On January 14th, Cesar Cortes, a senior at Bellaire High School, was shot and killed inside the school’s JROTC supply room. Witnesses say the accused gunman, also a senior, had brought the gun to school and was showing it to Cesar when it fired accidentally.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the 2016-17 school year, there were more than three-thousand cases of kids bringing guns to schools. While exact data from 2018-2019 isn’t clear, a report from Fortune Magazine found nearly four-hundred school gun incidents reported in the media, including six in Harris County. Fortune spoke with experts who say schools aren’t properly reporting the incidents because there is no nationally enforced reporting system.
Recommended Videos
A 2015 report in the Journal of Urban Health found that 4.6 million children live in homes with a loaded, unlocked firearm.
"We need better social norms about the responsibilities that come along with gun ownership,” Cassandra Crifasi, the deputy director of the Center for Gun Policy & Research at Johns Hopkins, told Fortune Magazine. “Everyone is focused on the rights they have, but not the responsibility.”
Channel 2 Investigates crunched the numbers for school gun incidents in the Houston area, and Monday night at 6 p.m., we’ll talk to authorities about possible solutions, and we’ll hear from a victim of school gun violence about what needs to be done.