The number of school shootings with casualties in the U.S. hit a new record in the 2021-22 school year and more than doubled from the previous school year, says the National Center for Education Statistics, Axios reports. It was the second consecutive school year in which the U.S. broke this record. The report defines a school shooting as an incident where "a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week." Casualties include people killed or wounded. There were 188 school shootings with casualties reported in the 2021-22 school year at public, private elementary, and secondary schools. That's an increase from the 93 school shootings with casualties reported in the 2020-21 school year. The most commonly known situations associated with such incidents included "escalation of dispute," "drive-by," "illegal activity," "accidental firing of a weapon" and "intentional property damage."
About a third of the in the 2021-22 school shootings had an unknown associated situation. "The number of wounded and the number killed during active shooter incidents showed no consistent trend over the period at the elementary and secondary level or at the postsecondary level," said the report, which tracked data since the 2000-01 school year. "At both levels, in years with casualties, there are more years where the number wounded was higher than the number killed," according to the report. The report urged readers to "interpret these data with caution" given that the latest figures are "outliers compared to prior years." Though the number of school shootings with casualties spiked in the 2021-22 school year, the previous school year saw the highest number of school shootings with casualties in two decades.