USA people - have you ever personally experienced a school shooting?

I had a bomb threat at my school but then they went thru a referendum and completely redid the school and put glass walls for every classroom so I hope my school never experiences it because it would be catastrophic on all levels.

And no they are not bulletproof glass.

No thank god, but Stoneman Douglas was my sisters high school, and where I would have attended if we didn’t move. I graduated long before the shooting but still felt close to home for me.

As a teacher I have been in a school building when a gun was fired and hit a school window. It was not a “school shooting” because it was two cars driving by shooting at each other.

School shootings are a very small percentage of shootings overall though. You’d have to basically remove yourself from society as a whole to remove the risk of any type of gun crime happening around you.

For what it’s worth, I’m 42, have been teaching for 17 years and that’s the only incident that has happened - and this is in an urban school in a city where unfortunately gun violence isn’t a super rare occurrence - but the vast majority of it isn’t random and is related to drugs.

Guns and shootings in general are a huge problem here, school shootings being the most devastating but even if that particular thing doesn’t happen to your family it’s likely some sort of gun violence will get close to you eventually. My husband was shot at on the highway in December (bullet missed him thank god but hit his side mirror) and back around 2019 he was also where that mass shooting occurred in El Paso. I have countless friends who’ve been affected by gun violence in some way, for me it just seems inevitable if you live long enough in the US that youll have your own story with it or someone close to you

Also my kids school has had several lockdowns just because of gun violence nearby somewhere, not inside the school but it’s still kinda traumatizing for kids and hard to explain to them

I’ve experienced more than one bomb threat while I was in school.

One of my schools would do active shooter drills by actually firing a gun with blanks in the hallways.

Fortunately I haven’t experienced a school shooting bt unfortunately I was at a “mass shooting” here in round rock at a Juneteenth festival! They started shooting & it was one of the scariest moments of my life, I have ptsd from it & I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, let alone children. I can handle the trauma as an adult bt I can’t imagine what kids who experience that go thru.

No but I could have. Ive always been "weird" and not afraid to be myself, so I leaned towards people who were the same, or so I thought sometimes. Anyways I dated this guy in high-school that was quirky. He asked me one day if I would ☠️ for him and I was like "no...." I turned him in and I was almost expelled for it. Turns out in court (2yrs later) he had a whole list of people and weapons. That was freaky.

No but several bomb threats in high school & once a girl set a fire in the girls bathroom. Always just attempts to get school closed, luckily.
It’s not uncommon for shootings to happen at events like Mardi Gras, festivals & fairgrounds, etc. I even had to call the cops one night when I was bartending because one of my regulars shot at another patron in my bar parking lot. Pretty sure it was over drugs. Drug use & subsequent shootings & gang violence is pretty common where I’m from though so I’m lowkey desensitized.

If you’re thinking about moving here and specifically concerned on this issue you can do research on specific state laws. All states have slightly different gun rights. Also you can see the statistics on states with less gun crime and school shootings. This can help you make a decision on the safest state to live in. For example. California has over 200 school shootings reported and Wyoming only has had 2. Some states are heavily populated and others are not. I believe Wyoming, Noth Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont have the lowest school shoutings reported in the US. Good luck! Some states are definitely safer than others.

So we had a threat that put our school and the nearby middle school into lock down. We were in lockdown for about 4 hours. My classroom was right infront of the school doors, cafeteria, and admin office. Hearing the principal kick his door open and scream for everyone to get in the classrooms, seeing the cafeteria evacuations through the crack under the door, and seeing my teacher praying over her rosaries with one hand while holding scissors in the other was scary.

As a teacher, i was escorting my 4 year old deaf student to the restroom. Lockdown was called, and i spent an hour standing on a childs toilet, in the dark, with my deaf childs face shoved in my shoulder to keep her quiet, and both of us soaked in her urine. Thankfully it was just a threat but hearing footsteps go up and down the hall and trying to keep a 4 year old who i couldnt explain what was going on quiet or id be taking a bullet for her any minute.

I stopped teaching in public schools after that.

No but when I taught, we had several threats outside the building that causes us to go in lockdown. The school was in kind of a rough area. Once I watched a man get tackled by police outside my classroom window.

we had a professional development where people came in and did this! I stayed home and refused to go.

The principal would also come around to our rooms during drills and bang on the doors and try to get it. And then I had to explain all of that to 25+ 5 year olds. Crazy stuff

As an American it would be really stupid to move to the US right now. Even if you disregard school shootings. We are becoming a fascist country. We are currently insolvent, so we are broke as fuck. ICE is kidnapping anyone they want- even if you are a citizen. Even if you are white you are not safe! Immigrants are literally dying in the ice detention centers. Not of mention our healthcare is shit. Our food is shit. There’s legit no good reason to move to the US rn. Unless you wanna risk you and your kid locked up indefinitely cuz our ice detention centers are for profit- so they want to keep bodies in there. Oh not to mention the immigrants who have just have gone missing. It is not safe here!!! Do NOT come the United States!!!

I haven’t experienced a school shooting, but my guy best friend in high school got expelled for bringing a gun to school to show off to his friends. He didn’t have any intention besides to show off but on the bus ride home, either the bus driver saw it or one of the kids saw it and alerted the police or something.

The alarming fact is that he was able to get into the school with it in his backpack and had it with him all day, shows how easy it would be for someone with malice in their heart to carry out a school shooting.

Not a true school shooting, but I had a pretty intense lockdown experience while there was an active shooter in the area when I was in highschool. And many bomb threats. Mind you I was in highschool in the 2010s.

we had 2 incidents where someone was near campus or on campus with a gun which caused us to go into lockdown, no shots fired though.

Not personally. But my kids have multiple active shooter drills a year and they are pretty traumatizing themselves.