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Are there warning signs? What we learned from covering school shootings.

Washington Post journalists John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich chatted with readers about gun violence on Wednesday

John Woodrow Cox, left, and Steven Rich, who have reported on school shootings for years. (Matt McClain/Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
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Hundreds of thousands of students have experienced gun violence at school since the Columbine High massacre in 1999.

I’m John Woodrow Cox, a Washington Post staff writer who has written for six years about the effects of gun violence on children in America. I’ve immersed in the lives of dozens of survivors, including Ava Olsen, whom I first met in 2017, soon after her best friend from first grade was killed in a school shooting in South Carolina. Ava, then 7, was so traumatized she quit going to school. I recently wrote about Ava’s attempt, now at age 13, to finally go back.

And I’m Steven Rich, a data reporter who has worked with John to create The Washington Post’s school shooting database. As part of that effort, I have helped review more than 370 incidents, analyzing the sex, age and gender of the perpetrators; the guns they used; the types of shootings they committed; the racial makeup of the schools they targeted; and the role that resource officers have played in stopping them. In 2022, there were more school shootings — 46 — than in any year since at least 1999.

We joined readers on Wednesday for a live chat on gun violence in the United States. This chat is now over, but you can read a transcript of it below. Reader questions may be edited for accuracy and clarity.

Read more of The Post’s coverage on gun violence:

Alexandra Pannoni, talent and community editor, produced this Q&A.

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