In the month of January, there have been a shocking amount of  school shootings in America alone. Eleven to be exact. What is even more shocking about this is the news only covered one or two of these horrific events. Does this mean school shootings are becoming normal?  According to Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been over 300 recorded shootings in the U.S alone since 2013.  According to the Gun Control Advocacy Organization, that is one shooting a week.   On Wednesday, January 24th, 2018, a 15-year-old student at a rural Kentucky high school went on a shooting rampage, leaving two teens dead and multiple students injured. However, the day before this a 16-year-old male student at a school in Texas shot a 15-year-old girl in the head. Meanwhile, the same day as the Texas shooting a man in New Orleans shot into a group of friends walking in the parking lot from his car.  It is crazy to think students have been pushed to the edge to the point that it makes them feel it is acceptable to shoot up the school to end the bullying.

Why is it that the news have stopped airing these incidents? Is it that they do not care for these incidents anymore, or is there something else behind why no one streams this over the television? It is important for the people to hear about these incidents resulting in casualties in our country.  Without the knowledge of these events, there is no possible way for us to prevent any potential shootings from occurring especially since it is so easy for teens to acquire the materials to come into school with a fully loaded gun. People say that this sudden outbreak of school shootings can be linked to the expanding of social media. This could be true because it is so easy to bully someone over Snapchat or Instagram because all it takes is the press of a button, but why can’t social media be used to spread love, instead of hate?

Below is a list of school shootings that have occured so far in the year of 2018 provided by “www.snopes.com”

22 January: Italy High School, Italy, Texas – A 16-year-old student opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun in the school cafeteria, wounding another student.

22 January: NET Charter High School, Gentilly, Louisiana – An unknown person fired shots at students from a vehicle in the school parking lot. One person was injured (though not by gunfire).

23 January: Marshall County High School, Benton, Kentucky – A 15-year-old student opened fire with a handgun on school grounds, killing two and injuring 18.

25 January: Murphy High School, Mobile, Alabama – A student fired a handgun into the air during a fight with another student. No injuries were reported.

26 January: Dearborn High School, Dearborn, Michigan – Shots were fired during a fight in the school parking lot. No injuries were reported.

31 January: Lincoln High School, Philadelphia – A fight during a basketball game resulted in the shooting death of a 32-year-old man outside the school.

14 February: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida – A 19-year-old former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 17 and injuring 14.

20 January: Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina – A 21-year-old was shot and killed during a fight at a party on school grounds.

5 February: – Oxon Hill High School, Oxon Hill, Maryland – A student was shot and injured in the school parking lot during an attempted robbery.

10 January: California State University, San Bernardino, California – Bullets were fired through a window, with no suspects or motive identified.

8 February: Metropolitan High School, New York, NY – A student fired a gun into the floor of a classroom.

10 January: Grayson College, Denison, Texas – A student fired a weapon belonging to an adviser, believing it wasn’t loaded. No injuries were reported.

1 February: Salvador B. Castro Middle School, Los Angeles – A semi-automatic handgun brought to school by a 12-year-old student accidentally went off. Four students were injured.

5 February: Harmony Learning Center, Maplewood, Minnesota – A third-grader pressed the trigger of a law enforcement officer’s handgun. The weapon went off but no one was injured.

10 January: Coronado Elementary School, Sierra Vista, Arizona – A middle school student shot himself in the bathroom of the school and was pronounced dead at the scene.

4 January: New Start High School, near Seattle – Bullets fired by an unidentified shooter entered an administrative office. No injuries were reported.

15 January: Wiley College, Marshall, Texas – Gunshots fired from a vehicle in the parking lot of a college dorm entered through a window, but did not injure residents.

Hopefully, we can find a way as a country to make people aware of what is happening in all these schools and work together in order to prevent these shootings from taking place. If we are not able to prevent this from happening, maybe we can hope for these occurrences to stop occurring so often and restrict gun sale over the Internet so it is harder for students to buy these guns, especially if they do not have a gun license issued by the state.