School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, among deadliest in U.S. history
Hours after 19 children and two teachers were killed in the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, a survivor of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., posted a stark reminder of the nation’s long history of deadly school shootings.
“My oldest son just finished his first year of college,” Craig Nason, a graduate of Columbine and father of four, wrote on Twitter. “This is America. There is no end in sight for the steady cadence of mass gun violence we seem unwilling to ever address.”
It is, Nason added, “a reality my peers could not have imagined on our worst day in April 1999.”
On that day, 12 students and one teacher were killed at Columbine by two gunmen in what was at the time one of the deadliest school shootings in modern U.S. history. (In 1966, an engineering student fatally shot 14 people and wounded 31 more during a 96-minute shooting rampage from an observation deck at the University of Texas at Austin.)
Since then, there have been four that were deadlier, including Tuesday’s massacre in Uvalde.
Blacksburg, Va.
On April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old gunman killed 32 students and faculty members in two separate attacks on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Va. The gunman, a student, then committed suicide. It was, and remains, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
Newtown, Conn.
On Dec. 14, 2012, a 20-year-old gunman fatally shot his mother at their home in Newtown, Conn., before killing 26 people — including 20 children — at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The gunman shot himself as police arrived. It is the second-deadliest mass school shooting in the United States, after the massacre at Virginia Tech.
Parkland, Fla.
On Feb. 14, 2018, a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people and injuring at least a dozen others. The shooter, a former student, was later captured and arrested. Surviving students organized the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C., weeks later, then toured the country on a bus in an effort to register and mobilize voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Uvalde, Texas
On May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old gunman shot his grandmother at their home before opening fire inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers before officials say he was shot and killed by police. It was the deadliest school shooting since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, and came just 10 days after 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y.
Other notable U.S. school shootings
Santa Fe, Texas
On May 18, 2018, a 17-year-old gunman opened fire at Santa Fe High School in southwest Texas, killing 10 people, many of them students, and wounding 13 more. The shooter, a student at the school, surrendered. It came just three months after the massacre in Parkland.
Roseburg, Ore.
On Oct. 1, 2015, a 26-year-old student opened fire in a residence hall on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., killing eight students and one teacher, and injuring nine others before killing himself.
Oxford, Mich.
On Nov. 30, 2021, a 15-year-old student opened fire at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Mich., killing three students and wounding seven others and a teacher. A fourth student died a day later. The parents of the teenage suspect were later arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter. According to prosecutors, the suspected shooter's father purchased the gun allegedly used by his son four days before the shooting as an early Christmas present.
