The 2021-22 school year saw the highest number of gunfire incidents in the United States in nearly a decade, with incidents more than tripling from the previous school year, according to a report released Friday.
Everytown For Gun Safety, a nonpartisan group advocating against gun violence, said that between Aug. 1, 2021, and May 31, 2022, there were 193 "incidents of gunfire" on the grounds of preschools and K–12 schools.
The number of incidents in 2020-21 was 62, the report said. The previous high was 75 incidents in 2018-19.
The group began tracking school gun violence in 2013.
According to the report, the incidents over the past year resulted in 59 people shot and killed and 138 people shot and wounded. At least 6 in 10 of those who died and 4 in 10 of those injured were either current or former students of where the incident occurred. The group defines gunfire incidents as involving a weapon that "was discharged in or onto a school’s campus or grounds."
"For the last 20 years, students, educators, and parents have lived with the reality of increasingly frequent school shootings. The worst period for this violence has been in the 2021–2022 school year, which saw nearly quadruple the average number of gunfire incidents since 2013," the report stated.
During the 2013-14 school year, the first year Everytown For Gun Safety began tracking the numbers, it tracked 36 gunfire incidents. That number dipped slightly the following school year, staying in the low 30s until the 2017-18 school year when the number of incidents climbed to 65, according to the report.
In 2018-19, the group reported 75 incidents before it dipped to 63 and 62 consecutively in the following two years.
The report comes three months after the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers. The shooter was killed when law enforcement confronted him at the school.
Everytown For Gun Safety outlined in the report a number of ways it believes gun violence could be prevented, including passing stricter gun laws and raising the age to purchase semi-automatic firearms.
"School is the last place where kids should have to worry about gun violence. Our children deserve better. Our country deserves better," the report states.
