Yet again this week we are grappling with the news of another mass shooting on school grounds, this time at Michigan State University. Last Monday’s shooting took place on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the attack that killed 17 students and staffers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and nine months after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21 children and teachers. Some students who were present at the MSU shooting are also survivors of another Michigan school shooting almost 15 months ago at Oxford High School.
What happens when children are repeatedly exposed to this kind of violence, grief and trauma over the course of their lives?
The data are clear: U.S. school shootings have increased over the last few years. An estimated 338,000 children have been exposed to gun violence in K-12 schools alone since 1999. And gun violence on college campuses persists. It is currently the leading cause of death among children and teens in the U.S. There is now a generation of young adults whose childhoods have been directly shaped by exposure to gun violence in and outside of their schools.
