51 Percent of School Violence Took Place in These 10 States Last Year

Fifty-one percent of school violence took place in just 10 states last year, according to a report released Monday.

The Educator's School Safety Network found that there were at least 3,380 threats and episodes of school violence occurring across the nation during the 2017-2018 school year, however at least half of these incidents were limited to 10 states.

The study flagged these as the top 10 "states of concern" after it was discovered that this was where 1,851 of the 3,654 threats and episodes occurred last year, USA Today said.

1. California
2. Florida
3. New York
4. Michigan
5. Pennsylvania
6. Ohio
7. Texas
8. Illinois
9. North Carolina
10. Virginia

There are a few factors that link these states of concerns, which are spread across the country and have varying gun-control policies and appear to share no commonalities on the outside.

For starters, Amy Klinger, study co-author and director of programs at education-based non-profit, ESSN, which focuses on violence prevention in schools, noted that it could be problematic to co-ordinate responses to violence in states where there are hundreds of school districts.

Ohio has 613 school districts that saw 170 threats and 14 incidents of violence in the past school year.

In wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many schools in the Northeast Ohio school districts saw an uptick in threats of pending gun violence.

According to Akron Beacon Journal, several of these were found to be credible.

"It's very difficult to make sweeping changes when you have 613 different government bodies making decisions," Klinger said, according to USA Today.

Furthermore, outside influences such as the accessibility of guns within a community, could also determine which states see more threats and violence, explained Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and a gun-control policy expert.

"There's a whole bunch of different factors that you can expect to lead to hotspots and gun violence on campus," Winkler said.

While the population of some of these states such as California, Texas, Florida and New York, may contribute to these numbers, the sheer volume of violence-related threats and incidents was still a cause for concern, the study noted.

Authors pointed out that there were no short-term solutions to address the problem, and that the issue could only be resolved through "sustained professional development and training for all school stakeholders that comes from an education, not law enforcement perspective."

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