Gun violence at high school graduations

Just like the Chiefs Super Bowl Parade, a dispute during a large public gathering can quickly escalate into a shooting if someone is carrying a concealed handgun.

Graduation should be a time to celebrate the accomplishments of students, but these ceremonies have already turned into a “warzone” four times—plus one close call with an armed parent/relative—so far this spring.

• Cape Girardeau, MO: Two people were shot during a Sunday afternoon high school graduation when a dispute between adults at the concession stand escalated into a shooting (May 19). The crowd evacuated the building, the remainder of the ceremony was cancelled, and classes were also cancelled the following day.

• Kansas City, MO: Shots fired during a high school graduation on Saturday afternoon (May 18) as students were walking across the stage. The crowd ran for cover and the remainder of the ceremony was cancelled.

• Boiling Springs, SC: A 52-year-old man pulled out a gun and pointed it at two people. He then used a baton to break the window of their car during a road rage dispute when the traffic backed up in the parking lot of Boiling Springs High following graduation (May 18).

• Cincinnati, OH: An 18-year-old who graduated earlier that evening was killed in school parking lot during an unauthorized grad party attended by a large group of students late on Friday night (May 18). 40 shots were fired.

• Albuquerque, NM: Mother was shot inside the auditorium during an evening graduation ceremony (May 8). She was reaching to hug her stepson when she was shot in the neck.

When kids have been doing active shooter lockdown drills in their classrooms since kindergarten, it’s depressingly predictable that their last moments as a k-12 student are spent running from gunfire.

Trends from 2010-2024

For each shooting at a school, in addition to the clock time, I also code the time period of the incident. These time periods provide context for understanding what was going on at the school when the shooting happened.

During late May and June when the time period is “School Event”, these shootings are usually happening at proms and graduations. Throughout the year, shootings at schools events include dances, drama club performances, back-to-school night, and holiday themed events like a Halloween party (when a police officer having a mental crisis yelled that he was “going to kill everyone” and then opened fire at a middle school “Trick or Treat” party last year before being subdued by parents).

Last year, a high school graduate and his father were fatally shot after graduation in Richmond, VA by a student who was prohibited from being on campus. Five others were wounded and 12 people were injured running from the scene.

Also in 2023, a parent with a concealed weapon fatally shot themselves (accidentally) at a graduation for Lenoir City High School in Tennessee. Two teens were also shot leaving the ceremony at Banning High School in California.

In 2022, 15 people were shot at six different high school graduations in Indiana, Louisiana (2), Michigan, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

The four shootings and four victims shot so far at graduations in 2024 (note: I coded the fatal shooting in Cincinnati as “night” rather than “school event” because it was not a school organized graduation party) is a really bad sign because it’s the middle of May and there are four more weeks of high school graduations.

Looking back at Richmond graduation mass shooting

A father and son were killed, 5 others were wounded, and 12 more injured from being trampled during the chaos, during a shooting outside the Huguenot High School graduation in downtown Richmond, VA. The shooter was a student at the school who was on a virtual learning only safety plan that banned him from campus due to prior threats of violence.

To add to the confusion, police recovered four different guns from the scene of the shooting and it’s still unclear how many people fired shots!

As a result of the shooting, all Richmond schools were closed the next day and a graduation ceremony for another high school at the Altria Theater was cancelled.