by James C. Sherlock
When we talk about getting weapons out of schools, most Virginians don’t have any concept of how many are found in schools every year.
Or think they are all in high schools. Or likely both.
When they do find out, eyes glaze over thinking of the cost and difficulty of fixing that problem in Virginia’s 2,100 or so public schools.
How could such a problem even be approached?
Consider the Willy Sutton rule.
The last full year pre-COVID, 2018-19, Virginia public schools reported 2,103 weapons incidents in 898 of its public schools. Yes, that is a disturbing number of weapons. I can find no indication on how many were guns and knives.
Yes, that only indicates the weapons that were found.
But “everybody” doesn’t do it at scale. There were seven or more weapons incidents in 41 schools. Continue reading