After a succession of publicly publicized mass shootings reinforced calls for stricter gun regulation in the United States, new survey results indicate that parents of students enrolled in grades K-12 are increasingly concerned about their children’s safety.
Gallup surveyed adults around the country whose children would be returning to elementary, middle, and high school classrooms for the upcoming school year. It revealed that 44% of participating adults fear for their children’s physical safety at school, while 20% reported that their children have independently expressed safety concerns.
According to Gallup, parental concern around the potential threats their children may experience in school environments increases in 2022. This year, according to data collected by the research group over the previous two decades, more K-12 parents are concerned about school safety than at any time since 2001.
At the time, 45 percent of parents expressed anxiety about school safety. This number was slightly lower than that reported by Gallup in the days following the April 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and at the beginning of the subsequent school semester. In April, parental worry reached a record high of 55% and then dropped to 47% when school resumed. The increase in safety worries observed in 2001 followed a decline in 2000 and, according to Gallup’s 2022 report, a second shooting at Santana High School in Santee, California.
The most recent survey results from Gallup follow multiple mass shootings that shook the nation this year. In May, ten people were killed in a mass shooting that occurred inside a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Later that month, 19 pupils and two teachers were killed and 17 others were injured in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Then, during the summer, seven people were shot and killed at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, along with over thirty others.
Since the Columbine tragedy, a number of comparable catastrophes have occurred in and outside of U.S. educational institutions, and there has been a well-documented increase in gun violence countrywide. Cassie Walton, a mother from Oklahoma, posted a TikTok video of her practicing active shooter procedures with her 5-year-old son as he prepared for school. In the video, which soon went viral, Walton’s kid demonstrated how he would use his backpack as a barrier if a shooter were to enter his classroom.