It’s the sixth anniversary of the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and as it stands the country’s gun violence epidemic only seems to be worsening. The number of school shootings has been steadily increasing since then, with 2018 seeing more than twice the number of incidents ever seen before in a year.
In light of this, Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit focused on gun violence prevention started by family members of the victims of the tragic event in Newtown, Connecticut released a PSA about how people often miss the signs of a potential school shooter. In fact, according to SHP, 80 percent of school shooters told someone about their plans beforehand.
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“Point of View,” directed by Rupert Sanders was made pro bono for the SHP, is an unsettling PSA that points out the patterns and warning signs usually presented in a person who plans on committing an act of gun violence. It’s shot from the point of view of a student in a school who is being bullied, and in the end decides to seek revenge on his fellow classmates. SHP, however, uses this as an opportunity to train audiences how to identify these signals in order to prevent future potential tragedies. So far, SHP has taught more than 5.5 million people from over 10,000 schools in the U.S.
So far in 2018, there have been 325 mass shootings in the US — 60 of which happened at a school. This is the highest number of K-12 school shootings since record keeping began in 1970, according to research published by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security in partnership with and sponsored by FEMA.
“More than 3,200 kids and teens have been killed or injured by guns and there have been over 300 mass shootings in just this one year,” said Nicole Hockley, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sandy Hook Promise and mother of Dylan, who was murdered at Sandy Hook, in a press release. “This is beyond unacceptable. It is inexcusable. Everyone has the power to stop violence before it starts, and we want to arm as many people as possible with the knowledge of how to keep their schools and communities safe.”
Watch the PSA: