Back to School, Back to School Shootings

Across the country, students are piling into buses and cars and heading back to class. And sadly but inevitably, as we’ve already seen twice this fall, school shootings will also begin again.

Some students will kill themselves with a gun – as more than 50 Americans do every day. Others will hurt or kill their classmates and teachers. In January 2013, following the shooting at the Sandy Hook School that killed 20 students and six educators, Everytown for Gun Safety began tracking every shooting that takes place on school grounds. The tracker currently sits at 195 school shootings since January 2013. It’s unfortunately possible that sometime later this fall, we will mark the 200th school shooting since Sandy Hook.

There is so much more we must do to prevent gun violence, including changing our lax gun laws and gun culture. That means keeping guns stored safely away from children and teens, as Moms Demand Action’s Be SMART program encourages gun owners to do, as well as passing common-sense gun laws that can save lives. States that require a background check on all handgun sales have about half the gun suicides of other states.