There have already been 18 gun-related incidents at American schools in 2018

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January 24, 2018 6:17 PM

There have been 18 gun-related incidents at schools in the US this year. Some of the incidents were suicides, some resulted in no injuries — others were deadly.

A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Wednesday left 17 people dead and over a dozen more injured.
The shooting marks the 18th gun-related incident at or near a school already this year. Some of the incidents were suicides and others resulted in no injuries.

A gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday afternoon, killing at least 17 people and injuring over a dozen more, authorities said.

The shooting is the 18th gun-related incident at or near a school since the start of the year, according to a running count by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.

But a gun-related school incident can mean anything from a suicide, a stray bullet being fired into a building from off school grounds, an altercation in the school's parking lot overnight, and, of course, an individual shooting at students.

"Most of these are sad and frightening in their own way, but they were not all cut from the same bloody cloth," read an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in January.

School shootings have become all too familiar in the wake of massacres at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, but these incidents are very different from a stray bullet ricocheting off a dormitory or a student accidentally discharging a firearm during a gun training session.

"Using the term 'school shooting' to describe events in which the shooter intended no harm to anyone but himself, or where a gun was fired accidentally, is plainly misleading," opinion writer Becket Adams wrote in the Washington Examiner.

Nevertheless, 18 is a high number. By this time in 2017 and 2016, there were seven gun-related incidents both years, according to Everytown's tally.