More and more US schools are confiscating guns from students and having to deal with calls falsely reporting school shootings.
The number of guns found on students in schools during the first two months of this school year has risen compared with the same time in the past two years, says the nonprofit group Gun Violence Archive, which monitors gun activity.
At least 220 guns were seized last month and in August in 35 states, compared with 128 at the same time last year. In the corresponding period in 2019, 132 guns were confiscated. The number of guns found in 2020 is likely to have been lower because it was amid the pandemic, when classes were remote.
At least 15 guns were recovered from schools in Baltimore, Maryland, last year, said Sergeant Clyde Boatwright of the Baltimore City School Police Force. It was higher than in any recent year. This school year the department has recovered two guns. One was used when a high-school student was shot dead outside a school.
The increasing prevalence of guns comes with an increase in what has come to be known as swatting. This is a hoax in which someone calls emergency services and reports a nonexistent crime to get law enforcement officials, generally a SWAT team, to go to an address.
On Wednesday many San Francisco Bay Area high schools received active shooter hoax calls, a day after police in Florida responded to swatting calls at several high schools.
Since early last month about 117 hoaxes have been reported at schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia, said the National Association of School Resource Officers, a nonprofit group for school-based law enforcement professionals. (With inputs from Agencies)
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