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This year, 113 people have been killed or injured in school shootings in the United States.

That's the sobering finding of a project to count the annual toll of gun attacks in schools.

At the beginning of 2018, Education Week, a journal covering education in the US, began to track school shootings - and has since recorded 23 incidents where there were deaths or injuries.

With many parts of the US having about 180 school days per year, it means, on average, a shooting once every eight school days.

Another database recording school shootings says 2018 has had the highest number of incidents ever recorded, in figures going back to 1970.

That database, from the US Center for Homeland Defense and Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), uses a different way of identifying gun incidents in school, and says this year there have been 94.

Never 'normal'

The idea behind the year-long Education Week project was to mark each shooting - so that attacks should never come to seem "normal" and that every victim should be remembered.

But it was also an attempt to fill in the gaps in knowledge, because while there was intense media coverage of multiple-casualty shootings, there was much less clarity about the attacks happening across the country each month.

Lesli Maxwell, assistant managing editor of Education Week, said this year has "definitely been an outlier" with two large-scale school shootings, which have contributed to such a high annual loss of life.

Seventeen people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

At Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas, there were 10 killed, with both gun attacks carried out by teenage boys.

"This year also stands out because of all the activism that followed Parkland, with students leading the charge," says Ms Maxwell.

Teenagers, guns and victims

There have been campaigns for tighter gun control - and on the other side of the debate, calls for more weapons in the hands of teachers or school staff.

While such mass shootings made headlines around the world, the majority passed by with much less attention.

These included a shooting at a primary school in Virginia last month, when a parent collecting their child was shot in the leg when a gun in the pocket of another parent was accidentally fired.

Or in March in a high school in Maryland, when a 17-year-old teenager shot and injured two students and then, after he was confronted, killed himself. One of the injured, a 16-year-old girl, died a few days later.

The shootings are a bleak list of teenagers, guns and innocent victims. The perpetrators are as young as 12 but are mostly 16 or 17.

The lack of certainty about the number of school shootings is also because it can be defined in different ways.

Highest level

The Education Week tracker only counted events where there were casualties and where shootings took place on school property and in school time and where there was a victim other than the perpetrator.

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security has a different measure - counting gun incidents in school, regardless of the time or whether anyone was shot or injured.

This wider measure has so far recorded 94 school shooting incidents across the US - which stands significantly above what had been the previous highest total, 59 in 2006.

By this measure, 2018 has also been the worst year for deaths and injuries, with 163 casualties, compared with a previous high of 97 in 1986.

It also shows the big increase over the decades, with annual casualties in the 1970s never higher than 35, about a fifth of this year's level.

Killers typically 17 and male

The data from five decades of school shootings shows the most typical age for a school killer is 16 or 17 and these perpetrators are highly likely to be male.

The attacks are not often "indiscriminate", but are more usually an "escalation of a dispute" or a gang-related incident.

But as well as following the statistics of school shootings, Ms Maxwell has seen the aftermath.

In the schools affected by such attacks, she says, there can be a cycle of strong and contradictory emotions.

At first, along with the "raw grieving" there can be a "coming together" of communities.

But that can be followed by divisions and a "splintering" as families look for answers and people to hold accountable for their loss.

She says there can be "fury against authorities and institutions", rather than any consensus on what should happen next.

No consensus

There is also no agreement at a national level about how to respond to school shootings, with opinion just as divided as when the year began.

"The needle hasn't moved," she says.

There are calls for guns to be kept out of schools and others calling for more guns to be used to defend schools.

"Our sense is that a vast majority of teachers don't want to be armed," she says.

"Whether it's one child or 17, it's awful and tragic and we need vigorous discussion about how to put a stop to it," says Ms Maxwell.

But there is no sign of any agreement about how that might happen.

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The editor of Global education is Sean Coughlan (sean.coughlan@bbc.co.uk).

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2018 'worst year for US school shootings'

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This year, 113 people have been killed or injured in school shootings in the United States. That's the sobering finding of a project to count the annual toll of gun attacks in schools. At the beginning of 2018, Education Week, a journal covering education in the US, began to track school shootings - and has since recorded 23 incidents where there were deaths or injuries.

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Middle and high school students have been sharing their thoughts on gun violence with the NewsHour since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. One thing all students agree on: Change is possible and action must be taken.

