Teachers, coaches and students don’t have to die.
Our children don’t have to cower in closets.
Scared students don’t have to text loving messages to their parents, hoping those aren’t their last words.
School boards don’t have to contract with tech companies for instant-alert messaging to warn about school shooters.
Sixteen months ago, after a gunman shot five people, killing one, at Northside Hospital Midtown medical office building in Midtown Atlanta on May 3, 2023, we said we don’t have to live this way, but we do.
What has changed since then?
Only this: More people have died from senseless gun violence. Everytown for Gun Safety reports that, “in an average year, 1,927 people die by guns” in Georgia. The Gun Violence Archive lists 16 mass shooting events in Georgia this year in which 18 people were killed.
On Wednesday, four people — two 14-year-old students and two teachers — were killed and nine others were wounded in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms.”
Yes, the same governor who signed a bill allowing concealed carry throughout the state without background checks or a license is praying for our children to be safe at school.
But prayers are not enough. Not when you’re governor.
We know the governor is a reasonable person. He risked his party’s ire by pushing back against claims of election interference. We beg him to be reasonable here, too, and to risk support from the gun lobby by pushing aggressively for gun reform.
We don’t expect that from U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican whose district includes Winder. He voted just one month after the Midtown shooting to prevent a ban on bump stocks. He regularly includes weapons in his campaign ads. In a 2021 ad (mysteriously missing now from his website), he claims he’s going to “stop the Pelosi agenda” while using a semi-automatic rifle to shoot a box of papers.
But don’t worry. He and his wife are “praying for the victims, their families, and all students at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.”
In the Gold Dome, where weapons are prohibited, our legislators enacted no meaningful gun reform this year. Instead, they protected the rights of firearms dealers from being identified as firearms dealers by credit card processors, a move for which Lt. Gov. Burt Jones declared he was “thankful.”
Left withering on the vine were bills that would have:
· Allowed colleges and universities to decide whether to allow concealed carry of weapons on their campuses.
· Prohibited the possession, manufacture, use or sale of semi-automatic assault rifles, large capacity magazines, large capacity magazine feeding devices in the state.
· Established a voluntary do not sell list for firearms.
· Created a red-flag law that would prohibit people convicted of family violence offenses from owning or possessing firearms.
· Created a study committee on the prevention of mass shooter events.
To their credit, some Republicans have indicated that they would consider improving gun safety laws in Georgia.
“You can always make improvements,” state Sen. Frank Ginn, a Republican who represents part Barrow County, told the AJC’s Greg Bluestein after the shooting. “The delicate dance we have to do is make sure we’re not infringing on Second Amendment rights. But there are things we can do to encourage commonsense gun ownership.”
When will the governor and our legislators put the lives of Georgians ahead of their loyalty to the gun lobby? The majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners, support commonsense gun reforms that would keep Americans safe from this senseless violence. They know we don’t have to live this way.
Among the most popular of those reforms is preventing people with known mental illness from possessing firearms. Though we don’t know the motivation for Wednesday’s shooting, we do know that the suspect and his father were investigated last year after someone reported a shooting threat made on an online gaming site. The school was notified before the investigation was closed.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-reform advocacy group, “In all incidents of targeted school violence — 100 percent — there were warning signs that caused others to be concerned.”
A majority of Americans also support red flag laws, which would allow family members or law enforcement to petition to remove firearms from people who are believed to be a threat to themselves or others or people who have been convicted of domestic violence. (Red flag laws are especially useful in preventing suicide deaths from firearms.)
Red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protective orders, in conjunction with universal background checks (also supported by a majority of Americans) are strongly associated with reducing firearm homicides, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank.
Secure storage can prevent firearms from ending up in the hands of curious children — or people with violent agendas. The majority of Americans support secure storage laws. (You might be noticing a pattern here. Despite what you might hear from gun extremists, Americans really do support commonsense gun reforms. Most Americans support the Second Amendment and believe that there can be constitutional restrictions on the right to own firearms.)
Georgia’s gun laws are among the laxest in the nation. They don’t have to be. We believe that Gov. Kemp and our other elected officials value the lives of Georgians. We hope they value those lives enough to champion strong, effective reforms. The governor can immediately call for a committee to study and recommend gun reforms for the legislature to consider — and pass — when it convenes on Jan. 13.
We’ve said it before, and we will say it again:
We don’t have to live this way.
— The AJC Editorial Board
An earlier version of this editorial referred incorrectly to a bill that passed in the 2024 Georgia legislative session. This version has been updated.
