Just a few weeks ago, a special panel of senators from the state of Georgia met to study possible legislation aimed at the safe storage of firearms and out of the hands of children.
A day later a 14 year old was charged in a fatal shooting at his high school in GeorgiaThat same panel met again Thursday to discuss safe gun storage policy. Lawmakers are still debating the issue because — like many other state legislatures across the U.S. — they have been unable to reach a consensus in recent years on whether new gun safety measures will solve the all-too-frequent mass shootings in schools and public places.
The Georgia school shooting was the 30th mass murder in the US so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in cooperation with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have been killed in the massacres.
Under federal law, no one under the age of 18 may legally purchase a rifle or other long gun from a licensed gun dealer. Yet authorities say Colt Gray used a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School near Winder, just outside Atlanta. Nine others were injured.
His father, Colin Gray, was charged on Thursday for second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in connection with his son’s actions and for “allowing him to have a weapon in his possession,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are grappling with what to do.
“As we sit here and mourn the families and the children, what do we do?” Senator David Lucas, a Democratic member of the study committee, asked rhetorically. “Do we talk? Or do we do something to make sure that legislation gets passed to give us some relief when it comes to guns?”
Republican Sen. Frank Ginn, a panelist whose district includes Apalachee High School, said he agreed that “we need to take action on this.” But Ginn said the focus should be on mental health.
“Guns are not the enemy,” Ginn said. “The enemy is the mentally ill.”
A recent report The RAND Gun Policy in America Initiative found supporting evidence that safe gun storage laws reduce gun injuries and deaths among youth.
A total of 26 states — including Democratic-led California and New York and Republican-led Florida and Texas — have laws requiring gun owners to lock up their weapons or penalizing them if a child gains access to an unsecured weapon, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a national advocacy group that works to combat gun violence. Georgia is not among them.
But Georgia lawmakers have considered several proposals for firearms storage.
In February, the Georgia Senate passed legislation that would encourage safe firearm storage by exempting gun safes and other firearm safety devices from state sales tax. A few weeks later, the House passed legislation to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for the purchase of gun safes, trigger locks, other firearm safety devices, or the cost of instructional courses on firearm safety.
But neither chamber agreed with the other’s approach.
Republican Rep. Mark Newton, a lead sponsor of the proposed income tax break, said Thursday he hopes senators will take a close look at the plan during the 2025 legislative session.
The Senate Arms Security Committee is considering proposals for next year.
This year’s rival bills “both had strong support and showed a desire to promote gun safety,” Republican Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, the sponsor of the Senate version, said Thursday. “I’m sure we’ll continue the conversation next session.”
Meanwhile, Democrats received little support for legislation that would make it a crime to fail to provide firearms to children.
However, in a test case being contested in court, the Democratic-led city of Savannah has… a regulation issued which imposes fines and possible prison sentences on people who leave their guns in an unlocked car.
State lawmakers and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have approved multiple rounds of school security grants in recent years, totaling $184 million.
The state budget that began on July 1 includes more than $100 million in continuing funding, enough to provide $47,000 a year to each public school to address security needs. Schools can use that for whatever security purpose they deem most pressing, though Kemp has previously said he wants to use it to fund a security officer for every school.
Kemp called the shooting “our worst nightmare.” But he declined to discuss what the state government could have done differently.
“Look, we’ve done a tremendous amount in terms of school safety,” Kemp told reporters outside Apalachee High School on Wednesday night.
Apalachee High School recently equipped teachers and staff with portable panic alarm buttons as part of its security efforts. A school resource officer triggered the alarm during Wednesday’s shooting, automatically calling authorities to the scene. School safety firm Centegix said its CrisisAlert system is in use at about 12,000 locations nationwide, primarily in K-12 schools.
After numerous high-profile shootingsSchool security has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the US, with a number of companies that lobby policy makers to enshrine their specific business solutions in state law.
Legislatures in some states, including Iowa, Nebraska and Tennessee, have passed laws this year expanding the ability for armed personnel in schools. It has been legal for Georgia school districts to allow employees to carry guns for years, but few of the state’s 180 districts are known to have adopted such policies.
Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, traveled to an elementary school in Winder last year to a plan to pay up to $10,000 a year for teachers who have a firearms training certificate and carry weapons in schools. But the proposal went nowhere in the Legislature.
The teen charged in the Georgia shooting had previously been questioned by a sheriff’s detective after an FBI tip that the boy, then 13, “may have made threats to shoot up a high school.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to a Jackson County sheriff’s report obtained by the AP. The boy denied making the threat, and a detective wrote that no arrests have been made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account.
In some states, concerns about the potential for harm with a gun can prompt authorities to temporarily remove firearms from a home. Twenty-one states have extreme risk protection laws, sometimes called red flag laws. Georgia is not one of them.
Opposition to such laws has grown in Republican-led legislatures. After a deadly shooting at a christian primary school In Nashville, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee pushed for a statewide measure that would allow a version of extreme risk protection orders. But the GOP-led The legislature refused to approve the proposal It.
An AP analysis found that many U.S. states are barely enforcing their red flag laws. This trend is attributed to a lack of awareness of the laws and the reluctance of some authorities to enforce them.
___
Associated Press editor Jeff Amy contributed from Atlanta.
