School shootings have risen dramatically since 2017; they may make students think about survival instead of studies

Includes any incident when a gun is "brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason."
Graph by Tory Lysik of AxiosVisuals, based on data from Center for Homeland Defense and Security. 

Wednesday, May 24, is the one-year anniversary of the killing of 19 children at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. It brings to mind this imagined teacher-and-student question and answer:
Teacher: What would you like to be when you grow up?
Student: If I get shot at school, I won't be anything.

That may sound overly dramatic, but statistics can suggest otherwise. "More than 1,000 incidents involving firearms have shaken America's schools since 2018 — a dramatic increase over any similar period since at least 1970, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database," reports Erin Doherty of Axios. "Guns are the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens and firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control. . . . Gun-related incidents such as gun suicides and gun murders, reached record levels in 2021 and 'swatting" calls,' or fake reports of shootings or bombs that prompt SWAT team responses and lockdowns, are rising." Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown, told Doherty, "The threat of gun violence has become a constant in children's lives in this country, and we're seeing the impact of it."

While an in-school shooting does not scar every pupil, most students are engaged in training to deal with one, which can interfere with student concentration and a sense of safety. "Nearly all (98%) K-12 public schools reported drilling students on lockdown procedures as of the 2019-2020 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics," Doherty writes. "Ninety-six percent of schools reported having written procedures for an active shooter incident. . . . Research suggests safety measures can effectively prevent gun-related incidents, but they risk disrupting the norms of the school day and have become controversial among some parents and activists." Burds-Sharps pointed out to Doherty, "At nine o'clock [students] have to hide in the bathroom for long periods and be silent and then at 10 o'clock, they need to learn math. . . . It's not a recipe for America's schoolchildren to learn and to achieve in school and to be able to focus and to concentrate."

Gun deaths remain racially divided. "Black children and teens disproportionately bore the burden of gun violence and were about five times as likely as white kids to die from gunfire in 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of CDC data," Doherty reports. "While guns became the leading cause of death for all American children in 2020, they have been the leading cause of death for Black children for over a decade. Dr. Katie Donnelly, a pediatric emergency medicine physician, told Doherty that she interacts "with a lot of kids who really aren't thinking about what they want to be when they grow up because they don't expect that they're going to grow up."