There have been at least 52 school shootings in the United States so far this year, as of October 15. Sixteen were on a college campus, and 36 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left at least 32 people dead and 50 other victims injured, according to CNN’s analysis of events reported by the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown for Gun Safety.

CNN cross checks these reports of school shootings against school and police accounts and media reports. All incidents of gun violence are included if they occurred on school property, from kindergartens through colleges/universities, and at least one person was shot, not including the shooter. School property includes but is not limited to, buildings, fields, parking lots, stadiums and buses. Accidental discharges of firearms are included, as long as at least one person is shot, but not if the sole shooter is law enforcement or school security.

In the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, when schools were closed, there was a major decline in gun violence incidents on school grounds. Since then, recent years saw a stark increase in school shootings, with at least 84 incidents in 2023, a record since at least 2008. But 2022 was one of the deadliest years, with 48 fatalities, according to CNN’s analysis. That year saw the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two educators were killed and more than a dozen others were injured.

Students and educators have engaged in activism around the issue of gun violence, and some educators have quit the profession.

Some states in the South have seen the highest rate of school shootings relative to their populations since 2008, according to CNN’s analysis. Washington, DC had the highest rate — 7 total shootings, more than 1 per 100,000 people — while Texas had the most overall with at least 71 school shootings. Meanwhile, just four states — Montana, Wyoming, New Hampshire and Vermont — had no school shootings in that period, according to CNN’s analysis.

The December 13, 2025, mass shooting at Brown University marked Rhode Island’s first school shooting since at least 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings. (CNN)