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School Climate & Safety Tracker

School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where

°ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳’s 2024 School Shooting Tracker
January 04, 2024 | Updated: October 28, 2024 3 min read
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School shootings—terrifying to students, educators, parents, and communities—always reignite polarizing debates about gun rights and school safety. To bring context to these debates, °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳ journalists began tracking shootings on K-12 school property that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths.

In 2024, we continue this heartbreaking, but important work. More information about this tracker and our methodology is below.

There have been 33 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳ analysis. There have been 215 such shootings since 2018. There were 38 school shootings with injuries or deaths last year. There were 51 in 2022, 35 in 2021, 10 in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.

Latest Situation

On Oct. 25, where a homecoming football game was being held in St. Martinville, La.

Injuries & Deaths

33     School shootings with injuries or deaths

63     People killed or injured in a school shooting

15     People killed

7     Students or other children killed

8     School employees or other adults killed

48     People injured

Where the Shootings Happened

The size of the dots correlates to the number of people killed or injured. Click on each dot for more information.

About the Shootings

Click on the column names to sort the data.

Contact Information

For media or research inquiries about this data, contact library@educationweek.org.

About This Tracker

In the emotionally charged aftermath of school shootings, politicians, activists, news media, and ordinary citizens often cite statistics that can present a distorted view of how many of these incidents occur. Those statistics are used to fuel ongoing debates about gun control, arming teachers, and school security.

With this tracker, °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳ aims to provide a clear accounting of K-12 school shootings. There is no single right way of calculating numbers like this, and the human toll in the immediate aftermath and long term is impossible to measure. We hope to provide reliable information to help inform discussions, debates, and solutions.

Methodology

Counting Incidents

This page refers to incidents that meet all the following criteria:

  • where a firearm was discharged,
  • where any individual, other than the suspect or perpetrator, has a bullet wound resulting from the incident,
  • that happen on K-12 school property or on a school bus, and
  • that occur while school is in session or during a school-sponsored event.

We do not track incidents in which the only shots fired were from an individual authorized to carry a gun on school property, such as a school resource officer, and who did so in their official capacity.

The numbers of incidents, injuries, and deaths reported in this tracker do not include suicides or self-inflicted injuries. While suicides and attempted suicides are serious issues of health and safety, many of the critical questions and debates that those incidents raise for educators and the broader public are often distinct from those generated by school shootings. Incidents may be added out of sequence as it can take time for verification.

Counting Injuries & Deaths

Injuries included in this tracker may be major or minor. While we only track incidents resulting in at least one bullet wound, total injuries are not necessarily the result of gunfire.

The total number of people killed or injured does not include the suspect or perpetrator.

Sources

In addition to our own reporting, we rely on local news outlets, school and district websites, news alerts via online search engines, the , David Riedman’s , and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Naval Postgraduate School’s .

How to Cite This Page

School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where (2024, January 4). °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳. Retrieved Month Day, Year from /leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2024/01

See Also

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School Climate & Safety Explainer School Resource Officers (SROs), Explained
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Greeley Police Officer Steve Brown stands in the hallway during passing periods at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colo. on Oct. 21, 2016. While school resource officers, like Brown, are expected to handle responsibilities like any police officer they're faced with unique challenges working day-to-day in schools
Greeley Police Officer Steve Brown stands in the hallway during passing periods at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colo. While school resource officers, like Brown, are expected to handle responsibilities like any police officer, they're faced with unique challenges working day-to-day in schools.
Joshua Polson/The Greeley Tribune/AP
School & District Management A Principal's Guide to Recovery After a School Shooting
Principals who led schools during or in the aftermath of a shooting wrote a guidebook of advice and lessons learned.
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Santa Fe High School freshman, Jai Gillard, writes messages on each of the 10 crosses representing victims in front of the school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 21, 2018.
Santa Fe High School freshman, Jai Gillard, writes messages on each of the 10 crosses representing victims in front of the school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 21, 2018.
Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP

Reporting & Analysis: Lesli Maxwell, Holly Peele, Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young Kim

Design & Visualization: Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young Kim

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