10-year period (Pew Research Center, 2022 ). Regarding school-based shootings, to date in 2022, there have been at least 95 incidents of gunfire on school premises, resulting in 40 deaths and 76 injuries (Everytown Research & Policy, 2022b ). Over the past few decades, school shootings in the USA have become relatively commonplace: there were more in 2021 than in any year since 1999, with the median age of perpetrators being 16 (Washington Post, 2022 ; see also, Katsiyannis et al., 2018a ). Additionally, analysis of Everytown’s Gunfire on School Grounds dataset and related studies point to several key observations to be considered in addressing this challenge. For example, 58% of perpetrators had a connection to the school, 70% were White males, 73 to 80% obtained guns from home or relatives or friends, and 100% exhibited warning signs or showed behavior that was of cause for concern; also, in 77% of school shootings, at least one person knew about the shooter’s plan before the shooting events occurred (Everytown Research & Policy, 2021a ).

The USA has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined (Rowhani-Rahbar & Moe, 2019 ). Guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the USA, with children ages 5–14 being 21 times and adolescents and young adults ages 15–24 being 23 times more likely to be killed with guns compared to other high-income countries. Furthermore, Black children and teens are 14 times and Latinx children and teens are three times more likely than White children to die by guns (Everytown Research & Policy, 2021b ). Children exposed to violence, crime, and abuse face a host of adverse challenges, including abuse of drugs and alcohol, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, school failure, and involvement in criminal activity (Cabral et al., 2021 ; Everytown Research and Policy, 2022b ; Finkelhor et al., 2013 ).

Yet, despite gun violence being considered a pressing social and public health issue, federal legislation passed in 1996 has resulted in restricting funding for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The law stated that no funding earmarked for injury prevention and control may be used to advocate or promote firearm control (Kellermann & Rivara, 2013 ). More recently, in June 2022, the US Supreme Court struck down legislation restricting gun possession and open carry rights (New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 2021 ), broadening gun rights and increasing the risk of gun violence in public spaces. Nonetheless, according to Everytown Research & Policy ( 2022a ), states with strong gun laws experience fewer deaths per capita. In the aggregate, states with weaker gun laws (i.e., laws that are more permissive) experience 20.0 gun deaths per 100,000 residents versus 7.4 per 100,000 in states with stronger laws. The association between gun law strength and per capita death is stark (see Table ​ Table1 1 ).

Gun law strength and gun law deaths per 100,000 residents

Accounting for the top eight and the bottom eight states in gun law strength, gun law strength and gun deaths per 100,000 are correlated at r  =  − 0.85. Stronger gun laws are thus meaningfully linked with fewer deaths per capita. Data obtained from Everytown Research & Policy ( 2022a )

Notwithstanding the publicity involving gun shootings in schools, particularly mass shootings, violence in schools has been steadily declining. For example, in 2020, students aged 12–18 experienced 285,400 victimizations at school and 380,900 victimizations away from school; an annual decrease of 60% for school victimizations (from 2019 to 2020) (Irwin et al., 2022 ). Similarly, youth arrests in general in 2019 were at their lowest level since at least 1980; between 2010 and 2019, the number of juvenile arrests fell by 58%. Yet, arrests for murder increased by 10% (Puzzanchera, 2021 ).

In response to school violence in general, and school shootings in particular, schools have increasingly relied on increased security measures, school resource officers (SROs), and zero tolerance policies (including exclusionary and aversive measures) in their attempts to curb violence and enhance school safety. In 2019–2020, public schools reported controlled access (97%), the use of security cameras (91%), and badges or picture IDs (77%) to promote safety. In addition, high schools (84%), middle schools (81%), and elementary schools (55%) reported the presence of SROs (Irwin et al., 2022 ). Research, however, has indicated that the presence of SROs has not resulted in a reduction of school shooting severity, despite their increased prevalence. Rather, the type of firearm utilized in school shootings has been closely associated with the number of deaths and injuries (Lemieux, 2014 ; Livingston et al., 2019 ), suggesting implications for reconsideration of the kinds of firearms to which individuals have access.

Zero tolerance policies, though originally intended to curtail gun violence in schools, have expanded to cover a host of incidents (e.g., threats, bullying). Notwithstanding these intentions, these policies are generally ineffective in preventing school violence, including school shootings (American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008 ; Losinski et al., 2014 ), and have exacerbated the prevalence of youths’ interactions with law enforcement in schools. From the 2015–2016 to the 2017–2018 school years, there was a 5% increase in school-related arrests and a 12% increase in referrals to law enforcement (U.S. Department of Education, 2021 ); in 2017–18, about 230,000 students were referred to law enforcement and over 50,000 were arrested (The Center for Public Integrity, 2021 ). Law enforcement referrals have been a persistent concern aiding the school-to-prison pipeline, often involving non-criminal offenses and disproportionally affecting students from non-White backgrounds as well as students with disabilities (Chan et al., 2021 ; The Center for Public Integrity, 2021 ).

The consequences of these policies are thus far-reaching, with not only legal ramifications, but social-emotional and academic ones as well. For example, in 2017–2018, students missed 11,205,797 school days due to out-of-school suspensions during that school year (U.S. Department of Education, 2021 ), there were 96,492 corporal punishment incidents, and 101,990 students were physically restrained, mechanically restrained, or secluded (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2020 ). Such exclusionary and punitive measures have long-lasting consequences for the involved students, including academic underachievement, dropout, delinquency, and post-traumatic stress (e.g., Cholewa et al., 2018 ). Moreover, these consequences disproportionally affect culturally and linguistically diverse students and students with disabilities (Skiba et al., 2014 ; U.S. General Accountability Office, 2018 ), often resulting in great societal costs (Rumberger & Losen, 2017 ).

In the USA, mass killings involving guns occur approximately every 2 weeks, while school shootings occur every 4 weeks (Towers et al., 2015 ). Given the apparent and continued rise in gun violence, mass shootings, and school mass shootings, we aimed in this paper to reexamine rates of intentional firearm deaths, mass shootings, and school mass shootings in the USA using data from the past 5 years, 2017–2022, reappraising our analyses given the time that had passed since our earlier examination of the issue (Katsiyannis et al., 2018a , b ).

As noted in Katsiyannis et al., ( 2018a , b ), gun violence, mass shootings, and school shootings have been a part of the American way of life for generations. Such shootings have grown exponentially in both frequency and mortality rate since the 1980s. Using the same criteria applied in our previous work (Katsiyannis et al., 2018a , b ), we evaluated the frequency of shootings, mass shootings, and school mass school shootings from January 2017 through mid-July 2022. Extant data regarding shooting deaths from 2017 through 2020 were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, utilizing the web-based injury statistics query and reporting system (WISQARS), and for school shootings from 2017 to 2022 from Everytown Research & Policy ( https://everytownresearch.org ), an independent non-profit organization that researches and communicates with policymakers and the public about gun violence in the USA. Intentional firearm death data were classified by age, as outlined in Katsiyannis et al., ( 2018a , b ), and the crude rate was calculated by dividing the number of deaths times 100,000, by the total population for each individual category.

The number of intentional firearm deaths and the crude death rates increased from 2017 to 2020 in all age categories. In absolute terms, the number of deaths rose from 14,496 in 2017 to 19,308 in 2020. In accord with this rise in the absolute number of deaths, crude death rates rose from 4.47 in 2017 to 5.88 in 2020. Table ​ Table2 2 provides the crude death rate in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, the most current years with data available. Figure  1 provides the raw number of deaths across the same time period.

Intentional firearm deaths across the USA (2017–2020)

Data obtained from WISQARS (2022)

Intentional firearm deaths across the USA (2017–2020). Note. Data obtained from WISQARS (2022)

As expected, in 2020, the number of fatal firearm injuries increased sharply from age 0–11 years, roughly elementary school age, to age 12–18 years, roughly middle school and high school age. Table ​ Table3 3 provides the crude death rates of children in 2020 who die from firearms. Males outnumbered females in every category of firearm deaths, including homicide, police violence, suicide, and accidental shootings, as well as for undetermined reasons for firearm discharge. Black males drastically surpassed all other children in the number of firearm deaths (2.91 per 100,000 0–11-year-olds; 57.10 per 100,000 12–18-year-olds). Also, notable is the high number of Black children 12–18 years killed by guns (32.37 per 100,000), followed by American Indian and Alaska Native children (18.87 per 100,000), in comparison to White children (12.40 per 100,000 children), Hispanic/Latinx children (8.16 per 100,000), and Asian and Pacific Islander children (2.95 per 100,000). A disproportionate number of gun deaths were also seen for Black girls relative to other girls (1.52 per 100,000 0–11-year-olds; 7.01 per 100,000 12–18-year-olds).

Fatal firearm injuries for children age 0–18 across the USA in 2020

  AN Alaska Native; – indicates 20 or fewer cases

Mass shootings and mass shooting deaths increased from 2017 to 2019, decreased in 2020, and then increased again in 2021. School shootings made a sharp decline in 2020—understandably so, given the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government or locally mandated school shutdowns—but rose again sharply in 2021. Current rates reveal a continued increase, with numbers at the beginning of 2022 already exceeding those of 2017. School mass shooting counts were relatively low between 2017 through 2022, with four total during that time frame. Figure  2 provides raw numbers for mass shootings, school shootings, and school mass shootings from 2017 through 2022. Importantly, figures from the recent Uvalde, TX, school mass shooting at Robb Elementary School had not yet been recorded in the relevant databases at the time of this writing. With those deaths accounted for, 2022 is already the deadliest year for school mass shootings in the past 5 years.

