SAEDNEWS: Depending on how researchers define a “school shooting,” the United States saw between 8 and 146 incidents of gunfire on school property in 2025 — a gap driven entirely by differing methodologies used by leading trackers
According to Saed News, the largest trackers show very different totals: the K-12 School Shooting Database — which counts nearly every discharge, brandishing or bullet striking school property — records roughly 146 incidents so far this year; Everytown for Gun Safety’s mapping of gunfire on school grounds counts around 91 incidents under its criteria; and Education Week — which only counts shootings that produced injuries or deaths on K–12 property during school hours or school events — reports 8 shootings with casualties in 2025.
The disparity comes down to definition. Some trackers intentionally use a broad net to show the full scope of gunfire on or near campuses — including accidental discharges, gang-related shootings that happen to occur on school grounds, and incidents where no one is hurt. Others restrict counts to incidents that caused injury or death during school activities, producing far smaller but more narrowly comparable totals. The different approaches are not mistakes — they reflect different research goals and policy arguments.
The K-12 School Shooting Database (K-12 SSDB) aims to document every instance where a gun was fired, brandished with intent, or a bullet struck school property — regardless of casualties. Its inclusive approach is designed for comprehensive academic research and reveals how often firearms touch school settings in any form.
Everytown maps incidents of gunfire on school grounds and counts episodes that involved shots fired or people being wounded or killed, but generally excludes cases where guns were only brought to a campus and not discharged. That narrower scope yields a lower figure than the K-12 database while still capturing most episodes of actual gunfire.
Education Week’s tracker counts only shootings that caused injuries or deaths on K–12 property or school buses during school hours or school events. By that strict metric, there have been 8 school shootings in 2025 that resulted in casualties — a figure often used when reporters or policymakers focus on lethal or injurious events alone.
The Aug. 27 attack at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis — a church service tied to an elementary school — is the deadliest school-related shooting of 2025: two children were killed and many others injured after a gunman opened fire during Mass. That episode is counted as a casualty-causing school shooting in trackers that use the injury/death threshold. Investigators recovered multiple weapons and are still probing motive and digital evidence.
No single tally can fully capture the human toll or the policy implications. The broad counts emphasize how frequently guns touch school spaces; narrower counts focus attention on the worst outcomes. Both are useful: policymakers use strict casualty counts when arguing for emergency response and security changes, while researchers and advocates point to broader tallies to argue for prevention, intervention and gun-safety laws. Recent trend data suggest some fluctuations year to year, and many groups warn that a single metric should not be the only guide for reform.