We should not have to beg the U.S. to stop letting our friends die

by Carly Novell, 12th grade, Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School, Parkland, Florida

On average, there are about 13,000 deaths in the United States resulting from gun violence each year. Seventeen of those deaths were people I attended school with. People I passed in the halls everyday.

Not many realize how much the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students are grieving. We are traumatized. We are scared. But we are ignoring all of that because we are trying to make a difference. We haven't had a minute to process or grieve. We are just trying to make sure that this does not happen again. We, as high school students who just went through something traumatic, are forced to beg and plead for change.

We will not be silenced by the media, by the government, by the president, by the NRA or by anyone for that matter.

Something needs to be done to get semi-automatic guns out of the hands of civilians. Something needs to be done to get firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill. It should not be so easy to obtain a gun. We should not have to beg the U.S. to stop letting our friends die. The NRA has silenced our government for too long. We will not be silenced by the media, by the government, by the president, by the NRA or by anyone for that matter.
RELATED: Opinion: A student's obituary should never say 'gunned down while studying for chemistry'
I have had enough of sitting around while adults do nothing
by Eden, 12th grade, Iowa City, Iowa
When I was 10, one of my friends and classmates was murdered. His father beat him, his three siblings, and their mother to death with a bat. Afterwards, Seth's father called the police to report the deaths and fled the home. At the time, there was a great deal of confusion. No one knew where he was. No one knew if he was armed. No one knew what he might do. Fearing that he might come to the school, Longfellow Elementary went into lockdown. In Mrs. Dillard's second-grade class, we sat in silence. The teachers said nothing. They didn't know what to say. How can you explain something like this to a child? We knew nothing. And so we sat in our corner, in the dark and in the silence.

I have had enough silence.

The adults have proven that they are unwilling to move beyond thoughts and prayers. We must force them into action.

I have had enough of being in the dark. I have had enough of sitting around while adults do nothing. I am not content with being in the corner anymore.

Change will not come on its own. We have to make it for ourselves. The adults have proven that they are unwilling to move beyond thoughts and prayers. We must force them into action.

That includes my own senators: Joni Ernst, who has accepted millions of dollars from the NRA, and Chuck Grassley, who has accepted hundreds of thousands. Is this how much our lives are worth?

We may not have the power, the resources, or even the ability to vote, but we do have our voices. In America, there is no weapon more powerful.

Teenagers' brains are not yet fully developed. Why can they buy guns?
by Cecilia, 11th grade, New Orleans, Louisiana
After listening to a story on NPR, I encountered a fact by a neuroscientist about brain development for the average 18-year-old. The prefrontal cortex of teenagers is not yet fully developed. This is the part of the brain that helps you to control impulses and make smart decisions in times of stress.

If 18 is the legal age to buy a gun, then I see a huge problem with this. I believe we should adjust the legal age requirement for someone to own a gun. These are steps Congress needs to take so that other high school students like me don't have to worry about experiencing another terrifying and tragic attack.

Students need a designated time to center themselves for school
by Nathan, 12th grade, Chicago, Illinois
One solution is social-emotional learning. Before school, after school and during lunch period, there should be chill-spaces for students to de-stress, talk to a counselor and get themselves ready for the day.

Students have lives outside of school filled with experiences that are either traumatic, mentally exhausting or triggering. A designated time to center themselves for the school day would help. While this solution does not solve the problem of guns in the streets, it does help provide outlets for students who have mental health issues.

I have had my hunting license since I was in fifth grade. We need to make it harder to buy firearms.
by Morgan, 12th grade, Anderson, Indiana
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people having guns. I have grown up in a house full of firearms and hunting bows. I have had my hunting license since I was in fifth grade. However, many people my age struggle with mental health. Some take it to extreme levels, like taking guns from their home to school and shooting innocent people.

As a country, we need to make it harder to buy firearms. Only certain guns should allowed to be sold to the average joe. Not only should we add more regulations, but we should add a tax when buying a firearm, like we do for cigarettes and alcohol - items that may bring harm to ourselves or others.
PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs react to gun violence: Armed with social media, young people across America are actively researching both sides of the gun debate and deciding where they stand.
Don't turn schools into prisons
by Ashunti, 12th grade, Chicago, Illinois
Some individuals favor solutions that place armed guards in a defense perimeter around schools. Others want to arm teachers. And yet the idea of a "good guy with a gun" makes me more fearful of school shootings in our future.

