The shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is part of a larger trend.

The deadly attack on Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is one of more than 200 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.

The images of the aftermath of the shooting at Robb Elementary, which teaches grades two through four, are sadly familiar: yellow police tape, somber local officials, distraught parents. Yet the anguish and horror expressed by politicians and the public in the wake of such incidents has not translated into safer schools.

Nineteen children and two adults died; that makes the incident the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

The Texas shooting was the 27th in a U.S. school this year, according to an analysis by Education Week, and the 212th mass shooting in the country during the same period, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Here Grid looks at the toll of gun violence on kids in the United States — and what’s driving it.

More kids are dying

Guns became the leading cause of death of U.S. kids and teens in 2020, overtaking car crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearm deaths of all types — homicide, suicide, unintentional and undetermined — increased by 29.5 percent in this age group from 2019 to 2020, the study found. That’s more than twice the relative increase across the general population.

The Uvalde shooting was the third gun attack at a Texas school this year, following a shooting last week that injured one student at a Houston high school and one in March that injured a high school student in Dallas. The last major school shooting in Texas took place in 2018, when eight students and two teachers died at Santa Fe High School near Houston; 13 people were injured. Still, the state has a relatively low rate of child gun deaths compared with neighbors like Louisiana and Arkansas.

Guns are more popular than ever

By all accounts, the United States is awash in guns. A 2018 analysis by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey found that the ratio of guns to people in the U.S. — 120.5 guns for every 100 people — far outpaced that in other gun-loving countries.

And the rate at which Americans have been buying firearms has risen sharply in recent years, according to data from the FBI’s firearm background check system.

Many states have also relaxed their gun laws. Last year, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law authorizing people in the state to carry guns without a permit — a policy also known as “permitless carry,” which advocates also call “constitutional carry.” Twenty-five states now have such laws, with the vast majority enacted in the last decade.

Who buys guns is changing

While Americans are buying guns at a faster rate, the demographics of gun owners are also changing.

Since 2019, women have comprised the fastest-growing group of new gun buyers, accounting for half of first-time firearm purchasers, according to the 2021 National Firearms Study. It also found growing racial diversity among gun owners. Twenty percent of new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021 were Hispanic, and another 20 percent were Black.

By contrast, people who bought guns during that period but were not new gun owners were predominantly white and male, as are gun owners overall.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this story. This story has been updated.