Since 2009, America has witnessed an unsettling 288 school shootings, with some of them totalling over a dozen casualties. Most recently, Santa Fe High School in Texas became the latest target of this troubling phenomenon, after 17 year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fire and killed 10 innocent individuals.
CNN has recently conducted a study to help contextualize these deadly and persistent occurrences, while also comparing their findings to other accredited G7 nations, who are known to house the largest and most advanced economies in the world.
Canada, the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and France are the seven nations that comprise this list. The parameters for the study include:
- Shooting must involve at least one person being shot (not including the shooter)
- Shooting must occur on school grounds
- We included gang violence, fights and domestic violence (but our count is NOT limited to those categories)
- We included grades Kindergarten through college/university level as well as vocational schools
- We included accidental discharge of a firearm as long as the first two parameters are met
With that in mind, America has endured a whopping 288 school shootings since 2009, which is 57 times more than the other six nations combined. Canada and France have only experienced two similar incidents, Germany with one, while Japan, Italy and the UK with yet to undergo such a tragedy.