Texas School Shooting Leaves One Student Dead — State Has Seen More School Gunfire Incidents Than Any Other

Topline

One student was killed and a second injured when a student at a high school outside Dallas opened fire Monday morning, police in Arlington, Texas, confirmed Monday afternoon, in the latest school shooting in recent months and the second this year in Texas, a state with some of the loosest gun control laws in the U.S.

Key Facts

Police officers in Arlington, Texas, responded to Lamar High School shortly before 7 a.m. Monday morning, where two students had been injured outside the school.

In a statement on Facebook, Arlington police said the two injured students were taken to a local hospital, where one of them was later pronounced dead, police chief Al Jones confirmed in a press conference Monday afternoon.

Police said they located the male suspect after arriving on scene and took him into custody, charging him with capital murder, with additional charges pending.

The suspected gunman, whose name and age have not been made public, opened fire outside the school and never made his way inside, according to police.

The shooting marks the second in Texas in less than a month and the 88th incident of gunfire on school grounds since 2013 —the most of any state, according to Everytown Research — including one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history in Uvalde in 2019.

Crucial Quote

“We need our community’s help to ensure that guns do not end up on school campuses,” Jones said in a press conference about the shooting, which he called a “senseless act of violence.” Jones also expressed the need for “gun owners to step up to be responsible and to ensure that they properly are securing their firearms so that kids don’t have access to them.”

Key Background

The shooting in Arlington comes nearly a year after 19 students and two teachers were fatally shot at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in one of the largest school shootings in U.S. history. Shootings at Texas schools since 2013 have resulted in 58 deaths and 80 injuries, according to data from Everytown. Despite the high number of shootings, however, lawmakers in Texas have loosened gun laws in recent years. In 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) signed a law allowing permitless carry, enabling most adults to carry a handgun in a holster—either concealed or openly—in most locations without a permit. Abbott called the law—which includes exceptions for airports, courts, polling stations, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, amusement parks and businesses that explicitly prohibit handguns—the “biggest and best” gun law of that legislative session.

Tangent

Last June, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, one of its strictest gun control measures in decades, which enhanced background checks for people under 21 years old and provided funding for states to create red flag laws, which prevent people believed to be a risk to themselves or others from purchasing guns. Congressional Democrats also proposed an assault weapons ban, though it lacked enough votes to pass the then-GOP-led Senate, following near unanimous opposition from Republicans, who argued the legislation would take weapons away from Americans who own them for self-defense purposes.

Big Number

178. That’s how many people have died in 118 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an event that killed or injured four or more people, not including the shooter.