Mass shootings, school shootings, and mass school shootings across the USA (2017–2022). Note. Data obtained from Everytown Research and Policy. Overlap present between all three categories

Gun violence in the USA, particularly mass shootings on the grounds of public schools, continues to be a pressing social and public health issue. Recent data suggest continued upward trends in school shootings, school mass shootings, and related deaths over the past 5 years—patterns that disturbingly mirror general gun violence and intentional shooting deaths in the USA across the same time period. The impacts on our nation’s youth are profound. Notably, gun violence disproportionately affects boys, especially Black boys, with much higher gun deaths per capita for this group than for any other group of youth. Likewise, Black girls are disproportionately affected compared to girls from other ethnic/racial groups. Moreover, while the COVID-19 pandemic and school shutdowns tempered gun violence in schools at least somewhat during the 2020 school year—including school shootings and school mass shootings—trend data show that gun violence rates are still continuing to rise. Indeed, gun violence deaths resulting from school shootings are at their highest recorded levels ever (Irwin et al., 2022 ).

Implications for Schools: Curbing School Violence

In recent years, the implementation of Multi-Tier Systems and Supports (MTSS), including Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Response to Intervention (RTI), has resulted in improved school climate and student engagement as well as improved academic and behavioral outcomes (Elrod et al., 2022 ; Santiago-Rosario et al., 2022 ; National Center for Learning Disabilities, n.d.). Such approaches have implications for reducing school violence as well. PBIS uses a tiered framework intended to improve student behavioral and academic outcomes; it creates positive learning environments through the implementation of evidence-based instructional and behavioral interventions, guided by data-based decision-making and allocation of students across three tiers. In Tier 1, schools provide universal supports to all students in a proactive manner; in Tier 2, supports are aimed to students who need additional academic, behavioral, or social-emotional intervention; and in Tier 3, supports are provided in an intensive and individualized manner (Lewis et al., 2010 ). The implementation of PBIS has resulted in an improved school climate, fewer office referrals, and reductions in out-of-school suspensions (Bradshaw et al., 2010 ; Elrod et al.,  2010 , 2022 ; Gage et al., 2018a , 2018b ; Horner et al., 2010 ; Noltemeyer et al., 2019 ). Likewise, RTI aims to improve instructional outcomes through high-quality instruction and universal screening for students to identify learning challenges and similarly allocates students across three tiers. In Tier 1, schools implement high-quality classroom instruction, screening, and group interventions; in Tier 2, schools implement targeted interventions; and in Tier 3, schools implement intensive interventions and comprehensive evaluation (National Center for Learning Disabilities, n.d ). RTI implementation has resulted in improved academic outcomes (e.g., reading, writing) (Arrimada et al., 2022 ; Balu et al., 2015 ; Siegel, 2020 ) and enhanced school climate and student behavior.

In order to support students’ well-being, enhance school climate, and support reductions in behavioral issues and school violence, schools should consider the implementation of MTSS, reducing reliance on exclusionary and aversive measures such as zero tolerance policies, seclusion and restraints, corporal punishment, or school-based law enforcement referrals and arrests (see Gage et al., in press ). Such approaches and policies are less effective than the use of MTSS, exacerbate inequities and enhance disproportionality (particularly for youth of color and students with disabilities), and have not been shown to reduce violence in schools.

Implications for Students: Ensuring Physical Safety and Supporting Mental Health

Students should not have to attend school and fear becoming victims of violence in general, no less gun violence in particular. Schools must ensure the physical safety of their students. Yet, as the substantial number of school shootings continues to rise in the USA, so too does concern about the adverse impacts of violence and gun violence on students’ mental health and well-being. Students are frequently exposed to unavoidable and frightening images and stories of school violence (Child Development Institute, n.d. ) and are subject to active shooter drills that may not actually be effective and, in some cases, may actually induce trauma (Jetelina, 2022 ; National Association of School Psychologists & National Association of School Resources Officers, 2021 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). In turn, students struggle to process and understand why these events happen and, more importantly, how they can be prevented (National Association of School Psychologists, 2015 ). School personnel should be prepared to support the mental health needs of students, both in light of the prevalence of school gun violence and in the aftermath of school mass shootings.

Research provides evidence that traumatic events, such as school mass shootings, can and do have mental health consequences for victims and members of affected communities, leading to an increase in post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression, and other psychological systems (Lowe & Galea, 2017 ). At the same time, high media attention to such events indirectly exposes and heightens feelings of fear, anxiety, and vulnerability in students—even if they did not attend the school where the shooting occurred (Schonfeld & Demaria, 2020 ). Students of all ages may experience adjustment difficulties and engage in avoidance behaviors (Schonfeld & Demaria, 2020 ). As a result, school personnel may underestimate a student’s distress after a shooting and overestimate their resilience. In addition, an adult’s difficulty adjusting in the wake of trauma may also threaten a student’s sense of well-being because they may believe their teachers cannot provide them with the protection they need to remain safe in school (Schonfeld & Demaria, 2020 ).

These traumatic events have resounding consequences for youth development and well-being. However, schools continue to struggle to meet the demands of student mental health needs as they lack adequate funding for resources, student support services, and staff to provide the level of support needed for many students (Katsiyannis et al., 2018a ). Despite these limiting factors, children and youth continue to look to adults for information and guidance on how to react to adverse events. An effective response can significantly decrease the likelihood of further trauma; therefore, all school personnel must be prepared to talk with students about their fears, to help them feel safe and establish a sense of normalcy and security in the wake of tragedy (National Association of School Psychologists, 2016 ). Research suggests a number of strategies can be utilized by educators, school leaders, counselors, and other mental health professionals to support the students and staff they serve.

Recommendations for Educators

The National Association of School Psychologists ( 2016 ) recommends the following practices for educators to follow in response to school mass shootings. Although a complex topic to address, the issue needs to be acknowledged. In particular, educators should designate time to talk with their students about the event, and should reassure students that they are safe while validating their fears, feelings, and concerns. Recognizing and stressing to students that all feelings are okay when a tragedy occurs is essential. It is important to note that some students do not wish to express their emotions verbally. Other developmentally appropriate outlets, such as drawing, writing, reading books, and imaginative play, can be utilized. Educators should also provide developmentally appropriate explanations of the issue and events throughout their conversations. At the elementary level, students need brief, simple answers that are balanced with reassurances that schools are safe and that adults are there to protect them. In the secondary grades, students may be more vocal in asking questions about whether they are truly safe and what protocols are in place to protect them at school. To address these questions, educators can provide information related to the efforts of school and community leaders to ensure school safety. Educators should also review safety procedures and help students to identify at least one adult in the building to whom they can go if they feel threatened or at risk. Limiting exposure to media and social media is also important, as developmentally inappropriate information can cause anxiety or confusion. Educators should also maintain a normal routine by keeping a regular school schedule.

Recommendations for School Leaders

Superintendents, principals, and other school administrative personnel are looked upon to provide leadership and comfort to staff, students, and parents during a tragedy. Reassurance can be provided by reiterating safety measures and student supports that are in place in their district and school (The National Association of School Psychologists, 2015 ). The NASP recommends the following practices for school leaders regarding addressing student mental health needs directly. First, school leaders should be a visible, welcoming presence by greeting students and visiting classrooms. School leaders should also communicate with the school community, including parents and students, about their efforts to maintain safe and caring schools through clear behavioral expectations, positive behavior interventions and supports, and crisis planning preparedness. This can include the development of press releases for broad dissemination within the school community. School leaders should also provide crisis training and professional development for staff, based upon assessments of needs and targeted toward identified knowledge or skill gaps. They should also ensure the implementation of violence prevention programs and curricula in school and review school safety policies and procedures to ensure that all safety issues are adequately covered in current school crisis plans and emergency response procedures.

Recommendations for Counselors and Mental Health Professionals

School counselors offer critical assistance to their buildings’ populations as they experience crises or respond to emergencies (American School Counselor Association, 2019 ; Brown, 2020 ). Two models that stand out in the literature utilized by counselors in the wake of violent events are the Preparation, Action, Recovery (PAR) model and the Prevent and prepare; Reaffirm; Evaluate; provide interventions and Respond (PREPaRE) model. PREPaRE is the only comprehensive, nationally available training curriculum created by educators for educators (The National Association of School Psychologists, n.d. ). Although beneficial, neither the PAR nor PREPaRE model directly addresses school counselors’ responses to school shootings when their school is directly affected (Brown, 2020 ). This led to the development of the School Counselor’s Response to School Shootings-Framework of Recommendations (SCRSS-FR) model, which includes six stages, each of which has corresponding components for school counselors who have lived through a school mass shooting. Each of these models provides the necessary training to school-employed mental health professionals on how to best fill the roles and responsibilities generated by their membership on school crisis response teams (The National Association of School Psychologists, n.d. ).

Other Implications: Federal and State Policy

Recent events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, prompted the US Congress to pass landmark legislation intended to curb gun violence, enhancing background checks for prospective gun buyers who are under 21 years of age as well as allowing examination of juvenile records beginning at age 16, including health records related to prospective gun buyers’ mental health. Additionally, this legislation provides funding that will allow states to implement “red flag laws” and other intervention programs while also strengthening laws related to the purchase and trafficking of guns (Cochrane, 2022 ). Yet, additional legislation reducing or eliminating access to assault rifles and other guns with large capacity magazines, weapons that might easily be deemed “weapons of mass destruction,” is still needed (Interdisciplinary Group on Preventing School & Community Violence, 2022 ; see also Flannery et al., 2021 ). In 2019, the US Congress started to appropriate research funding to support research on gun violence, with $25 million in equal shares provided on an annual basis from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health (Roubein, 2022 ; Wan, 2019 ). Additional research is, of course, still needed.

