• A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Wednesday left 17 people dead and over a dozen more injured.
  • The shooting marks the 18th gun-related incident at or near a school already this year. Some of the incidents were suicides and others resulted in no injuries.

A gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday afternoon, killing at least 17 people and injuring over a dozen more, authorities said.

The shooting is the 18th gun-related incident at or near a school since the start of the year, according to a running count by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.

But a gun-related school incident can mean anything from a suicide, a stray bullet being fired into a building from off school grounds, an altercation in the school’s parking lot overnight, and, of course, an individual shooting at students.

“Most of these are sad and frightening in their own way, but they were not all cut from the same bloody cloth,” read an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in January.

School shootings have become all too familiar in the wake of massacres at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, but these incidents are very different from a stray bullet ricocheting off a dormitory or a student accidentally discharging a firearm during a gun training session.

"Using the term 'school shooting' to describe events in which the shooter intended no harm to anyone but himself, or where a gun was fired accidentally, is plainly misleading," opinion writer Becket Adams wrote in the Washington Examiner.

Nevertheless, 18 is a high number. By this time in 2017 and 2016, there were seven gun-related incidents both years, according to Everytown's tally.

These are all of the gun-related incidents at or near schools in 2018 so far. Shootings with fatalities have an asterisk:

  • *January 3: A 31-year-old man shot and killed himself in the parking lot of his former elementary school in Michigan.
  • January 4: Shots were fired at New Start High School outside Seattle. No one was hit or hurt.
  • January 5: A bullet from a pellet gun shattered the window of a Forest City, Iowa, school bus full of students while in transit. No one was injured.
  • *January 9: A 14-year-old male student killed himself in the bathroom of an elementary school in Arizona.
  • January 10: A bullet hit a building at California State University, San Bernardino. No one was injured.
  • January 10: A student at Grayson College in Texas accidentally fired a bullet during a gun training session with an instructor. No one was hurt.
  • January 15: Police in Marshall, Texas, responded to reports of gunfire just after midnight on the Wiley College campus. A stray bullet entered one of the dormitories, but no one was hit.
  • *January 20: A Winston-Salem State University football player was shot and killed during an event at Wake Forest University.
  • January 22: A 16-year-old shot and injured a female student several times at Italy High School in Texas.
  • January 22: Someone in a pickup truck fired at a group of students gathered in front of Net Charter School in New Orleans. One boy was injured.
  • *January 23: A 15-year-old student at a high school in Kentucky shot and killed two students and injured 17 others.
  • January 25: A 16-year-old boy fired a round of bullets outside of Murphy High School in Alabama without injuring anyone.
  • January 26: An altercation between two people led to shots being fired in the parking lot of Dearborn High School in Minnesota during a basketball game. No one was injured.
  • *January 31: A shooting ensued outside Lincoln High School in Philadelphia after a brawl stemming from a basketball game. No students were involved. One person died.
  • February 1: A 12-year-old girl critically injured one student and four others after firing a gun at Salvador B. Castro Middle School in Los Angeles. The incident was reportedly an accident.
  • *February 5: A student at Oxon Hill High School in Maryland was shot in the school's parking lot.
  • February 5: A third-grader pressed the trigger of a cop's gun at Harmony Learning Center in Minnesota. There were no injuries.
  • February 8: A 17-year-old fired a bullet at Metropolitan High School in the Bronx, New York. No one was hurt.
  • *February 14:17 people killed and over a dozen injured a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida after a former student opened fire on Valentine's Day.