Panic on the Playground: The Distribution of Guns and Deadly Weapons in Indiana Schools

Gun-related incidents in schools have captivated public attention and heavily influenced the organizational policies of K–12 education in the United States in recent decades. Using restricted administrative records of approximately 3 million students who ever attended public schools in the state of Indiana between 2006 and 2025, the authors analyze the prevalence and context of gun and deadly weapon events in schools. Although gun-related events are often assumed to be concentrated largely in urban and impoverished high schools, this visualization demonstrates that gun events occur across all school levels, as 25 percent of elementary schools, 41 percent of middle schools, and 52 percent of high schools report gun events over this period. This visualization also examines these trends by school poverty, highlighting that schools serving higher percentages of students in poverty report gun and deadly weapon events at higher rates. However, schools serving lower percentages of students in poverty are far from immune from weapon events.