Teachers aren't always 100 percent the good guys. There are many accounts of teachers who aren't trustworthy enough to be around kids. Arming them all would endanger more kids than "protecting." These solutions seem to want to turn schools from safe environments into prisons.

We already have gun control. We do need to do something to help the mentally ill.
by Katie, 11th grade, Parker, Colorado
The media in general provides a liberal stance on the gun debate. Weapons come in many different forms, and a common misconception in our country is that we would be safer without guns. Even though improvements to gun policy could prove to be beneficial, they will never end the violence that has come to play a part in our education system.
RELATED: Students who support gun rights say schools safer when 'good guys' are armed
However, we do need to do something to help the mentally ill instead of arbitrarily restricting already existing gun regulations. Nikolas Cruz had a well-known history of firearm obsession. Cruz was even evaluated by behavioral health experts, yet he was not hospitalized or detained. We could have helped him before this tragedy unfolded in front of our eyes.

The government isn't messing with the Second Amendment
by Noah, 12th grade, Anderson, Indiana
Just because you make it harder to get guns doesn't mean your Second Amendment is being taken away. The person buying the gun should have to go through mental health screenings to see if they're stable enough to handle guns. He/she should then be required to go every six months to retake mental health exams. It should be harder to get guns or certain attachments. They should be required to take a class to make sure they know how to handle guns.
For many teens, witnessing the mobilization of student activists against gun violence in the wake of the Parkland shooting has been inspiring, but others remain skeptical.
People complain that the government is trying to mess with the Second Amendment, which it really isn't. People just need to grow up and deal with the fact that some folks may not be stable or knowledgeable enough to own a gun. The world is safer that way.

We have allowed greed to overpower our humanity
by Ashley, 12th grade, Palo Alto, California
I was 12 years old at the time of the Sandy Hook shooting. Hopelessly idealistic and a little naive, I believed that the government, who had to be equally sickened and shocked as I was at the massacre of elementary school children, would immediately scramble to prevent such tragedies from reoccurring.

But nothing changed. And then, another school shooting happened. Then another. Then 200 more. And here we are now, a nation reeling from the deaths of 17 more students and teachers in Florida, wondering what went wrong again.

Effective gun control and the Second Amendment truly can coexist.
RELATED: Opinion: I've asked hundreds of students if they would feel safer if I was armed. Not one has said yes
Our inaction as a nation is - and was - inexcusable. Thoughts and prayers won't save the hundreds of kids whose blood has been spilled while simply pursuing their education, and they won't create a safer America for future generations. There is no blanket solution to this incredibly nuanced issue, but we cannot continue to dodge and delay at the expense of children's lives.

When the National Rifle Association has donated millions to our representatives, it is no wonder that the many attempts to pass gun safety legislation have been repeatedly blocked. We have allowed greed to overpower our humanity; we cannot have the people who represent us value profit over lives.

When politics have become increasingly polarized, it is no wonder that we have not had effective dialogue regarding gun control. Progress cannot be made without communication and compromise; effective gun control and the Second Amendment truly can coexist.

Guns have changed, shouldn't our laws change with them?
by Tacey, 11th grade, Traverse City, Michigan
After the Florida school shooting my friends and I were having a conversation at our lunch table. We were saying how if four shooters came in at that moment, blocking all exits, what would we do. Run. Hide. Hug your friends and call parents because you know it's all over. These should not be the thoughts running through 17-year old girls' heads. We should be more concerned with a pop quiz in history than a mass murderer popping through the doors.

Yes, we have the Second Amendment, the "right to bear arms." This was passed in 1789, when loading a gun took a lot longer between rounds than it does now. An AR-15 can fire dozens of rounds a minute. A legally converted AR-15 can fire 700 a minute. Guns have changed, shouldn't our laws change with them?
by Morgan, 12th grade, Charlotte, North Carolina
In November, we will vote.
These submissions came from NewsHour Extra's Student Voice blog and the videos, featuring a compilation of interviews, were gathered by the NewsHour Student Reporting Labs. For more student voices, see the full version of the story here.
Parkland is different. My generation has grown up living through nonstop violence, and now many of us are of voting age. However, it won't begin with voting. We will organize school walkouts and speak to our administration. We will work with school boards and lobby local leaders. We will challenge the National Rifle Association and our elected officials. And in November, we will vote.

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How teens want to solve America's school shooting problem

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Middle and high school students have been sharing their thoughts on gun violence with the NewsHour since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. One thing all students agree on: Change is possible and action must be taken. We should not have to beg the U.S.

