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‘Inexcusable’: US School Gun Killings in 2018 at Highest Level in History

This year is the worst on record for gun-related shooting deaths in US schools, according to Sandy Hook Promise, a national non-profit organization founded by family members of children and staff shot and killed by a gunman at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
Sputnik

The organization, citing research by the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), revealed that there were 94 school shootings in 2018, an appalling 60-percent increase over 2006. 

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The NPS bases their statistics on any instance between 1970-2018 in which a gun was ‘brandished,' ‘fired,' or if a ‘bullet hit school property for any reason.'

"This is beyond unacceptable," Nicole Hockley, co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, told The Guardian.

"It is inexcusable," Hockley pointed out, adding that, "everyone has the power to stop violence before it starts."

Among several high-profile gun attacks at US schools this year are 17 dead in Parkland, Florida, and 10 dead in Santa Fe, Texas.

On February 14, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, a former student, used firearms he legally purchased to kill 17 students and staff at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In May, student Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed ten and wounded another 13 at a Texas high school using two guns that he took from his father's easily-accessible collection.

Sandy Hook Promise — founded by two parents in the aftermath of the brutal school shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut that saw one young man kill 20 kindergartners, six staff and his own mother — seeks to raise $1 million for educational programs through donations and the sale of a tribute song The Dreaming Kind, recorded by singer Sheryl Crow.

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