In The News: The pandemic waned, classrooms reopened and gun violence soared at the nation’s primary

More than a quarter of a million children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the massacre 22 years ago at Columbine High School near Denver. It has left teachers, parents, and students dreading what’s to come this fall when nearly all children are expected to go back to their classrooms. Read on for more.

Months had passed since the sixth-grader decided he wanted to die, and now the day that he hoped would be his last had come. The boy snuck into his father’s bedroom, reaching into a dresser drawer for the loaded magazine and 9mm handgun he’d been told never to touch. He hid them both inside his backpack, then left for school. “I hope my death makes more senses then my life,” the 12-year-old had already jotted in a spiral-bound notebook of his plan to commit suicide-by-cop. He would have shot himself if he hadn’t feared offending God, he later said in an interview he and his father gave to The Washington Post. Forcing a police officer to kill him didn’t seem as bad. “That way it wasn’t a sin,” he explained.

Read this full article in the Washington Post: ‘As school shootings surge, a sixth-grader tucks his dad’s gun in his backpack’