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Although most students will never experience a shooting at their school, children are experiencing gun violence in school at increasing rates. According to a database developed and maintained by John Woodrow Cox, The Washington Post enterprise reporter and author of Children Under Fire: An American Crisis, and Steven Rich, database editor for the investigations unit, in 2000, fewer than 10,000 children had experienced gun violence in their school; in 2022, the figure escalated to 43,450 (Cox & Rich, 2023).
With this news, it is easy to become discouraged. Cox and Rich (2023) reflected on data from the 366 separate incidents of school gun violence they studied, along with dozens of stories on the damaged children it represents; they believe there are reasons to remain hopeful, none more so than that most school shootings are preventable.
What Do We Know about School Shooters?
The notion that there is an archetype school shooter is false. However, we do know shooters at schools are typically students, and most school shooters seek specific targets.
The three youngest individuals in Cox and Rich's database are 6 years old; the oldest is 74 years old, a substitute teacher in Alabama who brought a handgun to a first-grade class and unintentionally fired it in his pocket, injuring a student.
Many shooters share similar attributes. Their median age is 16...