They seem to be rising because reporting of the events and public awareness of them are rising. They are actually declining, according to what I have seen. To

They seem to be rising because reporting of the events and public awareness of them are rising. They are actually declining, according to what I have seen. To determine the rate in previous years, researchers have had to comb through hundreds of local papers, and verify with local police reports, to find past incidents of criminal use of guns in schools. Nowadays, those are more likely to make national news, and also be reported in aggregate by the state police. To reiterate, gun violence in the US has apparently been in decline for decades--just like other kinds of violence. Now that awareness of gun violence is rising, we have a real chance at driving it into the ground and keeping it there, even without mass disarmament. Between genuine enforcement of existing laws--rather than the salutary neglect of those laws promoted at the enforcement end by gun-oriented lobbyists--and suicide prevention efforts, I think we are approaching a time when an acceptable compromise is possible that would put our rates of violent crime within a reasonable distance of more disarmed societies. But as recently demonstrated in Austin, availability of guns is not the ultimate problem. The problem is that defense-in-depth is hard. A determined attacker can always cause some damage, with whatever tools he may have at his disposal. It is very difficult to recognize a threat and then stop it before it is realized.