Title: The U.S. Has Suffered Nearly 200 School Shootings Since 2000 | Fatherly
Headings: The U.S. Has Suffered Nearly 200 School Shootings Since 2000
The U.S. Has Suffered Nearly 200 School Shootings Since 2000
The school shooting in Rancho Tehama Elementary School in California represents a horrifying trend, with no clear solutions.

Content: Before the infamous Columbine slaughter perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in 1999, school shootings were less common, so it was impossible to pin down why they happen. But even now that we’ve experienced hundreds of these horrifying events, patterns that could help us prevent them stubbornly refuse to emerge from the data. All we know is that school shootings involve guns (obviously) and are carried out by one of the largest U.S. demographics — young, white men. ADVERTISEMENT
“School shootings are a modern phenomenon,” The New Yorker explains. “ There were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before [Frontier Middle School shooting perpetrator] Barry Loukaitis, but they were lower profile. School shootings mostly involve young white men. And, not surprisingly, given the ready availability of firearms in the United States, the phenomenon is overwhelmingly American. But, beyond those facts, the great puzzle is how little school shooters fit any kind of pattern.” Bullying may have something to do with it — at least one study found that kids who are bullied are more likely to report that they have access to loaded guns. Meanwhile, the politically-charged issue of whether stricter gun laws would prevent these sorts of attacks dwells in fuzzier territory.