19 schoolchildren and two teachers died on Tuesday in the Texas city of Uvalde at the hands of one of the students. This is one of the deadliest American school shootings in recent years. In total, since the shooting at Columbine High School, which became a kind of milestone, 554 children, teachers and staff members have been killed or injured at the hands of teenagers in US schools, according to The Washington Post.
The Columbine High School Massacre in Colorado took place in April 1999. Using small arms and improvised explosive devices, two high school students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 13 people and injured 23 more before shooting themselves. The Columbine incident had a strong impact on subsequent school shootings: future shooters in one way or another focused on Harris and Klebold, expressing their protest against bullying by fellow students and teachers. According to sociologists, the Columbine case was the first in a chain of murders in which the participants - a kind of fan base of Harris and Klebold - were inspired by their predecessors, trying to surpass them in the number of victims, and as if passing the baton to future shooters.
Statistics cited by The Washington Post show that 331 schools have been hit by teenage militants since Columbine. 311,000 children were subjected to gun violence. 185 people were killed in the skirmishes, another 369 were injured. At the same time, the frequency of incidents has increased dramatically in recent years. There were 34 shootings in American schools in 2021, the highest number in any year since 1999.
Journalists obtained these figures by analyzing news reports, open databases, law enforcement reports and calls to police departments. The calculations included only shooting incidents that occurred on campus immediately before, during, or immediately after class. Shootings in colleges and universities are not included in the statistics, as well as shootings outside of school hours or random shots when no one was hurt.