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.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Microsoft pursues digital intelligence ‘aligned to human values’ in shift from OpenAIUNDER THE RADAR The iconic tech giant is jumping into the AI game with a bold new initiative designed to place people first in the search for digital intelligence
-
Sudoku medium: November 7, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
-
Codeword: November 7, 2025The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
France makes first arrests in Louvre jewels heistSpeed Read Two suspects were arrested in connection with the daytime theft of royal jewels from the museum
-
Trump pardons crypto titan who enriched familySpeed Read Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering while CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange
-
Thieves nab French crown jewels from LouvreSpeed Read A gang of thieves stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon
-
Arsonist who attacked Shapiro gets 25-50 yearsSpeed Read Cody Balmer broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and tried to burn it down
-
Man charged over LA’s deadly Palisades Firespeed read 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht has been arrested in connection with the fire that killed 12 people
-
4 dead in shooting, arson attack in Michigan churchSpeed Read A gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church where he shot at congregants and then set the building on fire
-
2 kids killed in shooting at Catholic school massSpeed Read 17 others were wounded during a morning mass at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis
-
Australian woman found guilty of mushroom murdersspeed read Erin Patterson murdered three of her ex-husband's relatives by serving them toxic death cap mushrooms
