<P> A study by Northeastern University found that "four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today ." </P> <P> On August 27, 2018, NPR reported that a U.S. Education Department report, released earlier in the year, for the 2015 - 2016 school year said "nearly 240 schools...reported at least 1 incident involving a school - related shooting ." However, when NPR researched this' claim', it could confirm only 11 actual incidents . </P> <P> School shootings are a "uniquely American crisis," according to The Washington Post in 2018 . School shootings are considered an "overwhelmingly American" phenomenon due to the availability of firearms in the United States . Between the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, there were 31 school shootings in the United States and 14 in the rest of the world combined . Between 2000 and 2010, counting incidents from 37 countries in which someone was injured or killed on school grounds, with two or more victims, and not counting "single homicides, off - campus homicides, killings caused by government actions, militaries, terrorists or militants," the number of such incidents in the United States was one less than in the other 36 countries combined; in the vast majority of the United States incidents, perpetrators used guns . </P> <P> The United States federal government does not track school shootings . Addressing school shootings in the United States was made more difficult by the passage by United States Congress of the Dickey Amendment in 1996, which mandated that no Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds "may be used to advocate or promote gun control" and halted almost all study of gun violence . </P>

When was the last school shooting outside the us