[caption id=”attachment_150046″ align=”aligncenter” width=”660″]Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014.
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Active shooter situations at schools–which are largely gun-free or highly regulated–aren’t as rare as the public might assume.
A 2014 FBI study on active shooter situations noted that 24.4 percent of the incidents happened in an educational environment.
The largest share, 46.3 percent, occurred in commercial environments.
The number of active shooter incidents that happened at primary and high schools, 16.9 percent, was more than at all government properties, 10 percent.
“Incidents in educational facilities account for some of the higher casualty counts,” the study states. The 39 incidents counted by the FBI “resulted in 117 individuals killed and 120 wounded.”
Image via Screenshot.
Forty percent of the active shooter situations fall under the federal definition of a mass killing, “three or more” people killed.
The study drew from “official police records, after action reports, and shooting commission documents as well as FBI resources and open source information” that identified 160 events between 2000 and 2013.
The FBI is “confident that our research captured the vast majority of active shooter events.”
In total, shooters killed 486 people and wounded 557 people, a fraction of total gun deaths.
Those numbers do not include shooters who committed suicide.
In comparison, 33,169 people died from firearms in 2013 alone. By category, 505 people died from an “accidental discharge of firearms,” 21,175 from “intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms,” 11,208 from “assault(homicide) by discharge of firearms,” and 281 from “discharge of firearms, undetermined intent,” according to the CDC.
Thankfully, active shooter events on college campuses are rare and shouldn’t be the focus of policy that attempts to reduce gun-related deaths. However, college campuses, like all educational facilities, should be aware of best practices to lessen the harm that those incidents cause.
