School Shootings By State

School shootings — an unimaginably chilling phrase that nonetheless has been cast into regular use, primarily due to its prevalence in the United States. These armed attacks within educational spaces, which often constitute mass shootings due to the volume of casualties, represent an urgent societal problem that spans primary schools to universities. The core drivers of such horrific events have been identified as the accessibility of firearms, family dysfunction and insufficient supervision, mental illnesses, and various psychological issues.

Key findings from this dataset include:

• The highest number of school shootings have taken place in California (232 incidents), followed by Texas (192 incidents), Florida (132 incidents), Illinois (122 incidents), and Ohio (106 incidents). These five states collectively account for a significant proportion of the total school shootings in the US.
• On the other end of the spectrum, states such as Hawaii, North Dakota, Wyoming have fewer than 5 recorded school shootings each.
• Mid-sized states in terms of population like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania display a higher count than some of the larger states like New York, indicating that mere population size isn't a dominant factor in the frequency of school shootings.
• The presence of states such as Louisiana (66 incidents) and Alabama (64 incidents) in the higher end of the spectrum reinforces studies pointing towards the connection between firearm accessibility and frequency of these incidents.
• States such as Colorado and Connecticut, which have been marred by high-profile school shootings in Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary School respectively, have a number of incidents (36 and 24 respectively) that highlight that the issue is not limited to these extreme cases but is recurrent.