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Two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, were shot and killed and nine other people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds Wednesday.
The deadly incident on Sept. 4 was the 218th time a gun was fired or brandished at a school so far in 2024, data shows. The total number of shootings includes any incident where people are shot at, injured, or killed, regardless of how many individuals are involved.
The suspected shooter — a 14-year-old student at the northern Georgia school — was arrested and is being charged with murder. Authorities said he would be tried as an adult.
A CBS News analysis of data from the K-12 Shooting Database shows that of the more than 200 incidents as of Sept. 4 — which include gang violence, domestic incidents and accidents, among other causes — 10 were in Georgia, including the Apalachee High School shooting.
And, like the majority — nearly 51% — of school shootings in the last 10 years, the fatal incident in north Georgia happened during the school day, while classes were in session. The 2022 shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, for example, occurred while school was in session.
The rest happen after school hours, mostly during extracurricular activities like sporting or school events, such as a 2023 shooting at a New Jersey high school football game where a 10-year-old was killed. School shootings that happen inside the school building tend to be deadlier, data show.
So far in 2024, 18 of the 46 people killed in school shootings were under the age of 18 (a figure that does not include the two students and two teachers killed in the Sept. 4 shooting.)
Since the 1960s, mass shooting incidents where four or more people are killed or injured represent only a small fraction of the numbers of gun deaths and injuries at schools in the U.S. 75% (75.69%) of the deaths and 68% (68.55) of the wounded are in incidents that are not classified as mass shootings and don’t garner as much attention.
Following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado — at the time, the nation’s deadliest — many states started mandating active shooter drills, which reached 95% of public schools in the 2015-2016 school year, CBS News previously reported.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the year of the Columbine shooting.
