An Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017-2022: Findings and Implications

Antonis Katsiyannis; Luke J Rapa; Denise K Whitford; Samantha N Scott

doi:10.1007/s41252-022-00277-3

An Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017-2022: Findings and Implications

Adv Neurodev Disord. 2023;7(1):66-76. doi: 10.1007/s41252-022-00277-3. Epub 2022 Aug 19.

Authors

Antonis Katsiyannis¹, Luke J Rapa², Denise K Whitford³, Samantha N Scott⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room 407 C, Clemson, SC 29634 USA.
² Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room 409 F, Clemson, SC 29634 USA.
³ Steven C. Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Purdue University, 100 N. University Street, BRNG 5154, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098 USA.
⁴ Department of Education and Human Development, College of Education, Clemson University, 101 Gantt Circle, Room G01A, Clemson, SC 29634 USA.

Abstract

Objectives: Gun violence in the USA is a pressing social and public health issue. As rates of gun violence continue to rise, deaths resulting from such violence rise as well. School shootings, in particular, are at their highest recorded levels. In this study, we examined rates of intentional firearm deaths, mass shootings, and school mass shootings in the USA using data from the past 5 years, 2017-2022, to assess trends and reappraise prior examination of this issue.

Methods: Extant data regarding shooting deaths from 2017 through 2020 were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the web-based injury statistics query and reporting system (WISQARS), and, for school shootings in particular (2017-2022), from Everytown Research & Policy.

Results: The number of intentional firearm deaths and the crude death rates increased from 2017 to 2020 in all age categories; crude death rates rose from 4.47 in 2017 to 5.88 in 2020. School shootings made a sharp decline in 2020-understandably so, given the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government or locally mandated school shutdowns-but rose again sharply in 2021.

Conclusions: Recent data suggest continued upward trends in school shootings, school mass shootings, and related deaths over the past 5 years. Notably, gun violence disproportionately affects boys, especially Black boys, with much higher gun deaths per capita for this group than for any other group of youth. Implications for policy and practice are provided.

Keywords: Firearm deaths; Guns; Mass shootings; School mass shootings; School shootings; Violence.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.