How many school shootings during spring 2026?

The 2025-26 school year appears to be the end of the post-COVID era peak in gun violence rates on k-12 school campuses in the United States.

The spring semester of 2026 had the fewest school shooting incidents in five years. Overall this is very good news, but the decline also produces more questions than answers.

Since Columbine in 1999, the number of shootings at K-12 schools has climbed steadily, with the post-COVID years producing numbers three to four times higher than in the 2000s or 2010s. Blue chart (below) is the number of shootings at k-12 schools from Jan 1 - June 10 from 1999-2026.

The red chart (below) shows the number of victims (both fatal and wounded) during the Jan 1 - June 10 time period. 2018 was unlike any other year with three 20+ victim attacks (Marshall County, Parkland, Santa Fe) during the spring semester. The highest peak on the red chart in 2022 was the first year that most schools re-opened after the pandemic. The spring of 2022 had highest volume of mostly single victim shootings that were disputes escalating into gunfire combined with the attack in Uvalde, TX.

The purple chart is where it gets interesting. Despite the increased number of incidents, the average number of victims per shooting has barely changed. With widespread adoption of lockdown training, fortification of school buildings, stop-the-bleed kits, and militarized police responses, why are the victim rates roughly the same?

Looking more closely at the average number of victims per shooting, there is not a clear pattern across the years. For example, 2000 (the year after Columbine) should be a peak if you believe the mass violence ‘contagion’ theory...but it’s the complete opposite. After 2018, there was a couple billion dollars in school security spending, but the victim/incident rate is the same as the 2000s.

My biggest takeaway is most planning and police training significantly overestimates the number of victims. Even with carefully planned attacks where a student has multiple weapons and extra ammo, most school shootings have 1 or 0 victims killed. Looking across all types of shootings (fights, domestics, accidents, and planned attacks), there is usually one victim wounded.

The summer months when schools are closed are a popular time for police to conduct training scenarios inside empty school building. The most common situation that police and EMS should practice for this summer is getting one victim to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Five distinct eras of school shootings

The school year gets complicated once we get into June because some schools are closed, others still have classes, or summer school with a limited number of students and staff is taking place. For that reason, I made these charts for January-May to show an apples-to-apples comparison.

I created this chart with five different time periods to help understand the cultural, political, and social context around the highest profile attacks. Each period has a colored line with the average number of shootings during the spring semester (Jan-May).

Pre-Stockton Era (1980-1989): Before a man shot 27 students and staff at Cleveland Elementary School in 1989, there was minimal attention and funding for security at schools. The term “active shooter” didn’t exist and “school shooter” was in the process of becoming shared cultural construct from books like Stephen King’s ‘Rage’.