27 school shootings have taken place so far this year

A shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that has killed 18 children and two adults marks the 27th school shooting this year. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the shooter behind Tuesday's incident was killed.

This comes just 10 days after a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., that took the lives of 10 people.

Education Week has been tracking school shootings since 2018. According to its database, 119 such incidents have taken place since then.

There were 27 school shootings with injuries or deaths this year.

The organization tracks shootings where a firearm was discharged and where any person (other than the suspect) has a bullet wound resulting from the incident. Education Week also includes only incidents that happen on a K-12 school property or on a school bus and that occur when school is in session or during a school-sponsored event.

It doesn't track cases in which the only shots fired were from a school resource officer or police officer.

The U.S. has surpassed 200 mass shootings this year

The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, has counted 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year, as of Tuesday. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter.

Data on the mass shootings that have occurred so far this year can be found here.

The U.S. ended 2021 with 693 mass shootings, per the Gun Violence Archive. The year before saw 611. And 2019 had 417.

As for school shootings, according to Education Week, 2021 had 34 such incidents at educational institutions (the highest since the organization started its database). In 2020, there were 10 shootings. Both 2019 and 2018 recorded 24 shootings.

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