AN American high school student has died after being shot by a fellow student.

The teenager was gunned down at Butler High School in Mathews, a small town about 35 kilometres southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina, local media reports.

The student was taken to hospital in critical condition but died later from their injuries.

The suspected shooter is in custody, and no one else was harmed during the incident.

Despite the traumatising morning, classes resumed as soon as a lockdown had been lifted. Parents were allowed to collect their children if they wished, and there were emotional scenes outside the school as shaken mums and dads got to hug their kids after the terrifying ordeal.

The shooting occurred two days after a gun massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue claimed the lives of 11 people.

Gunman Robert Bowers burst into the temple screaming “all Jews must die” before shooting at worshippers.

As debate over gun reform rages on in the US, New York Magazine has been praised for its latest front cover — a portrait of 15-year-old Parkland school massacre survivor Anthony Borges bearing his horrific scars and the colostomy bag he now lives with after being shot five times.

Borges used himself as a human shield by barricading a door to protect his classmates in the third deadliest school shooting in US history.

Since the shocking Parkland massacre in February, New York Magazine points out, at least 75 other shootings in schools barely made the news, and if they did, they slipped right out of it.

“It’s stunning to think that these shootings — these attacks on children — aren’t being talked about constantly,” the feature reads, along with the harrowing anecdotes from 27 school-shooting survivors over the last 72 years.