US School Shooting has risen up rapidly in last two decades

US School Shooting has risen up rapidly in last two decades

A Study on Thursday showed that  Mass shootings at US schools are rising rapidly, killing more people in the last 18 years than in the entire 20th century. The study only covered US school shootings and excluded gang shootings and any shootings that occurred at universities.  Researchers have reviewed the history of mass school shootings in the US and found some alarming trends. Lead author Antonis Katsiyannis of Clemson University in the US found the recent killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida is not an isolated occurrence, but part of a deadly epidemic that needs to be addressed. The United States had no mass school shootings that fit our criteria until 1940, when a junior high school principal killed the superintendent, the high school principal, the district business manager, and two teachers, before attempting suicide, because he thought he was going to be fired at the end of the school year,” said the report.

During the 20th century, mass school shootings killed 55 people and injured 260 others at schools especially in America’s Western region. Most of the 25 shooters involved were white males who acted alone, and only nine were diagnosed as suffering from mental illnesses at the time. Sixty percent of shooters were between 11 and 18 years old.

From 2000-2018, researchers counted 66 deaths across 22 mass shootings at schools. That’s higher than the death toll of 55 in 22 mass school shootings spanning the six decades from 1940-1999, it said.

So far this century, 77 percent of the mass school shootings have been carried out by adolescents. The study cautioned that the death tolls and the number of shootings offered no clear link to “more adolescent problems or high-powered weapons as a causality,” but said, “the trends must be noted.” US gun violence is an “epidemic that must be addressed,” concluded the study, urging expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and expanded support for addressing mental health issues. School shootings comprise just a fraction of the more than 30,000 gun-related deaths annually in the United States.