More than 300,000 school children have been witness to gun violence in US schools since the infamous Columbine massacre of 1999.
In the wake of the most recent school shooting tragedy that took place in Texas yesterday, 24 May, research by The Washington Post has revealed the jaw dropping level at which American school kids have been exposed to similar events in the last 23 years.
The Columbine High School massacre of 20 April, 1999, was seen as one of the darkest days in recent American history, with senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdering 12 students and one teacher in a shocking rampage before eventually committing suicide themselves.
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However, research done by the news publication has shown that far from being a watershed moment in American society, things haven't got any better.
They found that last year there were 42 school shooting incidents – more than in any year since 1999, while this year alone there have been 24 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day already.
The total amount of children, educators and other people killed during incident since Columbine stands at 185, with another 369 injured.
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More than that, though, the traumatising effects of these incidents has directly impacted tens of thousands of people, with the research suggesting more than 311,000 across 331 schools have witnessed gun violence in schools.
The Post also discovered that shootings have shown a trend of lying along racial lines. Black children have made up 16.6 percent of the American school population, but have experienced school shooting at 33 percent – more than twice the rate. This compares with the 56.7 percent of white children, of whom 38.1 percent have witnessed school gun violence and 19.5 percent of hispanic children, 22.9 percent of which have been exposed to such incidents.
With the federal government not tracking school shootings, The Post built its study on numbers gained from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports and calls to schools and police departments.
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It casts a grim shadow over American gun law policy and the huge issue the country still faces around gun violence – highlighted acutely by the devastating events that happened yesterday when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed at least 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
Ramos was eventually shot dead by law enforcement but not before unleashing deadly violence across the school.
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Simon Catling