In March 1999, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno called a meeting of representatives of several federal agencies to discuss what to do about school violence levels, which were high but not increasing. I showed the group a large poster on which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I was then the director of the injury center, had plotted the frequency of school shootings involving multiple deaths. It showed a steady and frightening increase. I had hoped that this would move the Clinton administration to take rapid steps to prevent more such shootings.
It didn't. Exactly one month later came Columbine, which took the lives of 13 students and two student perpetrators—at that time, the worst school shooting in U.S. history. We all know what happened next: Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and, most recently, Parkland, with many others in between. According to the Washington Post, “more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.”
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