School shootings have been on the rise recently, but the scale of carnage Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is by far the worst since the 2018 attack at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
There have been 26 school shootings this year and 118 incidents since 2018, according to Education Week, which has tracked school shootings over the last four years. The highest number of shootings in this span, 34, occurred last year.
There were 10 shootings in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.
Until Tuesday, six people had died in school shootings since 2018, including five students or children, and 40 were injured. The shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde has rewritten the data.
In the Edweek statistics, an incident was defined as a shooting when a firearm was discharged and when any individual, other than the suspect or perpetrator, had a bullet wound resulting from the incident, which had to occur on a K-12 school property or on a school bus while school is in session or during a school-sponsored event.
The most deadly shooting at a U.S. school occurred April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech, when a 23-year-old student killed 32 students and faculty members in two attacks, then committed suicide.
Next is the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, in which a 20-year-old killed 20 first-grade children and six adults, including four teachers, the principal and the school psychologist.
In 2018, a 19-year-old former student killed 17 and injured 17 at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which led to a wave of student activism.
One of the most chronicled incidents was the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. Two students killed 12 students and one teacher; most victims were in the school library. The shooters died by suicide.
According to the Gun Violence Archives, the increase of incidents reflects a broader trend in the nation over the seven-period of a study that ended in 2020. In the final year of the review, 999 children ages 11 and under died of gun violence in all forms, compared to 603 in the first year of the study.
It was a similar pattern for ages 12 to 17: 2,318 killed in 2014; 4,142 killed in 2020.