Despite legislative progress, and while advancements in gun legislation are meaningful and have the potential to aid in the reduction of gun violence in the USA, school shootings and school mass shootings are something schools and students will contend with in the months and years ahead. This reality has serious implications for schools and for students, points that need serious consideration. Therefore, it is imperative that gun violence is framed as a pressing national public health issue deserving attention, with drastic steps needed to curb access to assault rifles and guns with high-capacity magazines, based on extensive and targeted research. As noted, Congress, after many years of inaction, has started to appropriate funds to address this issue. However, the level of funding is still minimal in light of the pressing challenge that gun violence presents. Furthermore, the messaging of conservative media, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and republican legislators framing access to all and any weapons—including assault rifles—as a constitutional right under the second amendment bears scrutiny. Indeed, the second amendment denotes that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Security of the nation is arguably the intent of the amendment, an intent that is clearly violated as evidenced in the ever-increasing death toll associated with gun violence in the USA.

Whereas federal legislation would be preferable, the possibility of banning assault weapons is remote (in light of recent Congressional action). Similarly, state action has been severely curtailed in light of the US Supreme Court’s decision regarding New York state law. However, data on gun fatalities and injuries, the correspondence of gun violence to laws regulating access across the world and states, and failed security measures such as armed guards posted in schools (e.g., Robb Elementary School) must be consistently emphasized. Additionally, the widespread sense of immunity for gun manufacturers should be tested in the same manner that tobacco manufacturers and opioid pharmaceuticals have been. The success against such tobacco and opioid manufacturers, once unthinkable, is a powerful precedent to consider for how the threat of gun violence against public health might be addressed.

Author Contribution

AK conceived of and designed the study and led the writing of the manuscript. LJR collaborated on the study design, contributed to the writing of the study, and contributed to the editing of the final manuscript. DKW analyzed the data and wrote up the results. SNS contributed to the writing of the study.

Declarations

The authors declare no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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The latest government data on school shootings

The 2021–22 school year had the highest number of school shootings since records began in 2000.

Updated on Tue, February 20, 2024 by the USAFacts Team

In the wake of the school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, USAFacts has collected recent data about school shootings in the United States. Here’s what current data has to say about these incidents.

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security maintains a collection of metrics on school shootings: the K–12 School Shooting Database (or K–12 SSDB) .

How many people have died in school shootings?

From the 2000–01 to 2021–22 school years, there were 1,375 school shootings at public and private elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries.

School shootings, defined

The definition of a school shooting is provided by the School Shooting Safety Compendium (SSSC) from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The SSSC defines “school shootings” as incidents in which “a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week.” During the coronavirus pandemic, this definition included shootings that happened on school property during remote instruction.

The highest number of school shootings and casualties occurred during the 2021–22 school year, with 327 incidences resulting in 81 deaths and 269 injuries.

Between the 2000–01 and the 2021–22 school years, 70.8% of the 1,375 school shootings resulted in deaths or injuries.

Approximately 61.0% of recorded school shootings occurred at high schools, followed by 23.6% at elementary schools, 12.0% at middle or junior high schools, and 3.4% at other educational institutions. [1] School shootings at college-level institutions are not included in this dataset.

Where do school shootings occur most often? 

The most common spot for a school shooting was the parking lot, accounting for 28.3% of recorded cases, followed by any area directly outside the front or side entrances of the school (20.4%), and then “elsewhere inside of the school building,” meaning any area outside from the classroom, hallways, or basketball court (12.5%).

Where does this data come from?

The K-12 SSDB aims to compile information on school shootings from publicly available sources into a single comprehensive database. It defines school shootings as situations when someone brandishes or fires a gun on school property or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time or day of the week, or motivation.

For a fuller picture of crime in the US , read about how many high schoolers in the US carry guns , and get more USAFacts data in your inbox by subscribing to our weekly newsletter .

Includes schools for which school-level information was unknown or unspecified as well as those whose school level was "other."

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US School Shootings, 1997–1998 Through 2021–2022

Us school mass shootings, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022, us school mass shootings, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022: fatalities and injuries, conclusions, school shootings in the united states: 1997–2022.

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Luke J. Rapa , Antonis Katsiyannis , Samantha N. Scott , Olivia Durham; School Shootings in the United States: 1997–2022. Pediatrics April 2024; 153 (4): e2023064311. 10.1542/peds.2023-064311

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Video Abstract

Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis. In 2019, gun injury became the leading cause of death among children aged birth to 19 years. Moreover, the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined. The purpose of this study was to understand the frequency of school-related gun violence across a quarter century, considering both school shootings and school mass shootings.

We drew on 2 publicly available datasets whose data allowed us to tabulate the frequency of school shootings and school mass shootings. The databases contain complementary data that provide a longitudinal, comprehensive view of school-related gun violence over the past quarter century.

Across the 1997–1998 to 2021–2022 school years, there were 1453 school shootings. The most recent 5 school years reflected a substantially higher number of school shootings than the prior 20 years. In contrast, US school mass shootings have not increased, although school mass shootings have become more deadly.

School shootings have risen in frequency in the recent 25 years and are now at their highest recorded levels. School mass shootings, although not necessarily increasing in frequency, have become more deadly. This leads to detrimental outcomes for all the nation’s youth, not just those who experience school-related gun violence firsthand. School-based interventions can be used to address this public health crisis, and effective approaches such as Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports and services should be used in support of students’ mental health and academic and behavioral needs.

Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis. In 2019, gun injury became the leading cause of death among children aged birth-19 years. Similarly, school-related gun violence (eg, school shootings) has recently reached peak levels.

This study provides a longitudinal, comprehensive view of school-related gun violence over the past quarter century. Results reveal acceleration in school shootings in recent years, but not in school mass shootings; however, school mass shootings have become more deadly.

Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis, with severe consequences for the nation’s youth. In 2019, gun injury became the leading cause of death among children aged birth to 19 years, surpassing vehicle-related deaths for the first time. 1   In 2020, the United States was the only country among its higher-income peers in which guns were the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. 2 , 3   In the 2021–2022 school year, the average number of gunfire incidents on school grounds had virtually quadrupled over the prior year, reaching an all-time high. 4   Likewise, during that same year, there were a total of 93 school shootings with casualties in elementary and secondary schools—more than in any other year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began collecting such data. 5   In all, the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined. 6  

In addition to these dire statistics, gun purchases have recently reached an all-time high in the United States, with more than 22 million guns procured in 2022. 7   Stronger gun laws are linked with fewer deaths per capita, and recent empirical evidence suggests that states that instantiate more restrictive gun regulations have reduced gun deaths. 8   – 10   For example, child access protection legislation in 29 states and Washington, D.C., has resulted in a 22% decrease in firearm injuries per capita in those jurisdictions; notwithstanding, strong child access protection legislation has seen a 41% decrease in recent years. 11  

Sadly, children’s exposure to gun violence in the United States, including gun violence associated with school shootings, has become commonplace over the past quarter century. The Columbine High School massacre that occurred in April 1999 heightened American discourse—and remains symbolically at the forefront of the American psyche—about school-related gun violence. Since that time, gun violence has come to typify schooling experiences of the nation’s youth. As such, the issue of gun violence in the United States, including school-related gun violence, demands continued attention, especially in terms of its effects on youth. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to assess school-related gun violence over the recent past 25-year period, starting approximately with the Columbine High School massacre. Specifically, we set out to examine school-related gun violence vis-à-vis kindergarten through grade 12 school shootings and school mass shootings across a recent 25-year period, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022. Our primary aim was to understand the frequency of school-related gun violence across the quarter century, from the 1997–1998 school year through the 2021–2022 school year, considering both school shootings and school mass shootings.

To accomplish the aim of our study, we drew on 2 publicly available datasets whose data would allow us to tabulate the frequency of school shootings and school mass shootings from the 1997–1998 school year through the 2021–2022 school year. The databases were selected because they contain complementary data that, when taken together, would provide a longitudinal, comprehensive view of school shootings and school mass shootings in the United States over the past quarter century. Data on school shootings were retrieved from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s School Shooting Safety Compendium. 12   Data on school mass shootings were retrieved from the US Mass Shootings, 1982–2023 database, developed by Mother Jones . 13   Two noteworthy challenges that exist when studying school shootings and school mass shootings are the lack of a central or unified database that contains all incidents of gun violence in the United States, and the varied definitions used, within disparate databases, for what constitutes respective datapoints—for example, what counts as a school shooting or a school mass shooting. 14   For the purposes of this study, we followed the definitions provided in each respective database for the outcome of interest. As such, in our study, a “school shooting” constituted “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week”; incidents are cataloged in the database when they are noted in news reports published in print or online, and all specified incidents were included in our study. 12   Similarly, in our study, a “school mass shooting” was a shooting noted to have occurred at a kindergarten through 12th grade school site during which 3 or more victims were killed (shootings that occurred before January 2013 were counted if 4 or more victims were killed, pursuant to the operational definition of “mass shooting” that was in place at the time the database was initiated). 13   Again, all specified incidents in the database were included in our study. The analyses we conducted drew on incidents logged in each respective database in accord with these definitions. Data presented are holistic, as tabulated from each respective data source and calculated for each school year (which we denoted as July 1 through June 30). Results are presented descriptively.

Across the 1997–1998 to 2021–2022 school years, there were 1453 school shootings. The number of school shootings in the United States within a given school year has increased noticeably over the past 25 years, with the number of incidents per year initially appearing to be somewhat steady, then declining slightly, but then rising sharply in more recent years ( Fig 1 ). The number of school shootings in a given school year numbered between 15 and 328, with a low of 15 occurring during the 2009–2010 school year and a high of 328 occurring during the 2021–2022 school year. The most recent 5 school years reflected a substantially higher number of school shootings than the previous 20 years. Over the latest 5 school years—that is, across the 2017–2018 to the 2021–2022 school years—there were 794 school shootings. That was 135 more than the number of school shootings that occurred across the previous 15 school years combined ( n = 659).

