We spend a lot of time talking about school shootings, and how to prevent them, and rightfully so. But according to a new report by The Trace,1 gun violence in the vicinity of schools can also traumatize children and impede their learning. From 2014 to 2023, an average of 57 shootings occurred per day within 500 yards of a school in the United States.
Philadelphia’s own Russell Conwell Middle School in Kensington has seen nearly 500 shootings in its vicinity in the last decade. Rising seventh-grader Katoura Jones told The Trace in June, “Sometimes when I’m in my tutoring class I hear gunshots going off, and I’m the closest one to the window because that’s where I sit.”
I frankly don’t want to live in a Commonwealth where a distance of five football fields is all that separates my kindergartener and her friends from a flurry of bullets. Together, we can do something about it.
