huffingtonpost.com
The two students killed by a fellow high schooler Tuesday in Benton, Kentucky, weren’t the first victims of such violence this month. So far this week, three shootings have happened at or near schools. Eight more took place in the first three weeks of 2018.
A student bringing a gun onto school property and firing at peers or teachers seems to occur most often, though that’s not always what happens. Two of the shootings this month were later identified as suicides. And in one instance, a 32-year-old man shot at a school bus with a pellet gun.
Here’s the complete list of shooting incidents schools have faced so far this year:
Jan. 23: Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky–A 15-year-old boy opened fire inside the school, killing two and injuring 16.
Jan. 22: NET Charter High School in New Orleans, Louisiana–Someone driving by the school fired on a group of students in the parking lot. Only one boy was injured.
Jan. 22: Italy High School in Italy, Texas–A 16-year-old boy shot a 15-year-old girl in the cafeteria. He was arrested and she was airlifted to a hospital, where she was “in good spirits” as of Tuesday.
Jan. 20: Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina–Following an argument, a 21-year-old Winston-Salem University student was shot and killed during a sorority event at Wake Forest University.
Jan. 15: Wiley College in Marshall, Texas–Two people in a car exchanged gunfire with a person in a dormitory parking lot. No one was injured, but a bullet was fired into a dorm room with three female students inside.
Jan. 10: Coronado Elementary School in Sierra Vista, Arizona–A 14-year-old died in a school bathroom from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Jan. 10: Grayson College in Denison, Texas–A student confused a training weapon with a real one and fired a bullet through a classroom wall. No students were injured.
Jan. 10: California State University in San Bernardino, California–At least one shot was fired, shattering one classroom window. No students were injured.
Jan. 6: School bus in Forest City, Iowa–A 32-year-old man fired a pellet gun at a school bus, shattering one of the windows. No students were injured.
Jan. 4: New Start High School in Seattle, Washington–Two shots were fired at the school from outside the building. No students were injured.
Jan. 3: East Olive Elementary School in St. John, Michigan–A man standing in the school’s parking lot called 911 saying he was suicidal. He spoke with a county official for several hours on the phone, according to local media, but ultimately shot himself and died from a single gunshot wound.
With a tally of almost 300 school shootings since 2013, the country is averaging one school shooting per week, according to a report from gun control advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
Everytown defines a school shooting as when a “firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds.” Other groups may expand the characterization to include school-like settings, like the aforementioned school bus shooting.
In instances where minors shot a gun at school and authorities could determine where the child got the weapon, more than half obtained the gun at home, Everytown said. It’s also fairly common for a school shooting to result from a confrontation or verbal argument that escalates.
Experts have also begun to document the effects that fatal school shootings have on students.
“These incidents can affect students’ decision about whether to stay at their school, affect their cognitive skills, and influence their behavior at school,” according to a 2015 study titled “The Effect of High School Shootings on Schools and Student Performance.”
Authors Louis-Philippe Beland and Dongwoo Kim found that enrollment in ninth grade drops following a deadly shooting, as do standardized test scores in math and English for up to three years after a shooting.
A quarter of U.S. parents said they fear for their children’s safety while they are at school, according to an August 2017 Gallup survey. Parents’ concern about children’s safety reached a high after the 1999 Columbine shooting and has spiked sporadically in the wake of other major school shootings.
Yet some fear the need for gun safety isn’t resonating with a wider American audience.
“As we think about the lives affected today, we must not let news of school shootings become the new normal,” said Connie Courtney, a volunteer with the Kentucky chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun safety advocacy organization.
The issue doesn’t seem to be a major concern for the Trump administration, either. President Donald Trump hasn’t directly addressed any of the 11 shootings this year. Last year, he even tweeted out condolences about the wrong mass shooting.
What a total crock of BS…with all your Anti-Choice Bull Crap ~ has nothing to do with Violence in schools. Really you should be ashamed of trying to com-modify the violence with the right to choose.
ed note–it has EVERYTHING to do with it. It is the general de-humanization of the most innocent in society that psychologically-conditions people to see others in the same way and which then plays itself out in the real world in the form of warfare–both globally and at home–a small slice of which manifests itself in the daily spiral of violence we see taking place in our school systems and in society in general.
This type of commentary is why no one who truly wants to see an end to the bloodshed around the word, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Gaza, Yemen or wherever, should put an ounce of faith or confidence in those who claim to be ‘progressive’, ‘anti-war’ and yet ‘pro-infanticide’. Of course, they will–as our commentator William made clear in his heated statement–react viscerally and irrationally to the charge of being ‘pro-infanticide,’ but as the pics and accompanying reaction make perfectly clear, that is exactly what they are, and are every bit as much ‘pro-war’/pro-Death and pro-murder as those they claim to oppose.
ed note to William is correct. Abortion on demand, a way of gussying up what is otherwise known as infanticide–has contributed greatly to the generalized desensitizing of the collective American mind to violence against innocents and has formed an indispensable component towards the bloodlust and war which Americans seem to possess. When I was a kid growing up, not only did we have no school shootings, but as well we had shooting sports as part of our school curriculum and with no problems. Added to this is the incontestable Judaic control of media and the constant heroizing of white men who use guns to solve their problems, a short list of which includes names such as Eastwood, Gibson, Willis, Schwartzenegger, Cruise, etc, etc, etc and has left a near-permanent scar on the minds of young men who have been marinated in this type of deliberate psychological conditioning as a change-agent in preparing them for war.
when [[[pharasitic p$ychopaths]]] divide, conquer and rule via jewu$ury and propaganda, omnicide is the result. Attempting to live through this hateful fear-mongering whilst constantly, cheerfully opening other’s hearts, eyes and minds to reality is helped by your information. thank you, editor (<3)
Mr Crain
Get a new brain