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CLOSE

After Santa Fe and Parkland, gun control is a waste of time.

America is once again reeling from yet another deadly mass shooting. The victims at Santa Fe High School were taken from us too soon, and the prayers of Texas and the nation are with their families. There is something especially haunting about a killer targeting a school, where parents send their children on the assumption that they will be safe as they learn. Experience is a hard teacher, and with 2018's second major school shooting behind us, its lesson is clear: We must secure our schools.

All over the country, schools lack security measures of any consequence - not enough armed personnel, few safety protocols and insufficient entryway monitoring. No federal government agency, airport or congressional office building would tolerate such vulnerability, so why the resistance to outfitting schools with the same level of security?

American policymakers should look to Israel for guidance. Living constantly with the threat of terrorism, Israel solved the problem of school security long ago by hardening the target and tightening security practices. Every school with 100 or more students has at least one well-trained armed guard stationed at entrances to monitor who comes and goes.

These guards operate under the auspices of the Israel Police and undergo rigorous training every four months. Roughly 40% of applicants fail the training test, ensuring that only the cream of the crop defend the schools.

More from USA TODAY opinion: Would the Founders want our kids to die in school shootings like Santa Fe? I doubt it.

After Texas school shooting, how can we inoculate ourselves against the next one?

Dear Texas school shooting survivors: A Parkland teen's advice to Santa Fe students

Israel also rigorously trains students on how to respond in case of a crisis. We should continue to increase our efforts to do the same. We already require students to participate periodically in fire drills. But the last school fire that killed 10 or more was in 1958.

Protective power of armed guards

We do need to train and arm capable teachers and resource officers inside schools. In the Santa Fe shooting, resource officer John Barnes heroically engaged the shooter. He was seriously wounded, and while he did not successfully bring the shooter down, who knows how many lives Barnes may have saved while diverting the shooter's attention from the defenseless?

Recent news reports detail other incidents where school resource officers stopped potential shooters before they could inflict extensive damage.

Even so, arming resource officers and teachers must be viewed as a last line of defense. We must stop killers outside the school, as in Israel. Here's what we should do:

►Districts should post trained and capable armed guards outside as well as inside schools.

►They should also consider reducing the number of entrances to the building, so these guards can monitor traffic.

►Where feasible, schools could install metal detectors to ensure that nobody can sneak a weapon onto campus.

►Classroom doors must be made more secure against an attack. Classrooms should be equipped with the means to barricade these doors.

School shootings are a matter of seconds and minutes: Precious moments of delay could be enough to stop a shooter.

Gun control won't work

After so many tragedies, we should consider everything to protect schools, not waste our time with futile and unconstitutional new gun control. The Santa Fe shooter, who had also built operational bombs, was apparently ready to kill using any means necessary, with guns or without.

Moreover, not even the most avid mainstream gun-control proponents have proposed banning the guns he used: a shotgun and a revolver. Whatever one thinks of the Second Amendment, even repealing it wouldn't erase the roughly 300 million guns already in the country - it would simply disarm the law-abiding. In other words, nothing of practical use - only cheap political points - can come from muddying the waters with more gun control propaganda.

After 9/11, we didn't ban box cutters; we prevented passengers from carrying box cutters onboard planes by ramping up security at the airport itself - hardening the target. We should apply the same principle to our schools and spare no expense in doing so. What could possibly be more important?

Nothing is foolproof. No policy proposal will work 100% of the time, nor will it eradicate evil men intent on wanton destruction. There is a deep-seated cultural decay - fatherless children, degradation of human life across society, widespread moral confusion, etc. - at the root of this issue, and politics alone cannot repair it. But we owe it to our children to at least ensure their safety while at school. Israel has done it, and so can we.
Ken Paxton is the attorney general of Texas. Follow him on Twitter: @KenPaxtonTX
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2LrTejl

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To stop school shootings, use Israel's approach to fighting terror: Texas attorney general

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CLOSE After Santa Fe and Parkland, gun control is a waste of time. America is once again reeling from yet another deadly mass shooting. The victims at Santa Fe High School were taken from us too soon, and the prayers of Texas and the nation are with their families.

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Citizens Commission on Human Rights, CCHR

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While some have linked school shootings to "lack of mental health services" and hint that there would be fewer such incidents if people were under the watchful eye of mental health specialists, the true facts are either buried or obscured.

