The deadly shooting at Apalachee High School has amplified the conversation in Georgia about school safety and gun policy.

They’ve written about how scary it is to be in schools these days and how “thoughts and prayers” alone are not enough. Here’s what they have to say in guest opinion columns in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

From the community

- They said, ‘It could have been worse.’ Not for parents burying their sons by Melissa Marten, a Cobb County parent

- ‘Mom, we are under a hard lockdown’ by Debra Shigley, a lawyer, mother and candidate for Georgia House District 47

- Our voices can no longer be whispers of grief, but shouts for action on guns by Otha Thornton, a Georgia native and past National PTA president

- ‘I am 17 and I no longer feel safe at school’ by Dunwoody High School student Daniel Herrera

- In our political cowardness on guns, teachers left to take bullets for kids by T. Jameson Brewer and Westry Whitaker, associate professors at the University of North Georgia

- We cannot give up when we know these deaths are preventable by Sofia Chaudhary and Anna L. Rodenbough, both pediatric care physicians

- Kevlar in our children’s backpacks isn’t the answer to school shootings by Sharron M. Close, a clinical professor at Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

- Let’s talk about mental illness. Not guns. Never guns by Corey Ryan Forrester

- School shootings demand collective action by all of us by East Forsyth High School teacher Allison Webb

About the Author

Featured

Laurence Walker, a volunteer with the Cajun Navy Relief, left, takes two volunteers out on his boat on Lake Oconee to search for Gary Jones, Tuesday, February, 18, 2024, in Eatonton, Ga. The Putnam County sheriff is investigating and searching after Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Nicole Wilson and an Atlanta private school coach Gary Jones went missing on Lake Oconee over a week ago, Saturday Feb. 8th. The body of Wilson was found Sunday, Feb. 9th and Jones has not been found. (Jason Getz / AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com