US school shootings by school year, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022. School year denoted as July 1–June 30. Source: CHDS School Shooting Safety Compendium. Per the definition provided in the Compendium, a school shooting is defined as brandishing a gun, firing a gun, or a bullet hitting school property for any reason.

Although the number of US school shootings has substantially increased in recent years ( Fig 1 ), US school mass shootings have not increased in parallel ( Fig 2 ). There was a total of 11 school mass shootings across the 1997–1998 to 2021–2022 school years. A school mass shooting occurred in 8 of the 25 school year periods examined, with 2 school mass shootings occurring in 3 of the last 25 school year periods examined. There were 17 school years when no mass shooting occurred, whereas no more than 2 school mass shootings occurred during a given school year.

US school mass shootings by school year, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022. School year denoted as July 1–June 30. School mass shootings tabulated here are included in the school shooting counts reported in Fig 1 . Source: Mother Jones. 13  

Across the 1997–1998 to 2021–2022 school years, a total of 122 people were killed and 126 were injured in the 11 school mass shootings that occurred, for a total of 248 victims ( Fig 3 ). On average then, over the 25-year time span examined, there were approximately 5 fatalities and 5 injuries per school year that could be attributed to school mass shootings. The greatest number of fatalities and injuries sustained from school mass shootings, combined, was in the 2017–2018 school year, with 27 fatalities and 30 injuries. The 2021–2022 school year had the second greatest number of fatalities and injuries sustained from school mass shootings, combined, with 25 fatalities and 24 injuries. The most recent 10 years had more fatalities and injuries ( n = 141) than the previous 15 years ( n = 107), with 34 more victims overall. As such, although the number of school mass shootings did not dramatically increase over the 25-year period spanning the 1997–1998 to 2021–2022 school years—in contrast to the number of school shootings more generally—school mass shootings became more deadly. For example, there were 7.6 fatalities per school mass shooting event ( n = 5) from 1997–1998 to 2011–2012, compared with 14 fatalities per school mass shooting event ( n = 6) from 2012–2013 to 2021–2022. Thus, the number of deaths per mass shooting event has effectually almost doubled when comparing the most recent school mass shooting events with those that occurred earlier.

US school mass shootings by school year: number of fatalities and number injured, 1997–1998 through 2021–2022. School year denoted as July 1–June 30. Source: Mother Jones. 13  

Rates of gun violence in the United States continue to rise and, as a consequence, so do deaths resulting from that gun violence. 9 , 15   School shootings on the premises of U.S. kindergarten through twelfth grade schools are at their highest recorded levels. School-related gun violence and school mass shootings continue to be a serious public health concern, uniquely affecting youth within the United States. 16   In the discussion that follows, we draw on our findings and connect them to recent scholarship to consider the implications of increased school-related gun violence, including the psychological trauma that coincides with the rising prevalence of school shootings and the increased deadliness of school mass shootings in the United States.

The prevalence of school shootings and school mass shootings induces trauma in school-aged youth. Coping with the aftermath of violence—including school shootings and school mass shootings—is stressful and exacerbates that trauma. Children and adolescents directly exposed to violence and crime face a host of ancillary challenges, including drug and alcohol use and abuse, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, school failure, and involvement in criminal activity. 4 , 17   – 19   Moreover, youth indirectly exposed are peripherally impacted through extensive media coverage of school shootings and school mass shootings; this leads to more people suffering the effects of these tragedies, with resultant outcomes tied to worsened mental health consequences among members of communities in which gun violence occurs. 18 , 20  

Traumatic events—proximal or distal—affect youth’s development and well-being. Yet, schools often lack the financing for resources, student support programs, and personnel to provide students with optimal care. That is, schools sometimes struggle to meet the demands of students’ mental health needs even as the prevalence of school shootings increases and as the consequences of school mass shootings become more dire. 21   Successful school-based interventions and responses are possible, and they can lessen the probability of further trauma among youth impacted by gun violence. 22   Such interventions are needed in addition to broader policy changes and further restrictions in access to firearms. 16  

After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, President Obama promised to fund hundreds more school resource officers (SROs) and school-based mental health specialists across the nation. 23   In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, more than 450 bills were introduced in state or federal legislatures with a focus on school safety. 9 , 24 , 25   To reduce violence and improve school safety, schools have relied increasingly on heightened security measures, including increased numbers of SROs and the implementation of zero-tolerance policies (including exclusionary and aversive measures). Despite their prevalence, however, research suggests that the presence of SROs has not decreased school shootings. 26 , 27   Similarly, though initially designed to reduce gun violence in schools, zero-tolerance policies have been broadened to cover a variety of incidents (eg, threats, bullying). Despite best intentions, these policies have generally failed to stop school shootings and other forms of violence. 28 , 29   Instead, such policies have increased the number of times students interact with law enforcement in and around schools.

Along with armed security, schools throughout the nation are teaching their students how to “run, hide, or fight” if approached by an active shooter. 16   During Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate drills, students are frequently exposed to unavoidable and frightening images and stories of school violence. 30   They are subject to active shooter drills that may not be effective and, in some cases, may themselves actually induce trauma. Simulation drills expose students to aggressive and frightening elements—for example, the use of fake blood, the shooting of guns loaded with blanks or rubber pellets, and the false pretense that it the occurrence is not a drill but an actual attack. 16 , 31   Despite the potential for induced fear, anxiety, and trauma to come from these drills, school administrators view these activities as a suitable response to parental demands to keep children safe. 16 , 32   Whatever benefit physical security, active shooter drills, and SROs may have in safeguarding students, imposing fortress-like settings on youth can increase fear and introduce trauma rather than reduce it. 16 , 33 , 34   In effect, the supports designed to keep students safe may be inadvertently doing harm to their mental health. To enhance efforts to support student safety, district and school leaders must aspire to implement discrete security measures to prevent gun violence and school shootings, for example, through environmental design. 16 , 35 , 36  

Although security measures surely play an important role in protecting students from gun violence, it may be insufficient to focus only on shooting prevention through “hardening the target” 16   —that is by making school sites more secure to preemptively mitigate disaster. Prevention starts long before a shooter enters a school, and it includes more than just security measures on school premises. Instead, a comprehensive and scientifically supported public health approach is needed to address gun violence and school shootings. The Coalition of National Researchers proposed such an approach for safeguarding both children and adults against gun violence; the approach involves 3 levels of prevention: (1) universal approaches promoting safety and well-being for everyone; (2) practices for reducing risk and promoting protective factors for persons experiencing difficulties; and (3) interventions for individuals where violence is present or appears imminent. 37  

Recently, the framework of Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS)—including Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and Response to Intervention—has been implemented in schools. 9 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41   This evidence-based framework enables school personnel to address students’ educational, social, emotional, and behavioral needs. The Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports offers a wealth of resources and implementation strategies, and also provides information about data-driven decision-making, integration of evidence-based behavioral and academic interventions, preventive measures, culturally sensitive practices, and mental health support. 41 , 42   Schools should consider the implementation of MTSS as a means to counter the threat of gun violence, school shootings, and school mass shootings because it reduces reliance on exclusionary and aversive measures like zero-tolerance policies, seclusion and restraints, corporal punishment, and school-based law enforcement referrals and arrests. Instead, MTSS engenders support for students’ well-being, improves school climate, and supports reductions in behavioral issues and school violence. 9 , 43  

This study, like any empirical inquiry, has some limitations that should be considered as its results are interpreted. First, the databases used for this study were compiled directly from news reports and other publicly available or publicly reported information. Although the authors of each respective database have endeavored to do their due diligence to verify the accuracy of the data compiled in their database, because of reliance on public reporting, there is certainly the potential for undercounting the number of school-related gun violence incidents that occurred each year. As media attention on gun violence has increased over the years, there is also the potential for the number of reported incidents each year to be higher, such that incidents overall may not have increased or be increasing, but rather the observed increases may be an artifact of more attention paid to this issue by news media in more recent years. Given the similar national trends in gun violence and gun-related deaths, however, this explanation seems unlikely. 15 , 44  

The analyses in this study were also limited by and linked to the definitions of school shootings and school mass shootings as delineated in the databases from which we drew for the study’s data. This naturally constrained our ability to consider these outcomes from vantage points that are either beyond the scope or different in scope from those advanced by and reported in each respective database. 14   There is no singular national database that contains all pertinent information and complete statistics on school shootings and school mass shootings. This limits researchers’ ability to conduct empirical analyses on school shootings and school mass shootings.

These limitations notwithstanding, the analyses we conducted did provide new insights into the issue of school shootings and school mass shootings across a recent 25-year span, school years 1997–1998 through 2021–2022. Rates of school shootings have increased, and school mass shootings have become more deadly. In light of these results, we considered the effects of these increasing rates and risks associated with school-related gun violence for the nation’s youth, who have spent their entire lives attending schools marked by the specter of school shootings and school mass shootings.

Gun violence in United States is a public health crisis affecting the nation’s youth. School shootings have risen in frequency in the recent 25 years, and they are now at their highest recorded levels. School mass shootings, while they have not necessarily increased in frequency, have become more deadly. This public health crisis leads to detrimental outcomes for all the nation’s youth—not just those who experience school-related gun violence firsthand. School-based interventions can be used to address this public health crisis, and effective approaches such as MTSS and services should be used in support of students’ mental health and academic and behavioral needs.

