*

Police chief says shooter also found dead, was student at

school

*

Six wounded and taken to hospitals, two with

life-threatening

injuries

*

US data show 322 school shootings this year

(Adds details from latest press conference throughout)

By Brad Brooks and Joseph Ax

Dec 16 (Reuters) - A teenage shooter opened fire at a

Wisconsin school on Monday, killing a fellow student and a

teacher and wounding six other people before police found the

suspect dead at the scene.

The latest school shooting to devastate a U.S. community

took place at the Abundant Life Christian School, a private

institution that teaches some 400 students from kindergarten

through 12th grade in Madison, the state capital of about

270,000 people.

Two students who were wounded in the shooting had

life-threatening injuries, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told

a press conference. A teacher and three other students were shot

and expected to survive. Two of those victims were released from

the hospital, Barnes said.

The shooter, a student at the school who used a handgun, was

found dead inside the school by officers who immediately entered

campus upon arrival, police said. Officials declined to identify

the shooter by name, age or gender, nor did they identify the

victims.

CNN and the Associated Press, citing unnamed police sources,

reported the shooter was a 17-year-old girl who turned the gun

on herself after the rampage. Reuters could not verify the

reports.

If confirmed, it would be a rarity, as only about 3% of mass

shootings are carried out by females, studies show.

There was as yet no known motive for the violence, which

authorities said took place in one space inside the school. The

shooter's family was cooperating with the investigation, police

said.

"Today is a sad, sad day, not only for Madison, but for our

entire country, where yet another police chief is doing a press

conference to speak about violence in our community," Barnes, a

former school teacher, told reporters at an earlier press

conference.

"Every child, every person in that building, is a victim,

and will be a victim forever. These types of trauma don't just

go away," Barnes said.

There have been 322 school shootings this year in the U.S.,

according to the K-12 School Shooting Database website. That is

the second highest total of any year since 1966, according to

that database - topped only by last year's total of 349 such

shootings.

"We need to do better in our country and our community to

prevent gun violence," Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.

'LOCKDOWN, LOCKDOWN'

The shooter arrived at school on time and pulled out the

handgun about three hours into the school day, officials said.

Once the shooting began, students were locked in their

classrooms and "handled themselves magnificently," said Barbara

Wiers, Abundant Life's director of elementary and school

relations.

Students practice what to do in the event of a shooting,

and are normally told, "this is just a drill," Wiers told the

press conference.

"They were clearly scared ... when they heard 'lockdown,

lockdown' and nothing else they knew it was real," Wiers said.

Later students were taken off campus to a site where all the

survivors were reunited with their parents, officials said.

Gun control and school safety have become major political

and social issues in the U.S. where the number of school

shootings has jumped in recent years.

The gun violence epidemic has afflicted public and private

schools alike in urban, suburban and rural communities.

President Joe Biden called on Congress to enact gun-control

legislation to prevent further massacres. Similar calls have

gone unheeded after almost every school shooting in recent

memory.

"It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our

children from this scourge of gun violence. We cannot continue

to accept it as normal," Biden said in a statement.

In 2022 Biden signed into law the first major federal gun

reform in three decades, about a month after an 18-year-old man

opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing

19 students and two teachers.

The Wisconsin shooting took place 12 years and two days

after one of the most notorious school shootings in U.S.

history: the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in

Newtown, Connecticut. A 20-year-old man armed with a

semiautomatic rifle killed 20 school children plus six adults

who worked at the school.

Polling shows American voters favor stronger background

checks on gun buyers, temporary limits on people in crisis and

more safety requirements for gun storage at homes with children.

Yet political leaders have largely declined to act, citing the

U.S. constitutional protection for gun owners.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado, Joseph Ax in Princeton,

New Jersey, Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, Andrew Hay in

Taos, New Mexico, and Kanishka Singh and Nandita Bose in

Washington; Writing by Brad Brooks and Daniel Trotta; Editing by

Frank McGurty, Paul Thomasch, David Gregorio and Lincoln Feast.)