Just yesterday, I wondered where the first mass school shooting of the 2024-2025 school year would be. Now we know. In Georgia’s own Barrow County, where the Apalachee High School community was devastated by a shooting Wednesday morning that left two teachers and two students dead and at least nine more people injured.
The shooting suspect is a 14-year-old student who is in custody, according to authorities. The student’s name is Colt Gray. There is much we don’t know about the young shooter.
Here’s what we do know. The sympathetic murmurs from state’s leaders should be met with deafening demands from parents that we stop making it so easy for armed assailants to get guns and target schools.
The position of Georgia leaders has been that the solution to guns in schools is more guns in schools. Research makes clear that more armed guards in school buildings don’t lessen deaths and injuries.
It’s worth noting that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was at a Barrow County elementary school last year when he endorsed offering public schoolteachers a $10,000 annual stipend to take voluntary firearms courses and carry firearms in their classrooms.
The Violence Project examined 133 school shootings and attempted school shootings between 1980 and 2019. The presence of an armed guard did not reduce the severity of injuries, it found. In fact, the study concluded, “armed guards were not associated with significant reduction in rates of injuries.” A 2021 study found that deaths were 2.83 times greater in schools with an armed guard present.
School shooters often don’t expect to escape or fear return fire from police; they regard their actions as a suicide mission where they sacrifice innocent lives to make a point. School shootings remain an experience Americans relive repeatedly because of the 393 million guns in civilian hands.
From 1966 to 2019, 77% of mass shooters obtained weapons legally. Yet no one in leadership wants to talk about a proven deterrent: preventing guns from entering schools in the first place. In fact, Gov. Brian Kemp and state lawmakers pride themselves on making it easier to buy and carry firearms almost everywhere now in Georgia. The Gun Violence Archive has documented 385 mass shootings nationwide thus far in 2024.
Politicians contend, as did Tennessee Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett after the 2023 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School that killed three students and three adults, that gun violence is a tragic reality we must accept.
“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” he said. “We’re not going to fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals.”
But why we do allow criminals to easily buy and own AR-15s, deadly weapons created for warfare that are now murdering our children? We contend our guns make us safe.
But we are not safe. And neither are our children. Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“So far this year more than 300 children have been treated in a Georgia emergency department for a firearm injury — that is at least one child a day. We cannot continue to accept this as normal. Children should be able to feel safe in their classrooms and parents have a right to expect them to return home safely,” said Dr. Nicola Chin, president of the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Dr. Sofia Chaudhary, chair of the group’s Committee on Injury, Violence and Poisoning Prevention, in a statement.
Expect posturing from the governor about the importance of fortifying schools with more guns.
And, sadly, expect more school shootings.
About the Author