Drs Rapa and Katsiyannis conceptualized and designed the study, contributed to analyses, drafted portions of the initial manuscript, and critically reviewed and revised the manuscript; Ms Scott and Ms Durham drafted portions of the initial manuscript and critically reviewed and revised the manuscript; and all authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

COMPANION PAPER: A companion to this article can be found online at www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2023-065281 .

FUNDING: No external funding.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURES: The authors have indicated they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

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May 25, 2022

What We Know about Mass School Shootings—and Shooters—in the U.S.

Criminologists explain what the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., and other deadly assaults have in common

By James Densley , Jillian Peterson & The Conversation US

Law enforcement officers speak together outside of Robb Elementary School following the mass shooting on May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. According to reports, 19 students and 2 adults were killed, with the gunman fatally shot by law enforcement.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation , an online publication covering the latest research.

When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history.

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Now, it ranks fourth. The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack , in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people ; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile. For the purposes of our database, mass public shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more victims are murdered with at least one of those homicides taking place in a public location and with no connection to underlying criminal activity, such as gangs or drugs.

Our database shows that since 1966, when our database timeline begins, there have been 13 such shootings at schools across the U.S – the first in Stockton, California , in 1989.

Four of those shootings – including the one at Robb Elementary School – involved a killing at another location, always a family member at a residence. There have been reports the most recent perpetrator shot his grandmother prior to going to the school in Uvalde, although that has yet to be officially confirmed.

The majority of mass school shootings were carried out by a lone gunman, with just two – Columbine and the 1998 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Arkansas – carried out by two gunmen. In all, some 146 people were killed in the attacks and at least 182 victims injured.*

The choice of “gunmen” to describe the perpetrators is accurate – all of the mass school shootings in our database were carried out by men or boys . And the average age of those involved in carrying out the attacks was 18.

This fits with the picture that has emerged of the shooter in the Robb Elementary School attack . He turned 18 just days ago and purchased two military-style weapons thought to be the ones used in the attack.

Police have yet to release key information on the shooter, including what motivated him to kill the children and adults at Robb Elementary School. The picture of the shooter that has emerged conforms to the profile we have built up from past perpetrators in some ways, but diverges in others.

We know that most school shooters have a connection to the school they target. Twelve of the 14 school shooters in our database prior to the most recent attack in Texas were either current or former students of the school. Any prior connection between the latest shooter and Robb Elementary School has not been released to the public.

Our research and dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators of mass shootings suggests that for most perpetrators, the mass shooting event is intended to be a final act. The majority of school mass shooters die in the attack. Of the 15 mass school shooters in our database, just seven were apprehended. The rest died on the scene, nearly all by suicide – the lone exception being the Robb Elementary shooter, who was shot dead by police.

And school shooters tend to preempt their attacks by leaving posts, messages or videos warning of their intent.

Inspired by past school shooters, some perpetrators are seeking fame and notoriety . However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate cry for help . The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be alert to these warning signs and act on them immediately.

This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .

*Editor’s Note (5/25/22): Our partners at The Conversation have edited this sentence after posting to correct the date of the shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Ark.

The lasting consequences of school shootings on the students who survive them

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Assistant Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University

Associate Professor of Economics, The University of Texas at Austin

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Disclosure statement

Maya Rossin-Slater receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD102378, as well as the National Science Foundation CAREER award No. 1752203.

Bokyung Kim receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD102378.

Hannes Schwandt receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD102378.

Marika Cabral receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD102378.

Molly Schnell receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD102378.

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As the U.S. reels from another school shooting, much of the public discussion has centered on the lives lost: 19 children and two adults. Indeed, the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde , Texas is the second deadliest such incident on record, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Since the Columbine massacre in 1999 in which two teenagers killed a dozen students and one teacher , at least 185 children, educators and others have been killed by gun violence at American schools, according to figures compiled by The Washington Post .

But this death toll captures only one part of the immense cost of gun violence in American schools. We have studied the long-term effects of school shootings on the health, education and economic futures of those who survive such incidents. Our research shows that despite often escaping without physical harm, the hundreds of thousands of children and educators who survive these tragedies carry scars that affect their lives for many years to come.

Deterioration in mental health

In a 2020 study , we analyzed 44 school shootings that took place in the U.S. between 2008 and 2013 to assess the impact the incidents had on students’ mental health. Using a unique data set documenting antidepressant prescriptions in the surrounding areas, we found that antidepressant use among youth near schools that experienced shootings increased by over 20% following the event.

This increased usage of antidepressants persisted for over three years after the shooting, indicating that the deterioration in mental health among local adolescents was not temporary.

The effects were more pronounced when the school shootings included fatalities, suggesting that events like the massacre in Uvalde are likely to result in long-lasting health effects on survivors that extend beyond the physical injuries some have received.

Educational and economic trajectories

But the mental health impacts of mass school shootings tell only part of the story. While deadly massacres like the one in Uvalde receive widespread media and public attention, many more acts of gun violence at schools are less fatal and less highly publicized. Indeed, figures from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security show that in 2021 alone there were 240 incidents in which a gun was either brandished or used in a school.

Of all shootings that took place at U.S. schools in 2018 and 2019, nearly three-quarters had no fatalities . But that doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact.

To assess their effects, we studied fatal and non-fatal school shootings in Texas – taking a wider lens and considering acts of gun violence that frequently take place at schools but are unlikely to make national news.

Between 1995 and 2016, 33 Texas public schools experienced a shooting on school grounds during school hours – some schools had more than one.

Using detailed educational and labor market data, we compared the trajectories of students at schools that experienced shootings with those of students at schools that were similar in terms of institutional and student characteristics, such as demographic makeup and percentage of students from low-income backgrounds. But the comparison group of schools did not have a shotting over our study period.

We found that students who had been exposed to a shooting at school were more likely to be chronically absent and to be held back a grade in the two years after the event.

They were also significantly less likely to graduate high school, go to or graduate from college. The impacts extended into their early adult life. In their mid 20s, they were less likely to be employed and had lower earnings than their peers who had not been exposed to a shooting at school.

Eighteen of the 33 shootings we included in the study resulted in no fatalities, and no shootings resulted in more than one death. Yet, the negative impacts on people’s lives were profound. Our results reveal that each student exposed to a shooting could expect to earn US$115,550 less over the course of their lifetime.

Living with the consequences

The tragedy of the lives lost to gun violence in America’s schools cannot be overstated. But the data indicate that even those who escape these horrific events alive and without physical injuries are also victims.

These adverse impacts are observed in students exposed to mass shootings, but also the more routine acts of gun violence in schools that rarely make the news. With an average of nearly 50,000 American students experiencing an act of gun violence at their school annually in recent years, our findings suggest that the aggregate costs of school gun violence in terms of lost lifetime earnings is nearly $5.8 billion. The full costs in terms of detriment to the mental health of tens of thousands of young people is harder to quantify.

So as we mourn the 21 lives lost in Uvalde, we must not forget about the hundreds of other students who were at the school that day. These students will be forced to live with the consequences of what happened for decades to come.

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Exploring the connections between bullying and school shootings

Classmates of the boy who carried out a deadly shooting this month at his Iowa high school say he was bullied for years. NPR's A Martinez investigates what role bullying plays in school shootings.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

The high school in Perry, Iowa, is reopening this week after a deadly shooting there earlier this month. A student shot five other students and three staff members before taking his own life. One student died that day, the school's principal 10 days later. There's still no confirmed motive, but classmates told the Associated Press that the attacker had been bullied since elementary school. Now, it got me wondering if there's a connection between bullying and school shootings. These tragedies often revive the debate around gun control. But what part does bullying play? Can a teen get pushed to such a dark place that it results in violence?

In a few minutes, we're going to ask a couple of experts about that. But first, I went to Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland, between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, to ask these questions. Students walked to and from buildings scattered throughout a tree-filled campus. In one of the newest buildings, seven high schoolers met me in a cozy, glass-lined conference room. And a warning - some of what they had to say includes mentions of suicide.

DIEGO: From, like, elementary school all the way until the end of middle school, I was bullied a lot, and that's why I'm just thankful every day that I'm in here in this community and I'm safe from that.

MARTÍNEZ: That's Diego (ph), who's 17. Most of the students either had similar experiences or knew someone who had been bullied. Here's 18-year-old Austin (ph).

AUSTIN: I was bullied my entirety of when I was at my previous Friends school and just sort of feeling helpless, feeling like even if you have people you can go to, feeling as if you can't go to them because there's, like, such shame.

MARTÍNEZ: We're not using the students' last names because in the school's Quaker tradition, students and staff only go by their first names. Now, for Austin, the bullying pushed him to a dark corner.

AUSTIN: It felt like I was empty. I had thoughts of suicide and had to go to an intensive outpatient program for the entirety of basically 10th grade, and it was heartbreaking because I'm like, I'm a kid. I should be able to live - like, feel good about myself.

MARTÍNEZ: Many studies of school shootings have found that bullying plays a prominent role. A look at 41 different shootings by the National Threat Assessment Center, part of the Secret Service, found that the majority of attackers had experienced persistent bullying. And while Austin doesn't condone it...

AUSTIN: I definitely have an understanding of how if someone can be so close to wanting to hurt themselves, that that can easily be turned into being so frustrated, so tired of the behavior that they're getting from maybe the people bullying them, or even just, like, the world. And I could understand, even if it's not acceptable, of how those feelings and those thoughts could lead to someone doing something as terrible as that.

MARTÍNEZ: Greta (ph), who's 16, says the cycle of pain is easy to track.

GRETA: I mean, it's a pretty common saying, hurt people hurt people. And I think it's really unfortunate that violence ever feels like an acceptable response to when somebody's hurt. I think it's becoming normalized more and more as school violence continues to happen and action continues to not be taken.

