JOHN YANG: This week, the surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis.

He cited the estimated 50,000 Americans who die every year in gun related incidents.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 8,200 gun deaths so far this year, nearly 700 of them children and teens.

With school shootings on the rise over the past few decades, children and parents are increasingly worried about the safety inside the classroom.

But as William Brangham tells us, a new analysis finds that more and more incidents of gun violence are happening just beyond school walls.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: From 2014 to 2023, communities across the country saw more than 188,000 shootings within 500 yards of a school, that is an average of 57 shootings per day.

This comes from a new analysis done by the Trace, which is a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence, analyzing data from almost 150,000 public and private schools.

The Trace found that just last year, 6 million kids had a shooting occur near their school.

Olga Pierce is one of the journalists who did this analysis.

Olga, thank you so much for being here and sharing this really tremendous piece of reporting with us.

When we think about school shootings.

I think most people think of the massacres that happened Newtown, Uvalde, Columbine, et cetera.

But you guys chose to broaden the lens and look at shootings outsides of schools.

Why that focus?

OLGA PIERCE, The Trace: Obviously, school shootings inside the school building are traumatic and dramatic events, and they deserve our attention.

But those are very rare compared to the frequency of shootings we found around schools.

And something we had heard anecdotally from teachers and our reporting was, you know, I wish that we could take some of this attention and these resources were taking to prepare for shootings in the school and devote them to protecting kids outside the school building.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mentioned some of your findings that how millions of kids go to schools where a shooting happened nearby in just one year.

I mean, two of my own kids fall into that same exact category.

What else did you find in your reporting?

OLGA PIERCE: We were interested in the geographic distribution of schools.

And the first thing we found is that the schools that experienced this the most are in the places you would expect.

So places like Chicago and Philadelphia that have well documented gun violence problems, a thing that really surprised us was how frequent these shootings are outside the places you would expect.

So we found about 40,000 shootings that were adjacent to suburban schools.

We found 9,000 shootings near schools that were in small towns and thousands of shootings, even in rural areas.

So really, there's kind of nowhere you can go to avoid this phenomenon.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Separate from this really horrifying data that you guys are digging up.

What were some of the personal stories that you heard from these communities.

OLGA PIERCE: One of the saddest stories we heard was from a middle schooler in Philadelphia, who said that she's afraid to sit next to the window and her classroom because she has so frequently heard gunshots outside the building and heard screaming and imagine trying to learn if that's your reality, if you're just a middle schooler.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I mean, tell us a little bit more about that.

What does the research indicate about even though you're not directly involved in the shooting, you're not the perpetrator or the victim or even necessarily know the victims.

What does this pervasive violence in the community do to kids?

OLGA PIERCE: We know first of all, that it harms learning outcomes.

So kids who are exposed to violence, even things like memorials on the street that we see, tend to have lower test scores, for example.

So it's just hard to focus and hard for a brain to develop normally, when there's exposure to this.

On top of that, you know, people told us that what often gets interpreted as behavioral issues is actually just a really normal response to seeing violence all around you all the time.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you are reporting this and talking with parents did -- were parents aware of this?

I mean, was this something that they were cognizant that was going on in their communities that they feel that their children were safe at school?

OLGA PIERCE: So in some communities, there have been really high profile incidents, like students getting shots, leaving the school building, for example, and I think those parents are in general aware.

But one thing we did find in our reporting is that schools often are not great about communicating to parents when there is an incident.

So I would recommend any parents who doesn't know to maybe initiate a conversation, and actually in our story, if you go to our website, there's a tool where you can look up any school, which could help with that conversation.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And what kind of response did you hear from local officials in school officials are given these are things happening outside of the school walls, but our school officials are aware of this and trying to take measures to help protect kids.

OLGA PIERCE: Yeah, so we went to a school in Philadelphia, that was one of the most effective schools and they had done things like put bulletproof blankets and the windows, no adult was allowed in the school, not even parents kids have to be brought outside.

So obviously, there things the school can do, but the real long term solution is to reduce the frequency of gun violence everywhere.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is Olga Pierce, reporter for The Trace, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.

OLGA PIERCE: Thanks so much.