There have been at least 38 threats against schools all over the U.S. since the Parkland, Florida school shooting on Feb. 14, most of them made by underage students on social media.
Former student Nikolas Cruz took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, and put 14 other people in the hospital. The students of that school rallied around the hashtag, “Never Again.” However, there have been numerous threats and shootings since then, according to a new report by DailyMail.
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Some of the cases have been reported in the news, though none as prominently as the attack in Portland. One was committed in Ohio on Feb. 20, less than a week after the the Parkland shooting. A 7th grader brought a .22-caliber long gun into Jackson Middle School with the intent to carry out a mass shooting. Before classes began, however, he intentionally shot himself in the head instead.
Another shooting was carried out by a 53-year-old teacher named Jesse Randall Davidson. Davidson brought a handgun to a high school in Georgia where he taught social studies and fired a single shot through the window while barricading himself alone in his classroom. He was eventually taken into custody and charged with carrying a weapon on school grounds, terroristic threats, aggravated assault, reckless conduct, possession of a gun during commission of a crime and disrupting public school.
The reports range across 20 states in the U.S. Some students claim to have been making a “joke,” and one girl even said that she used a gun threat as an attempt to stall for more time to study for a test. In all cases, however, the threats have caused panic and school delays or closures. The nation is still reeling from the catastrophic shooting in Parkland and the subsequent heightening of the gun control debate.
In the state of Florida, traumatized civilians have been faced with no less than eight new threats since Cruz was taken into custody. Students from Stoneman Douglas High traveled to the state capital to request restrictions on assault weapons, and were denied. Since then, state lawmakers have voted to spend $67 million on arming teachers.
On Feb. 15, just one day after the shooting in Parkland, a student brought two guns to Palm Beach Lake High School, not far from the mourning town. Police received an anonymous tip out him, and when the arrived, the student dropped his weapons and ran. He was ultimately arrested.
While lawmakers have been slow to respond to the survivors’ calls for tighter laws, companies haven’t. Both Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart have made it harder to purchase assault weapons and handguns in their stores.
