Story highlights Millions of people reside in school districts scarred by shootings

Hundreds of thousands of students currently attend schools in those districts

(CNN) One school shooting after another has struck communities across the country, and the toll goes beyond the dead and wounded.

Entire communities are damaged, from students who escaped to those attending schools in the area, to parents, friends, neighbors, clergy. As one Parkland, Florida, rabbi put it after the attack there a week ago, a shooting reverberates throughout the population -- no one is truly untouched by such a tragedy.

"The entire community is torn and broken. Every child that was killed has five or 10 best friends that watched it happen and that dodged a bullet," Rabbi Shuey Biston told NPR on Friday. "And we're grieving together. We're mourning together."

Students released from a lockdown embrace following following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018. (John McCall/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

The shooting a week ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland has galvanized students -- not just locally but also elsewhere -- to become more vocal in pushing lawmakers to take action that would limit the frequency of such shootings.

"I'm terrified to go back to school," Alex Wind, a student at Stoneman Douglas, told CNN's Anderson Cooper, explaining why he and his friends were speaking out. "I don't want to feel unsafe in my own school."

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