Another record high: Counting school shootings in 2023
This is our summary of a recent article written by K-12 Dive. Please read the original article here.
Varying — and in some cases lacking — definitions and data make the issue hard to track, as experts continue to pursue solutions for both prevention and recovery.
School shootings reached yet another unprecedented high in 2023, outpacing the previous year’s record for the third year in a row. With a little less than two weeks remaining in the year, some 340 school shootings had been recorded as of Dec. 20 by the K-12 School Shooting Database.
The database, one of the leading projects tracking gun violence on school grounds, counts any time a gun is fired or brandished with intent, or when a bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, time, day or reason behind the incident.
Other organizations also track school shootings but use different definitions, depending on factors such as location, time and whether they were intended to cause — or resulted in — injuries or deaths. This mismatch of school shooting datasets and definitions is confusing to the public and can simultaneously elevate fears and mask trends, according to educators, lawmakers and school safety experts.
The confusion can also stymie prevention efforts, they say. However, some say the different collections can benefit stakeholders who have specific questions about gun violence on school campuses. For example, one collection could allow deeper research into what led to the shooting, while another can offer more insight into the details of a shooting.
The number of school shootings this year seems likely to fall just short of predictions from David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database and co-founder of the Homeland Security Advanced Thinking Program. He had estimated the final number of shootings would land somewhere between 360 and 400 by the end of 2023.
“Just based on the characteristics of these incidents — and that it’s been a growing number the last couple years without any kind of meaningful actions being done to address the root causes — I think that it was foreseeable” that the number of shootings would continue to increase, said Riedman.
Mass shootings
While school shootings as defined by Riedman have reached new highs in recent years, the active shooter incidents and mass shootings were a small portion of the overall gun activity on K-12 campuses in 2023.
School shootings may arise from disputes that escalate, while active shooting incidents usually involve intentionally targeting victims on a large scale. By October, there had been a total of seven active shooter incidents on school campuses, said Riedman.
Although the use and definition of the term “mass shooting″ varies, the FBI defines it as any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun.
According to Riedman, there have been five school shootings this year that each had four or more victims. The Covenant School mass shooting in March in Nashville, Tennessee, remains the deadliest this year as of Dec. 20, with six dead.
Deaths from school mass shootings in 2023 did not reach last year’s level, when 19 children and 2 teachers were killed by an active shooter in a single tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
So far this year, 227 people have been killed or wounded on school property from school shootings overall as of Dec. 20, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. That’s below last year’s level, when 273 were wounded or killed on school property.
Trends in 2023
Still, many of the trends in K-12 shootings this year followed prior patterns.
For instance, about a third of shootings in 2023 resulted from disputes that escalated. In total, 831 school shootings recorded since the 1970s began as disagreements, per Riedman’s analysis.
“When there’s a dispute, what would have just been an argument or a fight before turns into a shooting,” said Riedman.
Since the 1970s, students have perpetrated some 40% of school shootings, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database’s analysis. In 2023, most shootings were carried out by people with a direct connection to the school, such as students, former students and people attending school sporting events.
However, Riedman said he’s also seen a new trend emerge this year, with an increase in random school shooters who have no direct connection to the school.
John McDonald, co-founder and chief operating officer of The Council for School Safety Leadership, said he’s seeing school shootings become more aggressive, targeted and intentional.
There are “more manifestos that I’m seeing lately — that shooter that’s put more thought into this,” said McDonald. “It’s not spontaneous anymore. It’s more planned.”
Tracking school shootings
While several organizations track K-12 shootings, they employ different methods for collecting and reporting information. Most have months or years of reporting lag time, making it difficult to spot trends faster.
The FBI tracks active shooting incidents, which the bureau defines as when one or more individuals use a firearm and are actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Data for this reporting is sourced through official law enforcement reports and open-source information.
In 2022, four of the 50 active shooting incidents documented in the U.S. occurred at “education” locations including public and private pre-K-12 schools, school administration buildings, and public and private higher education properties, according to an FBI report released in April.
Those four incidents resulted in the killing of 20 students and three employees. Another 29 people were wounded, the report said.
Defining ‘school shooting’
Here’s how some sources define a school shooting:
K-12 School Shooting Database — Any time a gun is fired or brandished with intent, or when a bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, time, day or reason behind the incident.
FBI — Active shooter incidents at education locations are when one or more individuals used a firearm and was actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people on public and private properties used for educating pre-K-12 students and for school administrative functions like board and staff meetings, or on private or public properties used for post-high school studies.
A database compiled by the Gun Violence Archive shows that 125 shooting incidents led to death or injury at elementary and secondary schools in 2022. That compares to 93 incidents this year as of Dec. 11, according to this database. The Gun Violence Archive considers school shootings as an incident that occurs on the property of the elementary, secondary or college campus where there is a death or injury from gunfire and when students, staff, faculty are present at the facility for school or extracurricular activities.
The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics also publishes school shooting data — using information from a variety of sources, including the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s School Shooting Safety Compendium and the FBI.
In a September post, NCES said that since around 2000, these data show “no consistent trend in the number of school-associated violent deaths or in the number of FBI active shooter incidents in educational environments.”
Statistics from the School Shooting Safety Compendium for K-12 schools, a government-funded project that ceased updating its information in July 2022, pointed to an increase in the number of school shootings, NCES said. Indeed, an NCES table published in September 2022, using the compendium as a source, showed 319 school shootings in the 2021-22 school year.
The compendium defined school shootings as every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason.
The same NCES table shows that between the 2000-01 and 2017-18 school years, the number of schools with a gun brandished or shootings stayed below 100 for each school year. Starting with the 2018-19 school year, schools with shootings climbed into the hundreds before reaching 319 in 2021-22.