MARTÍNEZ: Janan (ph), also 16, thinks isolation is part of the problem.

JANAN: When you internalize your emotions and you don't tell anyone, you don't go to anybody, these emotions only build up in you, and at a certain point, it's like pouring water into a container. Eventually, it's all going to spill over and it's going to flood.

MARTÍNEZ: As I was talking to these teens, I was imagining bullying the way I experienced it in high school. A kid said something mean or insulting, or if I was really unlucky that day, I'd feel their fist somewhere on my body. All that still happens today. But Bryce (ph), who's 15, brought up an added layer unique to children of the smartphone era that makes terrible things feel normal.

BRYCE: Just looking at social media, people watch fight videos for fun, or when they see something happening, the first thing they do is, oh, I should record this, send it to the group chat later for a laugh.

MARTÍNEZ: Why do you think we're there, where a video of someone - a kid, a teenager - getting abused or bullied is social media currency?

BRYCE: That's a really hard question. I feel that humans are already, in America specifically, just totally desensitized to violence 'cause it's in our games. It's just like, oh, there's a school shooting. Oh, I heard about this other one last week, oh, and this other one the month before, like it's a casual occurrence.

MARTÍNEZ: Tiffany Evans is the school's dean of student life and knows exactly what Bryce is talking about.

TIFFANY EVANS: I think we want to make sure that students feel safe, but we're fighting a battle of social media, where it's glorified to be someone who hurt someone else, who says something rude. And so we're here at school, and they're with us, and we're telling them to do the right things, and this is our culture. But the social media platforms are allowing and supportive of those things. So it's really hard for us - right? - as adults to provide consistency for students.

MARTÍNEZ: The students and staff of Sandy Spring Friends School had. All kinds of ideas for ways to stem bullying and to try to help someone that feels so damaged by it, they might feel that lashing out violently is their only option. Joel Gunzburg is the assistant head of the lower school but for years was the school's counselor.

JOEL GUNZBURG: You have to know your kid. I mean, you have to know - like, this is where it becomes so important for teachers, administrators, counselors. You know who your student is. So why are they acting so different?

MARTÍNEZ: Communication, reaching out, looking for where there are a lack of mental health resources - all of these are part of the answer, Gunzburg says. But the student we heard from first, Diego - Diego might have hit on the one thing all of us can do better.

DIEGO: We just have to be kinder to each other. That's all there is to it.

MARTÍNEZ: OK. That was our visit to Sandy Spring Friends School in Montgomery County, Md. Listening in and joining us now are two experts in this field. Dr. Allison Paolini is an experienced school counselor. She's now the director of the school counseling program at Arkansas State University and has written about the link between school shootings and student mental health. And we also have with us Dr. Peter Langman, a psychologist who's consulted with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security about the motivations of attackers and has authored three books on the subject. Allison, let's start with you. What did you make of what some of the students had to say?

ALLISON PAOLINI: Really, really powerful. I think that a lot of them touched upon that, you know, a lot of these people are in so much pain, and they're lashing out in these very volatile ways - right? - but there's a reason as to why. And we know that bullying, specifically, has a monumentally negative impact on students.

MARTÍNEZ: Peter, anything that you heard from the students that stood out to you?

PETER LANGMAN: The importance of school climate, school culture can't be emphasized enough because, as I think it was Diego commented, you know, people just need to be kinder to each other.

MARTÍNEZ: Allison, is there enough support out there for students who might be suffering from bullying so badly - to the point where they're pushed to do something violent?

PAOLINI: Coming from a school counseling perspective, probably not. I can tell you that according to ASCA, the American School Counseling Association, the ratio of school counselors to students is supposed to be 250 to 1. Is that happening? No. When I was a school counselor at a very high-needs school, I had a caseload of probably over 500 students, and there was only one of me.

MARTÍNEZ: Peter, I mentioned how you've consulted with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security about the motivations of attackers. Is there a direct link or a line that can point to bullying, to a school shooting?

LANGMAN: Certainly there have been school shooters who have been severely bullied. Many, however, have not been bullied. And unfortunately, bullying is all too common. I've seen statistics that 70% or so of students experience peer harassment, but very, very few of them will commit a rampage attack, so it's hard to say there's a 1-to-1 connection. Bullying, like any other stressor, can increase the risk, but many other factors typically play into it. It could be academic struggles. It could be disciplinary actions at the school, an arrest in the community, romantic rejections and so on. So typically when we look into the cases, even when bullying is present, it's not the only stressor. It may be very important, but typically there's other things going on as well.

MARTÍNEZ: One last question for both of you. If there was the money and the will to get behind one thing to help a high schooler who is being pushed into this kind of dark corner and to try and get them out without something horrible happening, what would you want that one thing to be? Allison, let's start with you on that.

PAOLINI: Definitely having the mental health resources because I think, especially since the pandemic, there are so many students who are struggling with - whether it's something that's diagnosed or under diagnosed - we don't know whether or not they're receiving treatment. I think that counselors - school counselors, specifically - need to do more and to really address social-emotional learning. And I think a lot of these students would benefit, whether they're perpetrators of violence or victims or just students in general, right? I think that having these life skills - so being able to regulate your emotions, resolve conflict, mindfulness, communication and really expressing yourself rather than internalizing it, like a lot of the students had mentioned, if more schools focused more on preventative measures - right? - and were more proactive rather than reactive, I think we would see strides.

MARTÍNEZ: Peter, what about you? One thing we could focus on.

LANGMAN: My focus is violence prevention. And there's a growing trend for schools to have threat assessment teams. And the idea of threat assessment is identifying those students early, before they hurt anybody and getting the services they need so they can get back on track and live their lives and be, you know, successful, high-functioning members of our community. So I always want to make a plea for schools to have threat assessment teams, get them trained, know how to intervene effectively with, you know, wide range of students who may be facing a wide range of crises and get them out of crisis and back on track.

MARTÍNEZ: That's Dr. Peter Langman, psychologist and the author of three books on the motivations behind school shootings, and Dr. Allison Paolini, director of the school counseling program at Arkansas State University. My thanks to you both.

LANGMAN: Thank you.

PAOLINI: Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SCARS TO YOUR BEAUTIFUL")

ALESSIA CARA: (Singing) And you don't have to change a thing. The world could change its heart No scars to your beautiful. We're stars, and we're beautiful.

MARTÍNEZ: If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, you can call or text 988 - just those numbers, nothing else - 988 - and that gets you to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

CARA: (Singing) No scars to your beautiful. We're stars, and we're beautiful.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Essay: School Shootings In America

• Alex Ashlock

We are all trying to make some kind of sense out of what happened in Newtown, Conn. But it's futile. It will never make any sense, why a young man would kill 20 little children. Friday Dec. 14, 2012, will change the lives of those connected to the dead forever and will live forever in the memories of the rest of us.

What happened in Connecticut Friday followed a shooting in a mall in Oregon last Tuesday, when a young masked man killed two shoppers and himself. And just five months ago another young man opened fire during a screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 people.

Here's a piece published by Mother Jones that looks in detail at mass shootings in America:

• Mother Jones: A Guide to Mass Shootings in America

If you limit mass shootings to just school shootings, the Associated Press list counts 13 of them since 1997. That includes Columbine in 1999 when two high school students killed 12 people before taking their own lives. But there are so many others that we don't remember, that don't resonate in the way the words "Columbine" and now "Newtown" do. Here are some of them:

• Oct. 2, 2006: Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot to death five girls at West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania, then killed himself.
• Mar. 21, 2005: Jeffrey Weise, 16, shot and killed five schoolmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota before taking his own life. Weise had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.
• Oct. 28, 2002: Robert Flores Jr., 41, who was flunking out of the University of Arizona nursing school, shot and killed three of his professors before killing himself.
• Mar. 5, 2001: Charles "Andy" Williams, 15, killed two fellow students and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, Calif.
• May 21, 1998: Two teenagers were killed and more than 20 people hurt when Kip Kinkel, 17, opened fire at a high school in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents.
• Mar. 24, 1998: Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, killed four girls and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Ark., middle school. Ten others were wounded in the shooting.
• Dec. 1, 1997: Three students were killed and five wounded at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. Michael Carneal, then 14, later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and is serving life in prison.
• Oct. 1, 1997: Luke Woodham, 16, of Pearl, Miss., fatally shot two students and wounded seven others after stabbing his mother to death. He was sentenced the following year to three life sentences.

I'm 57. When I was in grade school, high school or even college, I don't remember ever thinking about someone coming into my school and killing me or my classmates. I don't remember any teacher or administrator ever mentioning the subject. There was nothing like there is today, when school kids know what "lockdown" means.

I heard a high school student from Newtown on the radio talking about this. When the lockdown order came for all Newtown schools Friday he told WBUR's Nancy Cohen everyone knew the drill. They closed the door and hid in the corner next to the door, so even if a gunman were to break into their classroom they could defend themselves.

Those little kids in the Sandy Hook Elementary School never even had that chance.

• H&N's full coverage of the Newtown shootings

This program aired on December 17, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

Alex Ashlock Producer, Here & Now Alex Ashlock was a producer for Here & Now since 2005. He started his WBUR career as senior producer of Morning Edition in 1998.

More from Here & Now

In the Oxford school shooting: historic punishment, familiar sadness

The shootings happen so frequently that the only way to distinguish one from the other is with a heartbreaking shorthand that’s both callous and intimate. The rampages have become known by their geography, first by the cities and suburbs where they occurred — Aurora, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Parkland. And then by the way in which the quotidian — a movie, a live concert, a grocery store, a school — became killing fields. But the shooting at a high school in Oxford, Mich., in which four students died carried the specific tensions and sorrows that have us yelling at each other across self-imposed divides about school safety, gun ownership and the authority of parents.

