Tuesday's Kentucky school shooting was the 11th U.S. school shooting of 2018

School shootings are becoming commonplace

(Image credit: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 24 January 2018

The town of Benton, Kentucky, is mourning the loss of two 15-year-old high school students, Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, shot dead Tuesday at Marshall County High School by an unidentified 15-year-old classmate who also wounded 12 other people and caused a stampede in which five other students were injured. It is America's worst school shooting of 2018 — only 23 days old — but it is also at least the country's 11th school shooting since Jan. 1, The New York Times reports. There were two on Monday, for example, in Italy, Texas, and New Orleans.

There have been about 50 school shootings in the U.S. this academic year (some were suicides, and some resulted in no injuries), and about one shooting a week since 2013, the Times says. "We have absolutely become numb to these kinds of shootings, and I think that will continue," Katherine W. Schweit, a former senior FBI official, tells the Times. She coauthored an FBI study of 160 active-shooter situations between 2000 and 2013, and a quarter of them were in educational settings, the number growing as the study went on. You can read more about how schools and states are responding at The New York Times.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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