A leading school shootings researcher, Ron Avi Astor of UCLA, said he was wrong to expect that reducing bullying and improving school climate would lower the incidence of school shootings. Astor’s comments come after evidence he presented to the American Educational Research Association showed a divergence between declining weapon-related behaviors reported in a long-running California survey and a national increase in recorded school shooting incidents from 2001–2024. The article frames the shift as a difficult reassessment for policymakers and schools that invested in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling, and other climate-focused safety interventions after earlier research and guidance. For higher-education institutions supporting education policy research, teacher training, and campus-school partnerships, the finding raises urgent questions about what prevention strategies demonstrably reduce firearm incidents—and what needs to be redesigned to match real-world outcomes.