https://www.theguardian.

com/world/2018/feb/14/school-shootings-in-america-2018-how-many-so-far

How many school shootings have there been in 2018 so far?

Attack on a Texas high school is the 16th shooting to have resulted in death or injury during the first five
months of the year

Fri 18 May 2018 20.12 BST

First published on Wed 14 Feb 2018 23.27 GMT

Five months into 2018, there have been 16 shootings at US schools that have resulted in injury or death,
based on data from campaign group Everytown for Gun Safety.

The shooting in Texas on Friday, where, by mid-morning, the death toll was given by a local sheriff as
between eight and 10, now stands as the 16th school shooting of the year, according to the campaign
group Everytown for Gun Safety.

At Parkland in Florida in February, 17 people were confirmed killed by an ex-student firing an assault
weapon, in the worst school mass shooting of 2018 so far.

The tragedy sparked a new national grassroots movement, led by surviving students from the Marjory
Stoneman Douglas high school where the Parkland shooting happened, calling for greater restrictions and
background checks on gun ownership.

Donald Trump floated the idea of tighter gun control but also the option of arming teachers, and has not
made any substantive changes that affect gun availability in the US.

In January, a 15-year-old student opened fire at a high school in Kentucky, leaving two students dead and
18 injured. Other incidents have been grave, but on a smaller scale.

In early February, one student in Los Angeles was shot in the head, and another in the arm, when a gun
concealed in a fellow student’s backpack went off.

Congressman Bill Nelson, a Democrat of Florida, said in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre: “Are we
coming to expect these mass shootings to be routine? And then after every one we say ‘enough is enough’
and then it continues to happen?”
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Congress has refused to tighten restrictions on gun ownership, even after 20 children and six educators
were massacred in 2012 in Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut.

“We’re lessening the threshold of how crazy someone needs to be to commit a mass shooting,” Austin
Eubanks, who survived the 1999 shooting at Columbine high school, told the Guardian last fall.

He was speaking in the wake of catastrophic Las Vegas shooting, where a depressed man took up position
high up in a hotel, with a large arsenal of guns and ammunition, and sprayed bullets upon a music concert
audience, killing 58 and injuring more than 800. Eubanks said he had watched an increasing pace of mass
shootings across the US, in schools and elsewhere, with fear and anxiety.
1:35
'This happens nowhere else': senator decries gun laws after Florida shooting – video

The fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting last December passed in subdued
fashion, with congressional Republicans refusing to pass new gun control laws and instead pushing for a
law that would weaken gun restrictions nationwide and make it easier to carry a concealed weapon across
state lines. Donald Trump won the White House campaigning on a promise to support the National Rifle
Association (NRA), the influential gun rights group, and oppose any limits to Americans’ right to own guns.
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The repeated tragedies and frightening incidents continue to spark deeply divided political responses, with
some Americans urging tighter laws on gun sales and ownership and others advocating for putting more
armed guards in schools, or making it easier for teachers and parents to carry their own concealed
weapons.

Experts caution that the toll of gun violence on children and teenagers falls heaviest outside of schools.
Youngsters are much more likely to be shot in their own homes or neighborhoods than at school, according
to research by the school safety expert Dewey Cornell.
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But the emotional impact of school shootings has sparked a booming school safety industry. In 2017, the
market for security equipment in the education sector was estimated at $2.68bn, according to industry
analysts at IHS Markit. Some companies have capitalized on parents’ fears by selling bulletproof backpacks
or whiteboards, as well as offering ways to fortify school buildings themselves against attack.

While refusing to pass substantive gun control restrictions, Congress has approved hundreds of millions of
dollars in federal spending to help put police officers in public schools, including $45m in 2013, the year
after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

Some gun rights advocates have pushed to expand gun-carrying in schools further. Andrew McDaniel, a
state legislator in Missouri who introduced legislation last year to make it easier to carry guns in schools,
told the Guardian that in rural schools where it might take 20 or 30 minutes for law enforcement to
respond to a school shooting in progress, it made sense to have other armed citizens ready to step in.