900 School Shootings In Last Ten Years, Why The US Has Lost Its Battle Against Gun Culture?

The United States has been left shell shocked after yet another mass shooting incident at a Texas school that claimed the lives of 21 people.

19 students and two adults were gunned down by an 18-year-old gunman at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde on Tuesday.

AFP

The assailant identified as Salvador Ramos, acted alone and had shot dead his grandmother before going on a rampage at the elementary school, as he went from classroom to classroom, opening fire.

The attacker was killed by law enforcement.

This is the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade and the latest gruesome moment for a country scarred by a string of massacres.

Reuters

The tragedy in Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and it added to a grim tally in the state, which has been the site of some of the deadliest shootings in the US over the past five years.

School shootings in Texas

In 2018, a gunman fatally shot 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. A year before that, a gunman at a Texas church killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, another gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanics.

Over the past few years, the US has seen an increase in gun attacks in schools, including some by students themselves who turn their deadly weapons against their classmates and teachers.

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, is to date the deadliest mass shooting incident in a US school.

26 people including 20 students between the age of 6-7 were shot dead by one man - 20-year-old Adam Lanza. Before his murder spree in the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother. Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

AFP

More than 900 school shootings since Sandy Hook

Since then according to websites tracking gun violence in the United States, there have been over 900 shooting incidents in schools.

"It¡¯s been 340- ¡ª 3,448 days ¡ª 10 years since I stood up at a high school in Connecticut ¡ª a grade school in Connecticut, where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Since then, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfires reported on school grounds," US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday during his address following the Texas school shooting.

Reuters

27 school shootings in US in 2022

Education Week has been tracking school shootings since 2018. According to its database, 119 such incidents have taken place since then.

There were 27 school shootings with injuries or deaths this year.

According to their data, before the Texas incident, a total of 67 people were killed or injured in school shootings this year.

Out of the 27 people killed, 24 were students while three were school employees or other adults. 40 people including students and adults were injured in school shootings in 2022.

AP

2021 had 34 such incidents at educational institutions.

In 2020, there were 10 shootings. Both 2019 and 2018 recorded 24 shootings.

212 mass shootings in US in 2022

It is not just schools that have become scenes of mass shootings this year.

Reuters

According to The Gun Violence Archive, 212 mass shootings have occurred across the US so far this year.

A total of 693 mass shootings were reported in the US In 2021. In 2020 the country saw 611 such incidents and in 2019 had 417.

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