Back-to-school reality: Campus shootings rose dramatically last year

The morning after two teenagers were fatally shot outside her daughter's school in Nashville, Jeannie Hunter told her 13-year-old she could skip school if it didn't feel safe.

To Hunter's shock, the girl responded with, "Murder happens every day," adding that gun violence wasn't a good excuse to miss a day of instruction.

Hunter felt scared, sad and angry that such a brutal crime had been carried out in the campus parking lot. After hearing her daughter's reaction, she thought, "This is the world we have given our children."

Six months later, Hunter still hears for her daughter's safety, especially on days when school shootings pop up in the news, she said.

As students return to school, some parents are silently bracing at drop-off, experiencing fear and anxiety about their kids' safety on campus. Their worries are not unfounded, according to new data shared with USA TODAY which found that schools are experiencing an uptick in gun violence .

The findings published Friday by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, are unique because they look not only at mass shootings at schools you've heard about in the news, where people on campus were killed or injured, but also at campuses where gunfire disrupted learning. The data proposes we consider the bigger picture of schools plagued by the presence of guns and children being exposed to gunfire, not just the grimmest incidents that involve deaths and injuries.

The study tracked a 31% rise in school shootings during the last academic year compared to the previous year. It found that the 2023-24 year had the second-highest number of incidents since Everytown began tracking gun violence at schools more than a decade ago. The 2021-2022 school year – when kids first returned to campuses after pandemic-related closures – had the highest number of gun violence incidents on campuses.

Everytown researchers and Riedman reviewed media reports on U.S. school shootings and found there had been at least 144 incidents of gun violence, which they defined as any time a gun was discharged on campus, last school year. The violence led to 36 people's deaths and 87 people being injured. Forty-six children sustained gunshot wounds on campuses in the previous school year, the data shows.

The rise in gun violence on school campuses comes amid a drop in violent crime. Recent data from the FBI reflects a decline in the murder rate nationwide.

Why did gunfire increase in schools last year?

The reasons for the documented spike in gunfire on school campuses are unclear.

Riedman, a researcher on the project and the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, attributes the rise to "easy access to firearms."

Others blame the problem on the lack of strong safety measures at schools and the mental health crisis among young people who end up bringing guns to school.

Odis Johnson, the executive director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, said it's possible more guns are being brought to school, but the uptick in shootings Everytown has documented could also mean cases of gun violence are being better tracked now than they were before.

How can we curb gun violence in schools?

Republican-led state legislatures in Tennessee and Iowa passed laws this year allowing teachers to carry firearms on school grounds. They argued that educators have a responsibility to keep kids safe when there is a threat on campus. More than two-thirds of states allow educators to carry guns , according to data compiled by the nonprofit Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence .

Many supporters of Everytown for Gun Safety's work, on the other hand, oppose the idea of arming teachers or active shooter drills that train students how to respond if a shooter comes onto school grounds. Many also object to having armed police and school resource officers on their campuses.

Sarah Burd-Sharps, who heads the research projects for Everytown for Gun Safety, worries that more guns in educators' possession would make "the threat of gun violence in schools ... greater than ever."

Burd-Sharps said these proposed solutions from gun rights advocates "bring higher risk and often have harms."

The 2023-24 school year also stood out in the Everytown findings as the year with the greatest number of police shootings and unintentional shootings on campus. Unintentional shootings involve cases when a gun is accidentally fired.

The organization has its own solutions to the crisis of gun violence on campus. It recommends states raise the age limit to purchase semi-automatic firearms , enact and enforce secure firearm storage laws and require background checks on all gun sales.

Student shooting survivor: 'We've normalized this crisis for too long'

Students might be sitting in math class or chatting in the cafeteria when a shooter enters their school grounds.

Rebekah Schuler was in the hallway at her Michigan high school on Nov. 30, 2021, when she heard gunfire coming from the other end of the hall. A 15-year-old student has been convicted of killing four students and wounding six others at the school near Detroit.

Schuler survived the mass shooting, but the trauma of that day lingers, surfacing "day in and day out," she said.

Three years later, Schuler, 18, volunteers for Students Demand Action, calling on states to adopt laws requiring background checks for handguns, secure storage for firearms and other measures to keep kids safe.

"We've normalized this crisis for too long, and it doesn't have to be this way," Schuler said.

Students like Schuler who have seen, heard, or felt the reverberations of gunfire at their schools may experience flashbacks, anxiety and depression, said Rachel Masi, a clinical psychologist who treats young people in New York and a research consultant for Sandy Hook Promise . And kids may not know how to speak up about their feelings, but instead may act out with anger or irritability.

As the school year begins, Masi said it's likely common for students to normalize the fear or anxiety around gun violence, since it's the reality they've grown up in, in the U.S.

"Some of that normalization comes from being in that survival mode," she said. "They know they have to go to school and think 'How am I going to get myself through that door? They dissociate or say 'I have to get through that anxiety. I have to push forward.'"

La-Shanda West, who teaches social studies for Miami Dade County Public Schools in Florida, and other educators are preparing to keep kids safe from gunfire this year.

West works with Sandy Hook Promise and her local teachers' union to create awareness about preventing gun violence. She wants people to understand that "gun violence is preventable" this school year, and anyone who suspects a threat of guns or violence on school grounds should report it to authorities.

'This is not the life I want for her'

In Tennessee, where educators are allowed to carry guns in schools, Hunter, the Nashville mother, is concerned that gun violence "is not getting better, and it's getting worse."

She doesn't want her kids to be in the presence of a firearm, no matter who is carrying it. She doesn't want them to witness a crime scene on school grounds like her daughter and her daughter's schoolmates did.

"This is not the life I want for her," Hunter said. "I don't want her to say this happens every day. I want her to say 'Oh, that's terrible.'"

Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Back-to-school reality: Campus shootings rose dramatically last year