Canada’s worst ever K-12 school shooting massacre would be just another Tuesday in America

U.S. has already seen 14 school shootings in 2026 & there were 230 in 2025 down from 336 in 2024

In pondering the horror of what happened in Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10, 2026, many officials, including Premier David Eby, said some version of “this doesn’t happen in Canada.”

This is something that happens somewhere else. 

What is unsaid in this sentiment is that “somewhere else” is the United States where gun culture is baked in, akin to nationalism or team pride or a cult. 

In that context, a cynical way of considering the worst K-12 school shooting ever in Canada this week is that while everyone is rightly horrified, a tragedy such as this would be just another Tuesday in America. 

Turns out, that’s not even cynical enough. 

There have been six Tuesdays so far in 2026 and 14 school shootings in the U.S. 

More than that, there were 52 Tuesdays in 2025 and 230 school shootings with 148 victims (fatal and wounded) in the U.S.

Unbelievably for anyone outside of America, that’s the (relative) good news. That 230 number is WAY down from the 336 firearms incidents at schools in 2024 with 276 victims. They hit a peak in 2023 with 352 shootings and 250 victims. There were 308 in 2022 (273 victims) and 257 in 2021 (189 victims).

In 2020, there were 74 school shootings with 116 victims. The irony being is that 2020 was the first year of the pandemic, an extremely mentally anguishing year, but with a lot fewer school days for kids. That year’s trauma echoed in the subsequent five years with two and three times as many shootings and victims.

These numbers come from data compiled by David Riedman (PhD), a professor in the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services at Idaho State University. After the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting in 2018, the deadliest in U.S. history with 17 dead and 17 injured, Riedman noticed that there was a serious lack of information about school shootings. He thought they should be tracked as closely as terrorist attacks or natural disasters. So, he created the K-12 School Shooting Database (k12ssdb.org), which specifically “documents when a gun is fired, brandished (with intent to harm), or a bullet hits school property.”

That’s the source of the above data regarding the number of shootings over the last few years.

The Tumbler Ridge massacre will never be forgotten in Canada, yet it would be but a tragic blip in the U.S., just another horrific day in a nation addicted to firearms. 

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Paul J. Henderson
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