The assertion that school shootings are a “uniquely American problem” is difficult to refute considering the alarming frequency with which they occur in the United States in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world.
A school shooting is a firearm-related attack that occurs at an educational institution such as a primary school, secondary school, or university.
Many school shootings are classified as mass shootings due to the number of people injured or killed by the attack.
The FBI defines a mass murder (a categorization that is commonly applied to mass shootings) as “four or more murdered during an event with no ‘cooling-off period’ between murders.”
Researchers define mass shootings as four or more people killed in a public place, not in the course of committing another crime, not involving struggles over sovereignty, and excluding the shooter.
However, the federal government does not keep track of school shootings, so the disheartening work of compiling the number of children murdered in schools is left to non-profits and media organizations scouring news headlines.
Speaking of headlines, have you noticed U.S. school shootings aren’t even breaking news anymore?
Over the two decades after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, more than 278,000 children in the United States were victims of some sort of gun violence.
Over the two decades after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, more than 278,000 children in the United States were victims of some sort of gun violence.
While school shootings remain uncommon, there were 34 in 2021, more than in any year since at least 1999, despite the fact that most children did not attend school for the first two months of the year.
According to the Washington Post, which allocates specific resources to tracking school shootings, at least 157 children, instructors, and others have been killed in assaults, with another 356 injured.
Between 2009 and 2018, there were 292 school shootings at 310 schools in the United States; nevertheless, Mexico, the country with the second-highest number of school shootings, has had 17 documented school shootings since 2004. Each of these occurrences resulted in one to two deaths.
School shootings in Honduras are “so prevalent that they are absorbed fast into the country’s news cycle and barely register outside its boundaries” due to heavily armed gangs. As a result, the real number of school shootings in Honduras is unclear, but it is often assumed to be high.
Six school shootings have occurred in Australia since 1991, resulting in three deaths.
Since 2001, there have been five school shootings in Brazil, with a total of 30 people killed.
In Europe: eight in Germany since 1913, one in Lithuania (1925), one in Sweden (1961), three in the United Kingdom since 1967 (none since the 1996 massacre), three in Finland since 1989, two in the Netherlands (1999 and 2004), one in Denmark (1994), one in Hungary (2009), two in France (2012 and 2017), one in Estonia (2014), one in Spain (2015), at least five in Russia since 2014 (including events in May and September 2021), one in Crimea (2018), and one in Poland (2019, no deaths).
The “Peshawar siege” in Pakistan in 2014 was a Taliban attack that murdered 145 people (including the shooters), making it Asia’s bloodiest school shooting.
Other school shootings include one in Taiwan (1962), two in Israel (1974 and 2008), one in Yemen (1997), one in the Philippines (1999), one in Thailand (2003), one in Lebanon (2007), one in India (2007), one in Azerbaijan (2009), one in Argentina (2004), one in New Zealand (1923), one in Nigeria (2013), and one in Kenya in 2015.