School Shootings Demand Action Now.
There Have Been 47 School Shootings In America This Year, As Of September 13th.
In 2025 there has already been 47 school shootings, leaving 19 dead and 77 injured. Between 2009-2018 there were 57 times more school shootings in America than the rest of the world.
Using the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) we see that between 2000-2021 there was 515 children who died in school shootings, with 1,161 injured. This amounts to 382 shootings with at least one death, 591 with no deaths but at least one injury, and 402 with no casualties.
Diving more into these numbers from NCES there was 320 shootings that targeted elementary schools, 162 targeted middle schools or junior highs, and 777 targeted high schools.
This is where "School shootings" includes all incidents in which a gun is brandished or fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims or reason.
If we go back to 1970, and compare to today, school shootings are 12 times more likely to happen. Children are 6 times more likely to be a school shooting fatality, and 5 times more likely of being a victim.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that between 2009-2018 most school shootings were as a result of a dispute or grievance between students, with second being a general grievance with the school itself.
Most shootings carried out by a student happened in rural, wealthier, low-minority populated areas and these shootings are the most fatal. However, poorer, high-minority populated schools have more shootings overall with the shooters typically being non-students.
According to a Stanford study using over 100,000 students, antidepressant use is higher among those who survived a school shooting. These students are less likely to graduate high school or college, often experience declining test scores, and are more likely to need to repeat a grade.
Luckily, we know there are solutions. Unfortunately, they are being ignored at the federal level.
Say Something is an anonymous reporting service created by the Sandy Hook Promise, that allows students to leave anonymous tips for staff about students they believe may pose a threat.
A study published in Pediatrics analyzing over 18,000 tips throughout 4 school years found over 1770 included tips about firearms. 51% of these firearm tips were considered life threatening, 38% of those tips about firearms included potential school attacks, 22% included personally seeing or knowing someone had a weapon on them.
School violence prevention programs like social-emotional learning or positive behavior interventions are also linked to reducing violence, and better student mental health.
These programs teach strategies to build character development, manage emotions, and deescalate social situations one might find themselves in.
Meta-analysis of other psychological intervention programs at school heavily link them with being effective in reducing aggression, violence, and conflict.
And then there's the one that may trigger some gun lovers, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
I don’t just say this to say it, but increases in the strictness of a states gun law’s are associated with decreases in the probability of a weapons threat at any given school within the state.
This isn’t to say take anyone’s guns away, but to implement Red Flag Laws and get rid of loopholes allowing those without a background check to obtain a gun.
These are easily implementable, could be required through law by federal legislation that should get total bipartisan support, and would show America finally putting its children before it’s guns.
The question is why we haven’t done it yet.