What is the appropriate power dynamic between parents and teachers? Can a 1950s version of gun culture realistically exist in this 21st-century society? Can communities barricade and surveil schools to safety? Oxford overflowed with the lies the culture tells itself.

Do you recall the Oxford shooting in November 2021? It’s written on the soul of those who lived through it, but for others it may have been overtaken by the urgencies of a presidential election, the rising death toll in Gaza or some singularly personal calamity that requires full attention. But more likely, Oxford sadly, horrifically, simply faded away.

So many of the details of the tragedy were familiar: a young man got hold of a gun and left a path of devastation and terror in the hallways and classrooms of an American school. The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the killings, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, in an Oakland County courtroom, his parents were tried for their part in the mayhem.

Jennifer and James Crumbley had separate trials for involuntary manslaughter. First, the mother. Then, the father. The juries found them both guilty, the first time parents were convicted of deaths in a mass shooting committed by their child. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced each of them to 10 to 15 years in prison. She noted that the convictions were “not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts — or lack of acts — that could have halted an oncoming runaway train, repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.”

Their punishment was a far cry from what their attorneys requested. James’s attorney argued that he be sentenced to time served — and the clock has been ticking since the couple was arrested in December 2021 when police officers found the husband and wife camped out in a warehouse on the east side of Detroit, some 40 miles south of Oxford. Jennifer’s attorney suggested that her client be sentenced to house arrest — in her attorney’s guesthouse.

The Crumbleys’ was an unusual prosecution. The closest comparison might be the recent case of Deja Taylor. In Virginia in 2023, Taylor’s 6-year-old son gained access to her gun and shot his first grade teacher. Taylor was punished as a result of his actions, but her crimes were child neglect , possessing a firearm while being a drug user and lying on a background check. In contrast, the Crumbleys have been found complicit in the Oxford killings. They enabled them. They not only failed their child and their family; they failed society. They helped to clear a path that led to the killings and their countless ripples of trauma.

It was quite something to see the mother face a jury . She didn’t look like the same person who had been arrested. She moved like a woman carrying not just additional physical weight, but also the outrage and despair of a community. There were moments when a courtroom observer might have been tempted to decry her prosecution as another way in which mothers still are expected to bear the bulk of the responsibility for parenting. The prosecution depicted her as a woman more consumed with her work and her horses and her extramarital affairs than her child. But then she took the witness stand and said, “I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have.” She demonstrated an inability to see her own failings upon closer inspection. And her failing was that she saw the son that she wanted to see, that it was easier to see, rather than the deeply troubled one who stood before her asking for help.

James was the parent who purchased the gun that was his son’s tool for devastation. He bought it and tucked it away in an armoire and slipped the bullets under a pair of jeans and that was his safety plan at a time when 327 people a day are shot in the United States. It was his right to bear arms in a part of the country that loves hunting and target-shooting, but not to do so carelessly. James never took the stand, but his jailhouse phone calls were filled with anger and threats toward the prosecutors. When he finally addressed the victims’ family members during Tuesday’s sentencing, he said, “I’m sorry for your loss as a result of what my son did.”

During the trial, an educator testified to locking eyes with the killer as he pointed a gun at her. She managed to dodge the bullet that was aimed at her heart but instead hit her shoulder. A police officer grew emotional as he explained how he’d watched hours and hours of video that tracked the killer as he moved through the school and the bodies fell. Through their testimony, listeners learned that this school had more than 100 cameras positioned throughout it. Classroom doors had special bolts that extended into the floor so that entrances could not be breached. It was a fortified school, a place where seemingly every corner was under surveillance, but it was not immune to the killings. The hardened school was no match for a single desperate student with a gun.

The killer had described his mental distress. He shared this information with a friend and in his journal and with his parents. The teachers deferred to the parents despite concerns that their son needed immediate counseling — not because teachers foresaw the deaths of his schoolmates but because they feared for his own safety. And what did the parents do with all their authority? These are the days in which parental rights demand that children be excused from learning about sex or gender issues or racism. Parents demand to be told about their child’s every mishap and desire shared with a teacher or counselor but don’t want to hear that their child is struggling.

“He was not the son I knew when I woke up on Nov. 30,” Jennifer said to the victims’ families during sentencing. “I know we did our best.”

Then as she sat at the defense table in her prison stripes, she added: “This could be any parent up here in my shoes.”

Indeed, it could be any parent who ignores signs that their child is struggling emotionally, purchases them a gun, fails to secure the gun and insists that they could not possibly foresee a tragedy.

Parents imagine the possibility that all sorts of things could befall their child. They envision stranger danger on the playground. They worry about government overreach into their relationship with their child. They fret about their child being uncomfortable in school or socially ostracized or being diagnosed with a deadly ailment. And they’re terrified of lockdowns and shootings and having to meet in a family unification zone to be told that their worst fear has come true.

Before the judge announced the Crumbleys’ sentence, the victims’ family members talked about their loss. Their stories were filled with unfathomable sadness. Indeed, the truest thing that Jennifer’s attorney might have said was that there was more than “enough sadness to go around.” Holding the Crumbleys accountable will do nothing to dissipate the sadness of today, but perhaps it will help to limit the sorrows of the future.

• Public Health

School Shootings Are Raising Anxiety and Panic in U.S. Children

T he May 24 mass shooting in a Uvalde , Texas elementary school, in which a gunman killed 19 young children and two teachers, was the third-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. But it was also just the latest of an increasingly common type of U.S. tragedy—one that experts say is saddling American schoolchildren, even the youngest, with rising levels of anxiety and other mental-health problems.

Even when children aren’t directly involved in school shootings, they are deeply affected by them and often experience anxiety and depression as a result, says Kira Riehm, a postdoctoral fellow at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “These events are extremely high profile, and they’re portrayed hugely in the media,” says Riehm. They also happen with alarming frequency. In 2022 so far, there have already been 27 school shootings in which someone was injured or killed, according to Education Week’s school shooting tracker .

In a study published in 2021 in JAMA , Riehm and other researchers surveyed more than 2,000 11th and 12th graders in Los Angeles about their fear of shootings and violence at their own or other schools. Researchers followed up with those same students and found that kids who were initially more concerned were more likely to meet the criteria for generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder six months later—suggesting that kids internalize these fears, which can then manifest as diagnosable mental-health issues, Riehm says. While the researchers didn’t find an overall association between concern about school violence and the development of depression, they did when they looked specifically at Black children.

“The root issue is this concern and fear that this could also happen at your school or another school,” Riehm says. “They are large numbers, and unfortunately, that’s kind of in line with what I would have expected before even looking at the data.”

Children of all ages are at risk for developing these types of symptoms after shootings, but research shows that younger children are even more likely than older ones to develop symptoms like anxiety and PTSD as a result, says Dr. Aradhana Bela Sood, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Elementary school kids are probably going to have a much rougher time than perhaps older adolescents,” says Sood. Younger kids haven’t developed “those defenses, those capacities to sort things out in the brain,” Sood says. “They just haven’t had life experiences. And they have no idea how to make sense of this.”

Read More : Close-Knit Uvalde Community Grieves After Elementary School Shooting

In a 2021 review published in Current Psychiatry Reports , Sood and her colleagues analyzed research about the effects of mass shootings on the mental health of children and adolescents. They found that young children (ages 2 to 9) who are directly or indirectly exposed to violence have increased rates of PTSD, but, older children (ages 10-19) “need multiple exposures to violence—direct or indirect—for it to lead to PTSD, suggesting that younger children are more sensitive to violence and develop psychological symptoms post exposure to violence at a higher rate,” the study authors write. (In the review, direct exposures were defined broadly as witnessing or surviving a violent event; indirect exposures included seeing images of a shooting.) High social media use and continuous news reporting on mass shootings expose children repeatedly to these disturbing stories, which “can have at least short-term psychological effects on youth living outside of the affected communities such as increased fear and decreased perceived safety,” the authors write.

Gun-related concern has been widespread among U.S. schoolkids for a long time . Shortly after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 people were killed, researchers surveyed high school students across the U.S. Their results , published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine , found that 30% more students said they felt unsafe at school, compared to national survey data collected before the shooting. This is evidence of “vicarious traumatization,” Sood says, which can occur when a child hears about a tragedy or sees images of it—even if they don’t experience it firsthand. Sood says that kind of exposure is much more likely to produce long-term damage in children who already have shown symptoms of anxiety and depression—which describes a growing number of American kids. “There are certain children that I would be very vigilant about,” Sood says.

While young children are deeply affected by traumatic events, the good news is that they are also resilient. “Obviously there’s an impact, but what you want to see over weeks is a gradual reduction in this response, and that’s normative for young kids,” Sood says.

Whether a child is directly or indirectly impacted by a mass shooting, there are specific steps parents and guardians can take to help their young children process the tragedy. “It is important for people around the child to be vigilant and aware of how they can be supportive and allow the evolution of the grief,” Sood says. Giving the child a predictable routine, allowing them to talk about the experience without judgment, and limiting the news that the child takes in about a tragic event all help, Sood says. Parents or guardians should also make sure they are taking care of their own mental health .

The omnipresent threat of gun violence is just one of the many contributors to the worsening mental-health crisis among U.S. adolescents . Riehm says that issues like climate change and COVID-19 are other large concerns. In November 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association jointly declared a national emergency for the mental health of children. “We are caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, and their communities,” the experts wrote.

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School Shooter's Parents Sentenced to Maximum in Landmark Gun Case

J ames and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the Oxford High School shooter who shot and killed four of his fellow students in November 2021, were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison, the maximum possible, after separate juries convicted them of manslaughter.

