#Gun Crisis Philadelphia 1/28/14

#GunCrisis

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School shootings spike across the US in January,  including three incidents in the Philadelphia region Posted: 28 Jan 2014 07:09 AM PST Six-year-old Jordan Hall waits with her mother to find her brother aftertwo students were shot inside his school in Philadelphia earlier this month. Photograph for the Gun Crisis Reporting Project by Joseph Kaczmarek. Since the Newtown school shooting, demandaction.org has counted 36 more school shootings in the US, including 29 incidents in 2013. Yet in the first month of 2014, they have already added seven more incidents to their list,  including three in the Philadelphia region. UPDATE: Shots were fired Tuesday at a high school in Honolulu, according to the Associated Press: Shots fired at Hawaii school; injuries reported This list includes the previous incidents tracked bydemandaction.org: A 17-year-old student was wounded in a shooting at Liberty Technology Magnet  High School in Jackson, Tenn. on January 9th. On January 14th, a shooting at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M. left at least two children wounded. In Lancaster, Pa., King Elementary School was locked down after someone fired a gun in the schoolyard on January 15th. Two children were wounded inside the Delaware Valley Charter School in Philadelphia on January 17th. A Widener University student was shot on campus in Chester. Pa., on January 20th. A student was shot and killed on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, In., in January 21st. And a student was shot to death outside a dorm at South Carolina State  University on January 24th. According to demandaction.org, their list includes incidents in which a firearm was fired or brandished on school property, identified through media reports, and likely an under count  of the true total. At the Gun Crisis Reporting Project, we tracked several more incidents in the news, both near and far this month: Philadelphia: Student found with gun at W. Phila.charter school Pennsylvania: 2 Guns in DelCo Schools Washington: 2 people found fatally shot near Howard University Chicago: Several shot on South Side, including girl, 17, on way to school California: Boy, 14, in critical condition after shooting near Reedley High Georgia: Principal, parents talk safety after gun found at middle school Oklahoma: Shooting Scare Rattles University of Oklahoma Oregon: Portland police investigating report of a gun shown by Franklin High Student at lunch Virginia: Four teens arrested, gun recovered at Granby High School And according to a recent report from thinkprogress.org: “Just about the only discernible impact of adding security officials into schools isa dramatic increase in the number of students arrested. More alarmingly, there have been instances of officers forgetting  their guns inside bathrooms used by students or accidentally firing their guns inside  of crowded high schools.” After last weekend’s mall shooting in Maryland, celebrity Katy Perry asked her nearly  50 million Twitter followers if they were “Scared to go to school? Scared to go to the mall?  Scared to go to the movies?,” and if anyone else was sad about “the constant stream of  shootings and how normal it’s becoming,” finally adding: “You and I both know this is getting embarrassing.” As the first anniversary of the Newtown shooting approached in December, momsdemandaction.org released this video: Stop The Silence At the same time, school shootings represent a very small part of the gun violence crisis  in Philadelphia. Three men were killed and four more people were wounded in unrelated  incidents on the same day as the recent school shooting. Five incidents last weekend – including two fatalities — brought this month’s shooting victim totals in Philadelphia to 23 dead and 41 wounded.