On September 4th, 2024, 14-year-old Colt Gray entered Apalachee High School in Georgia armed with a weapon, with intention to kill. Two students and two teachers lost their lives, and nine other people were hospitalized.

This is not an isolated incident. According to CNN, the Apalachee High School shooting was the 45th gun-related incident at a school in 2024, and the number is only increasing. In fact, the total number of school shootings in 2024 is currently estimated to be about 76, with a disproportionate amount of them occurring in the South.

With the ever-increasing frequency of gun violence in schools, it begs the question of the mental and emotional effects that constant shooting coverage has on students. According to a recent Knight Errant survey with 121 responses, over 55% of students feel more afraid to go to school after hearing about a school shooting. “I just wonder if it’s gonna happen to me. Because, especially with the recent one where it was from a student, that’s just scary to think about,” junior Kate Meyer said.

However, for students who have actually experienced a gun-related incident at their school, the coverage hits close to home. When another student entered her middle school with a gun and fired at the ceiling multiple times, senior Elizabeth Gallager remembers the panic she experienced, and the dread she felt over having to go to school afterward. “I was like, ‘this is a real possibility–this could actually happen to me.’ I didn’t want to go to school. I don’t think a lot of kids that were there when it happened wanted to go. I remember crying once because I really didn’t want to go,” Gallager said.

For students like Gallager, who have experienced gun-related incidents, the healing experience can be rather difficult. It’s hard to know how to cope with such a scary event; even if no one was hurt, fear and paranoia can follow for a long time. “One of my biggest struggles was that I sort of became aware of my own mortality, and I became a little paranoid,” Gallager said.

Even for students who don’t have any personal experience with gun-related incidents, the constant influx of information can still have a deteriorating effect on students’ mental health. According to school psychologist Ty Cody, humans are empathetic creatures: when they see harm being brought to someone so young, it inflicts a heavy sense of dread. Additionally, when teenagers see other people their age being hurt by their peers, it can also induce a sense of anxiety. “[W]e’re exposing ourselves to that trauma because we care about humans on a global level,” Cody said.

It’s because of that care for humans, Cody explains, that many students experience feelings of depression, anger, and anxiety during the periods after school shooting, even if it’s nowhere near their area. “We just start to [wonder] ‘Okay. Is my school safe? Am I safe?'” Cody said.

While students and faculty consider Benilde-St. Margaret’s safer than the average public high school–due to the fact that private schools are often not the target of gun violence–feelings of insecurity may still be felt by the BSM community. However, Cody explains that school shootings are always preventable, as putting in the effort to care for student’s well-being can be a large factor in preventing the urge to commit violence, and BSM has a lot of helpful resources for students who may be feeling lost, depressed, angry, or lonely. “BSM is a good example of investing in our…team. I don’t want to just focus on counseling, because we have a lot of amazing staff. When it comes to prevention, [people] always talk about how everyone in the school building, anyone that works at BSM…is a part of [violence] prevention,” Cody said.

In addition to resources dedicated to supporting student’s mental health, BSM has resources devoted to making students feel safer in the wake of prevalent gun violence. Lockdown drills are the first thing that comes to mind, and students believe that they provide some sense of security when it’s hard to feel secure. In Gallager’s case, when the drill was actually put into use, she felt that it prevented what was already a dangerous situation from deriving into complete panic and confusion. “Since everyone knew what to do, it wasn’t chaos where nobody knew what was happening,” Gallager said.

On an institutional level, however, it can be difficult to address those feelings, especially when many people feel powerless due to the lack of legislation in place to prevent gun violence. For many students, hearing about school shootings can make them feel helpless; like the power for safety or change has been stripped away from them, and in many ways it has. Although it’s a divisive topic, many people believe that the lack of legislative change on gun control partially removes their power to prevent school shootings in the future. According to the Pew Research Center, about 61% of American adults believe that it’s too easy to legally obtain a gun in America, and 58% favor stricter gun laws.

Legislative action isn’t the only way that students may feel helpless, however. Just knowing that people around the country are hurting, and there’s nothing that can be done to help them can be a debilitating thought. But just because it’s easy to feel helpless doesn’t mean that has to be the case. Reaching out to local communities, outside of school, and addressing these issues internally can provide helpful coping mechanisms. “Taking action and becoming involved, [and] volunteering [are helpful coping mechanisms]. It doesn’t necessarily have to be becoming a part of school violence prevention in the country, it can be volunteering to help out in activities in your local community. In other ways it’s just a way to say, ‘I can take action. I can help improve things’,” Cody said.

This is not to say that coping with violence is a linear process. For some, it can seem impossible to remove that sense of helplessness. “I don’t know how to regain the control that was never given to me. If it were to happen [to me] I would be completely helpless and there is nothing that I can do to change that,” Meyer said.

In a world where a 14-year-old boy can end the lives of four people in less than an hour, it’s almost impossible not to get caught up in the fear and wonderings that come with such a devastating event. Cody recommends limiting the amount of news one intakes, so as to stay informed, but not force oneself to be exposed to trauma that will inevitably lead to more stress. “It can be a lot of news flooding in, and we have to realize how much that does impact both adults and teenagers. It does impact our stress and anxiety and fear. We want to stay informed, we want to follow current events, but then we need to limit the amount of news flooding into your daily life,” Cody said.