Still, another resource — Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization advocating for reduced gun violence — tracks every time a firearm discharges a live round inside or into a school building or onto a school campus or grounds, as documented by the media, its own sourcing and the K-12 School Shooting Database. As of Dec. 11, it recorded 131 incidents of gunfire on school grounds this year.
Seeking a federal definition
Legislation introduced in the U.S. House and Senate for the past two sessions seeks to set a federal definition of a school shooting as an event where one or more injury or death occurs on school grounds, or while students were traveling to or from school or a school-sponsored event.
The bill would require the U.S. Department of Education to publish an annual report on school crime and safety that would include the number of school shootings and details from those incidents, as well as the safety measures in place at schools involved.
“If we are to truly address this issue, we have to own the data, we have to collect the data, and there really is no good reason why we don’t.”
Rep. Jahana Hayes
U.S. congresswoman and former teacher
Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Connecticut, is one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Hayes was a high school history teacher in Waterbury, Connecticut, when, on Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman killed 26 adults and children at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. When Hayes came to Congress in 2019, she said she was “shocked” to learn there was no federal definition of a school shooting, or a uniform and consistent method for collecting and reporting data.
“If we are to truly address this issue, we have to own the data, we have to collect the data, and there really is no good reason why we don’t,” Hayes said.
She added, “I just can’t imagine how we’re going into the 11th year after Sandy Hook that we have not made concrete, tangible nationwide steps to address student safety on campuses, whether it’s an elementary school or a college campus. That should be a safe space.”
Movement on the bill, however, has been slow due to disagreement on gun violence prevention. Hayes said she and others are prepared to reintroduce the bill in future Congresses if it doesn’t pass next year.
A memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults murdered on May 24, 2022, during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on April 27, 2023, in Uvalde, Texas.
Understanding student shooters
In an effort to prevent future shootings, researchers and school safety experts have studied the available statistics to try to understand why students would shoot other students. A 2020 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that half of school shootings between the 2009-10 and 2018-19 school years were committed by a student or former student.
Jerry Sparby was an elementary school principal in 2003 when a then 15-year-old former student of his shot and killed two students at nearby ROCORI High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota. Sparby — who had known the student since preschool — was asked by the teen’s family to talk to him while he was at a detention center soon after the shooting. What Sparby remembers most from that conversation was the shooter saying he felt socially isolated at school and how he had craved connections.
Over the past two decades, Sparby, now a wellness and mental health consultant, has traveled the nation at the request of school systems and families to talk with students who have been identified as at risk of causing harm or being a potential shooter. He found the one commonality among all those students is they all felt “invisible” at school.
“Their peers don’t see them. Their peers have nothing to do with them,” said Sparby, who has started a nonprofit called HuddLUp to support students’ mental well-being and positive peer connections. “They all tell the same story — that ‘there wasn’t a kid in the classroom who knew I was there, nor did they care.’”
The COVID-19 pandemic amplified both students’ feelings of loneliness and the need to prioritize student mental health services, he said. “What we’re hoping for is no invisible kid.”
Preparation and recovery
While COVID-19 has exacerbated students’ behavioral issues, school shootings have been around since at least 1996, said McDonald. And they’ve increased exponentially in recent years.
“And we’ve got to get pretty real here about what are we going to do,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re going to find ourselves in a position 25 years from now saying, ‘Geez, for 50 years, we still haven’t figured this out.’ Shame on us.”
McDonald, Riedman and other school shooting experts point to the barriers to solving the problem: inconsistencies in school safety and violence prevention measures, changing school discipline policies, and a lack of resources. Both school violence experts and educators agree that access to guns and an overall increase in community violence is exacerbating the issue.
“And we’ve got to get pretty real here about what are we going to do. Otherwise, we’re going to find ourselves in a position 25 years from now saying, ‘Geez, for 50 years, we still haven’t figured this out.’ Shame on us.” -John McDonald
Co-founder and chief operating officer of The Council for School Safety Leadership
However, no matter the preparation and prevention measures, it’s not possible to entirely prepare for a shooting — including the emotional toll it takes, said George Sells, spokesperson for St. Louis Public Schools. Sells experienced a school shooting in October 2022, when a 19-year-old former student opened fire on students and staff, killing two and injuring seven.
On that day, for example, Sells and his team didn’t anticipate that traffic and police barricades would keep them from getting to the scene at Central Visual Performing Arts High School . As a result, they had to run about a mile to access the school and the reunification point.
“It’s one of those things that you want to be prepared for, so to speak, but you never are,” said Sells. “It’s like a slap across the face when you’re not expecting it — and boom, there it is.”
Recovery is still a work in progress in the district. Sells calls it “a journey more than it is a task.”
A little over a year later, Sells added, he and others can still feel the fallout.
“But I’ll tell you what: Everybody in my office now knows that you keep a comfortable pair of shoes available and handy in case something like that ever happens again.”
Protesters gather inside the Tennessee State Capitol to call for an end to gun violence and support stronger gun laws on March 30, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Trends for 2024 and beyond
In the meantime, experts expect 2024 to bring more of the same.
Riedman predicts school shootings to exceed 300 next year, just as they did in 2022 and 2023.
“Unfortunately, this is becoming more and more common,” echoed Sells. Sells and others agreed that, since schools are microcosms of broader communities, so too is the problem of increased shootings at schools a microcosm of the gun violence problem nationwide.
“I think it kind of matches how there’s just, there’s violent crime, and there’s gun crime, and there are more people carrying guns than any other point in history that we know of,” said Riedman. “And that’s just leading to a lot of incidents happening in schools.”
McDonald, the school safety expert who co-founded The Council for School Safety Leadership, said much the same.
“The threats are not stopping, the shootings aren’t slowing down. And I don’t see them slowing down,” he said. “I think the next five to seven years are going to be pretty tough years.”