Tuesday's sentencing capped a landmark, years-long legal saga that saw, for the first time in the U.S., parents being held criminally responsible for a school shooting carried out by their child.

In an emotional and at times contentious sentencing hearing, family members of the four students killed by Ethan Crumbley at the Michigan high school addressed his parents directly, accusing them of a lack of remorse over their son's actions and looking the other way in a series of troubling incidents leading up to the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting.

"You failed as parents," Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, said through tears. "The punishment you face will never be enough."

"Not only did your son kill my daughter, but you both did as well."

James and Jennifer Crumbley were each convicted during separate trials of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year after juries found them criminally negligent for giving the 9mm semi-automatic handgun used in the shooting to Ethan as a Christmas present four days before the massacre.

In the closely watched trials, prosecutors argued that the Crumbleys ignored warning signs about their son's mental health, including a warning from school officials that Ethan had been drawing violent images in his assignments on the morning of the shooting.

The prosecution said the Crumbleys were told Ethan was in need of immediate psychiatric help but said they refused, taking him home but failing to search his backpack, which contained the handgun. Ethan returned to school that day, went into a bathroom, and then began his rampage.

The Crumbleys defense teams argued that there was no way they could have known their son was planning to carry out a mass shooting.

In addition to Baldwin, Tate Myre, 16, Hana St. Juliana, 14, and Justin Schilling, 17, were killed. All four victims had family members who delivered gut-wrenching statements to the court ahead of the sentencing, each asking the judge to hand down the maximum punishment possible in the unprecedented case.

Both Jennifer and James Crumbley also addressed the court and the victims' families seated behind them, asking for "fair and just" sentences that took into account the two-plus years they've spent in jail, saying once more that they had no idea their son was capable of such violence, and apologizing.

"He was not the son I knew when I woke up on Nov. 30," Jennifer said of Ethan, who was given life in prison without the possibility of parole last December after pleading guilty to terrorism and first-degree murder charges.

"Any sentence that they ask for, I ask that you do impose it on me," Ethan said at the time.

Update 4/9/24, 1:15 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comments from the courtroom.

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The Dogs Helping the Covenant Children Find Their Way Back

To heal after a mass shooting, the Covenant School families have turned to therapy, faith, one another — and a lot of dogs.

Monroe Joyce, 10, runs with one of two dachshunds taken in by her family. She is one of several children who now have a dog after surviving the Covenant School shooting. Credit...

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By Emily Cochrane

Photographs by Erin Schaff

Emily Cochrane and Erin Schaff spoke with more than a dozen Covenant School parents, students, staff and their dogs.

• Published March 24, 2024 Updated March 28, 2024

Two of April Manning’s children, Mac and Lilah, had just survived the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville. They needed stability and time to grieve.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

So she did everything she could to keep the family dog, Owen, their sweet but ailing 15-year-old golden retriever, with them for as long as possible. She pushed back his final trip to the vet, keeping him comfortable as he slowly moved around the house.

Getting another dog was the furthest thing from her mind. But a few weeks after the shooting, her children sat her down for an important presentation.

Prepared with a script and a PowerPoint — “Why We Should Get (Another) Dog” — they rattled through research showing the mental health benefits of having one. It could limit their chances of developing PTSD and help them feel safe. Playing together would get them outside and boost their happiness.

Ms. Manning and her husband considered. Maybe a second dog was possible.

First came Chip, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Then, after Owen succumbed to old age, came Birdie, a miniature poodle and Bernese Mountain dog mix. And in taking them in, the Mannings were far from alone.

In the year since Tennessee’s worst school shooting, in which three third-graders and three staff members were killed by a former student, more than 40 dogs have been taken in by families at Covenant, a small Christian school of about 120 families.

“I really only expected them to help in a cuddly kind of way, like just to snuggle the kids when they’re upset ,” Ms. Manning said. “But I wasn’t really expecting all the other benefits from them.”

To spend time with the Covenant families is to understand how they have relied on one another, traditional psychological treatments and mental health counseling, and their Christian faith to hold them together.

But it is also to see how often what they needed — a distraction, a protector, a friend who could listen, something untouched by darkness — came from a dog.

An Immediate Response

Dogs greeted the surviving children at Sandy Hook Elementary School as they returned to a refurbished middle school in 2013. A dozen golden retrievers were on hand in Orlando to provide comfort after the deadly attack at a L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in 2016. The therapy dogs who tended to the surviving students in Parkland, Fla., made the school yearbook .

“Over this period of sort of, 35,000 years, dogs have become incredibly adept at socializing with humans, so they’re sensitive to our emotional state,” said Dr. Nancy Gee, who oversees the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Even brief, minute-long interactions with dogs and other animals can reduce cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, research by Dr. Gee and others has shown, providing a possible lifeline for veterans struggling with PTSD and others recovering from trauma.

And on the day of the Covenant shooting, dogs were immediately there to help. Covey, the headmaster’s dog, was at a nearby firehouse, where dozens of staff members and students were evacuated. Squid, a retriever mix, was at the children’s hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, helping to comfort the staff if needed.

When the students who survived were put on a school bus to be reunited with their anguished parents, Sgt. Bo, a police dog, was sitting at their side.

Officer Faye Okert, the dog’s handler with the Metro Nashville Police, handed out a baseball card of dog facts to distract and comfort the children.

“The focus was on him,” said Officer Okert. “You had smiles after what they had been through.”

After families reunited, counselors offered clear advice: To help your child, get a dog. Or borrow a neighbor’s.

That led several parents to connect with Comfort Connections, a nonprofit comfort dog organization. Jeanene Hupy, the group’s founder, had seen firsthand how therapy dogs had helped the Sandy Hook students and started her own organization once she moved to Nashville.

The group, which oversees a menagerie of golden retrievers, a gentle pit bull and a massive English mastiff, began its work by visiting individual homes in the days after the shooting. Then, when students returned to class weeks later, the dogs were once again there.

They were something to look forward to, in the moments when walking through the school doors felt overwhelming. And when there were painful reminders — a water bottle clattering to the floor, an unsettling history lesson on war or the absence of a friend — a child could slip away and cuddle a dog.

As Ms. Hupy put it, something special happens “when you bring in something that loves you more than it loves itself, which is these guys.”

A Reassuring Presence

First it was a joke, then a reality: Everyone was getting a dog.

Fueled by community donations and her own money, Ms. Hupy began connecting several parents and puppies. Even for families who could easily afford a new dog, Ms. Hupy and her trainers dramatically eased the logistical hurdles by finding and training puppies that seemed perfect fits to each family.

The Anderson girls shrieked and cried with joy when they learned they were getting a dog, and have now taught Leo how to flaunt sunglasses and do tricks. The Hobbs children constantly scoop up Lady Diana Spencer, often fashionably dressed in a string of pearls or sweaters.

The dogs are also there in the harder moments, too, like when an ambulance or police car drives by blaring its siren or when the memorial ribbons in their neighborhood remind them of what was lost.

“Sometimes it’s just nice to have a giant soft pillow that doesn’t need to talk to you and just cuddle it,” said Evangeline Anderson, now 11.

And if the dogs chew on a shoe or make a mess on a rug, Ms. Manning said, it is a lesson in how to deal with conflicting emotions.

“We still love them and we’re so glad we have them — both things can be true,” she said. “Just like we can be really nervous about going back to school and still also be excited to do it.”

And maybe, the parents realized, it was not just for the children.

Rachel and Ben Gatlin were driving back from vacation on the day of the shooting. That has meant grappling with the heaviness of survival and knowing that Mr. Gatlin, a history teacher who carried a pistol on his ankle for personal protection, could have run toward the shooter that day.

And while their new dog, Buddy, has adapted to the bossiness of their young children and has developed a penchant for sock consumption, he has also kept the adults’ thoughts focused in the moment. Tending to his needs has served as a reminder of their own.

“When you see it working, you’re in total comfort,” Ms. Gatlin said.

Even the school’s chaplain, Matthew Sullivan, found that the stories of new puppies being shared each day in chapel were “wearing me down in a good way.”

“I kind of wanted to enter into the experience of all these families firsthand,” he said.

Now Hank, a slightly anxious, floppy-eared Scooby-Doo doppelgänger, has been adopted into his home, which had been a little empty without his grown children.

The Alternatives

Not everyone got a dog.

For the McLeans, the solution was two rabbits.

“It’s an incredible distraction to their reality,” Abby McLean said of her children, cupping her hands to mimic cradling a rabbit on her shoulder. “I find myself occasionally doing it as well.”

Another family added Ginny, a tortoise with a possible seven-decade life span, to the mix of animals already in their house.

“For having lost people early in life — there was something that equated to me in that, that there was a longevity to it, to a tortoise,” said Phil Shay, who picked out the tortoise with his 12-year-old daughter, Ever.

Still, the dogs far outnumber the other pets. And every day they can make a little difference.

The first night that George, Jude and Amos Bolton had tried to sleep alone without their parents after the shooting, the slightest grumble from the ice machine or the dryer had been too much. Their mother, Rachel, who had maintained that she liked dogs, just not in her house, soon agreed to take in Hudson, a miniature Goldendoodle puppy with doe-like eyes and wild curls.

“We didn’t realize the dogs could create comfort for people,” Jude, now 10, said, his hands ruffling Hudson’s ears. And when Hudson came home, he added, “he’s just been comforting us ever since.”

It is now easier to sleep through the night, safe with the knowledge that Hudson is there.

“All my friends joke, they’re like, ‘I can’t believe you’re a dog person now,’” Ms. Bolton said. But this dog, she added, “has healed this family.”

Read by Emily Cochrane

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville. More about Emily Cochrane

Erin Schaff is a photojournalist for The Times, covering stories across the country. More about Erin Schaff

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