A recent Fox News report admits that "Researchers lacked data on a lot of factors that can influence gun violence, but they did find fewer school shootings occurred in states with mandatory background checks and higher spending on mental health and education." 1

According to this report, spending more money on mental health equals less gun violence. If that were the case then one would expect to find the violent offenders were not receiving mental health care. But the exact opposite is true.
National Institute of Mental Health Admits Violent Link to Psychiatric Drugs
These observations were made in a NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) report:

"And, of course, scripts linking guns and mental illness arise in the aftermath of many US mass shootings in no small part because of the psychiatric histories of the assailants. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes.... Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooter James Holmes 'was seeing a psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia' before he opened fire in a crowded theater...Isla Vista, California, shooter Elliot Rodger suffered from Asperger's disorder and took psychotropic medications." 2
Psychology Today Contributor says Suicide and Violence Related to Psych Drugs
Lennard J. Davis bolsters this viewpoint in a piece he wrote for Psychology Today:

"It's been well known that adolescents and young people have an increased risk of suicide when they begin to take SSRIs. But what we may forget is that suicide is an impulsive behavior that is turned against oneself. But impulses, particularly violent ones, can be turned against others.

"An accompanying effect of SSRI's is the dulling of feelings that cause depression-and one of the main feelings in this line is empathy. If empathy is dulled and violent impulses increase when young people are on SSRI's, then certainly that is a recipe for causing harm to others."
Scientists in PLOS Report Warn of Serious Adverse Effects
Davis seems to realize these drugs are dangerous as he then states, "...we also have to entertain the idea that those drugs may have directly or indirectly contributed to the violence that resulted...After all, drugs are drugs-with effects and side effects. We need to know more about how these drugs work before we decide that the best policy is to get as many trouble adolescents on them as possible. The physician's motto: 'Do no harm' is more relevant than ever in this scenario." 3

It has been admitted in a Public Library of Science (PLOS) report that "acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs. Varenicline [Chantex], which increases the availability of dopamine, and antidepressants with serotonergic [denoting a nerve ending that releases and is stimulated by serotonin] effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs. Prospective studies to evaluate systematically this side effect are needed to establish the incidence, confirm differences among drugs and identify additional common features." 4
What is the Solution?
While researchers ponder further studies to "evaluate systematically this side effect", the public remains at risk.

The real perpetrators of violent behavior are the psychiatrists peddling and the drug companies that continue to manufacture these drugs.

If only one person died at the hands of a murderous maniac on a psychiatric drug, that would be one person too many. But the number of lives lost to violent mass shootings since the year 2000 is over four hundred. 5

How many of the perpetrators were on psychiatric drugs? Many times those facts are hidden so one can only speculate. But as the NIMH revealed, there are several shooters openly acknowledged as having been under the effect of psychotropic drugs during their shooting rampage.

What will it take to remove the offending drugs from the marketplace? Apparently, concern for humanity on the part of drug producers and psychiatrists is not forthcoming. Profit and greed have replaced the Hippocratic oath in the so-called medical profession known as psychiatry. It is time we all raise our voice on this issue.

1 http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/12/13/gun-laws-mental-health-spending-tied-to-fewer-school-shootings.html

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/

3 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/obsessively-yours/201212/newtown-shootings-caution-about-violence-and-ssris

4 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015337

5 http://time.com/4368615/orlando-mass-shootings-chart/

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The Real Cause Behind School Shootings - Citizens Commission on Human Rights, CCHR

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While some have linked school shootings to "lack of mental health services" and hint that there would be fewer such incidents if people were under the watchful eye of mental health specialists, the true facts are either buried or obscured.

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The following table lists the worldwide school shootings from 1996 to the present. Find the date, location, and a short description of each incident.

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I wonder if the school shootings will stop or get worse.

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I wonder if the school shootings will stop or get worse.

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I feel that taking guns away would make a huge uproar. I feel like if they just made guns more expensive or harder  to get then it would cut down on the problem.

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I feel that taking guns away would make a huge uproar. I feel like if they just made guns more expensive or harder  to get then it would cut down on the problem.

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How  many school shootings there are in the United States. I feel like they should increase the security a lot to protect the children so stuff like this doesn't happen.

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How  many school shootings there are in the United States. I feel like they should increase the security a lot to protect the children so stuff like this doesn't happen.