Students Create Database of Every K-12 School Shooting
The database records any time a gun has gone off in or around a school campus, including incidents of suicide. The data is also searchable by 16 different categories.
- By Jessica Davis
- October 11, 2018
A new database with information on every shooting at a school in the last 50 years is now available publicly online. The database was created by David Riedman, a former student at the Naval Post Graduate School while working on a project for the Center for Homeland Security.
Riedman and Desmond O’Neill created the database after trying to research school shootings and discovering how difficult it was to find detailed information.
"We wanted to record every single time that a gun has been brandished, fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason regardless of the time of day or day of the week,” Riedman said. "When we got online, and we were looking for information and looking through official databases. We couldn't find a single source that provided us really comprehensive information about school shootings."
The database records any time a gun has gone off in or around a school campus, including incidents of suicide. The data is also searchable by 16 different categories.
The website allows you to download the full data set collected by Riedman and O’Neill, which includes the date, school, location, number of killed and wounded, information on the shooter and a number of other details about each incident. There are also infographics that visualize the data, including Incidents by State, Number of Killed by Year and Incidents by Firearm Type.
“What we found is that the majority of school shootings happen during disputes that escalate into a shooting,” Riedman said.
Riedman believes the site would be useful for school administrators working on budgets and plans for school security.
"If you look at school shootings and you see that many of them occur outside of the school building that might make you think twice about fortifying classrooms, so we just want people to have an information source to weigh their decisions against,” Riedman said.
The database is located here.
About the Author
Jessica Davis is the Associate Content Editor for 1105 Media.