Thread by @JohnWoodrowCox

1/ This year, I partnered w/ @dataeditor to chronicle the many ways school shootings affect children in America. Our project, edited by the magnificent @WPLyndaRobinson, was anchored by a deep look at how the epidemic has changed students who endured them.
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2/ Our school shootings database, the most exhaustive ever built, charts incidents dating back to '99. We found that 2018 was, by every measure, the worst year in modern U.S. history.
Shootings: 25
People shot: 94
People killed: 33
Students exposed: 25,332
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3/ Three weeks after a teenager killed 17 people in Parkland, we told the story of Jesse Osborne, a 14-year-old in South Carolina whose planning and confession provided extraordinary insight into the mind of a school shooter:
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4/ Ava Olsen, one of the first-graders who survived that school shooting in Townville, S.C., later wrote a letter to President Trump, pleading with him to “please keep kids safe from guns.” The White House wrote back, but Ava still wasn’t satisfied:
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5/ There’s been relentless debate this year about how to stop school shootings, but this is what the data shows: If kids as young as 6 did not have access to guns, two-thirds of school shootings over the past 20 years could not have happened.
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6/ To keep their students safe, schools spend billions on elaborate products and services being peddled by entrepreneurs making grand promises. The problem: almost none of them can prove what they’re selling will save lives.
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7/ America has failed to understand the impact of school shootings on students who never go through them. More than 4.1 million experienced a lockdown last school year, and the effects were often devastating. Kids wept, wrote wills, texted family goodbye.
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End/ A great many people contributed to this work, including @ChasingCrumbs, @lizziehrt, @_allysonchiu, @JohnMuyskens, @monicaulmanu, @danrindl, @gabrielflorit, @chrisalcantara, @aboutaaron, @timcurran_dc, @semelm and @cameronbarr. Thanks to all.