The shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School with deaths and injuries reveals how violence, including firearms and daily assaults, has also entered places dedicated to young people. And it is the mirror of global concerns
The news of the last few hours has brought the tragedy that occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, to the center of world attention, where an armed attack shocked a small community in the space of a few minutes. Local law enforcement officials report at least ten people killed, including the perpetrator of the attack, and over twenty injured in what is one of the most serious episodes of violence in a Canadian educational institution in recent decades.
The alarm went off during lessons: students and staff suddenly found themselves in the middle of a situation that no one — neither teachers nor families — could have ever imagined. This massacre follows a dramatic script which, while remaining more widespread in the United States, marks the crime news of various countries in every part of the world.
The broader data on the phenomenon of violence in schools, despite various definitions and collection limits, show a complex and disturbing picture. According to international databases, there are dozens of school shootings in the United States each year, with hundreds of incidents recorded in each of the past three years, if a broad definition is applied that includes any gunfire event on a school campus. Those with multiple victims, although rare compared to other types of youth violence, have enormous symbolic power, because they strike at the heart of the idea of a safe community.
In Europe, such extreme cases remain exceptional, but they are present: in the summer of 2025, for example, a shooting in an Austrian school in Graz caused several victims and dozens of injuries, reminding us that there are no “islands” immune to social and psychological crises that can explode into violence.
To come to us, in Italy the statistical reality of violence in schools takes on different but no less significant connotations. Extensive investigations show that the use of bladed weapons among students has increased in recent years, with a percentage of students reporting having carried knives or used physical violence; in the 2018-2025 cycle, to consider a recent time interval and without necessarily tracing everything back to the pandemic and therefore the post-covid period, there was an increase in the presence of knives in classrooms and in the vicinity of institutions, together with alarming signs of aggressive attitudes in the daily lives of students.
We have experienced this with the very recent crime news. In Italy, isolated stories of serious episodes are on the rise – including stabbings and attacks with improper weapons – which tell of environments in which tension and vulnerability degenerate to extreme consequences.
These situations, which manifest themselves both with extreme episodes and with more widespread and daily forms of violence, clearly indicate that school is no longer – if it ever was – a place totally protected from the climate of insecurity that permeates society.
Violence among young people cannot be tolerated and must always scandalize. Trying to reflect on the issue, first of all it must be said that it was not born in the classroom, but now finds its worst stage there, because it exposes social fractures, deficits in family relationships, psychological fragility and gaps in collective care, together with the inability to address these educational emergencies.
Faced with a tragedy like that of Tumbler Ridge and the disturbing signs emerging from other contexts, the questions we must ask ourselves collectively are simple and terrible: what society have we built? When did we start to raise the level of tolerance on transmitted, committed and committed violence? What social environment sees violence erupt among its most fragile members, in spaces that should be dedicated to learning and growth?
The answers cannot be simplistic nor confined to school walls. They require deep reflection on risk factors – from social isolation to family dynamics, from the possession of firearms – this is the North American case – to that of cutting weapons, which is increasingly widespread among the very young, from collective responsibility in prevention and psychological support to how we choose to protect the little ones beyond material barriers.
What to do, then?
First of all, overcome, all together and with great effort and effort, the culture of abuse, the customs clearance of violence – verbal, media, social – and the dynamics aimed at the annihilation of others, in every field. Violence, of all kinds, must be condemned, not exalted as an element of sincerity, or vitalism, or a necessary reaction to a stimulus that is inadmissible, absolving oneself from the consequences in response to it.
Furthermore, we need to rethink school safety certainly not as a sum of barriers and procedures, but as a cultural project that involves families, communities, institutions and young people themselves in building relationships of mutual care and responsibility. Investing in psychological support services inside and outside of school, promoting violence and addiction prevention programs, promoting real listening spaces for students in difficulty and open dialogue with families are concrete, yet difficult, steps on a path that can no longer be postponed.
It is a social journey that involves everyone, that costs a lot, that takes time, but there is no “low cost” alternative: the Canadian tragedy reminds us that pain knows no borders and that security – the real, intimate, social one – must be built day by day, with long-term choices and a collective commitment that is not limited to emergency sirens, but penetrates to the heart of our communities.
Otherwise, we risk transforming schools from places of education into theaters of fears and discomforts that do not belong to our children.
