School shooting in Georgia sparks debate over laws on safe storage of weapons

Just a few weeks ago, a special panel of Georgia state senators met to review possible legislation to help keep firearms safely locked away and away from children.

A day after a 14-year-old was charged in a fatal shooting at his Georgia high school, the same body met again Thursday to discuss safe gun storage policies. Lawmakers are still talking about the issue because, like many state legislatures across the U.S., they have been unable to agree in recent years on whether new gun safety measures are a solution to the all-too-frequent mass shootings at schools and public places.

The Georgia school shooting was the 30th mass killing in the United States this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University. At least 127 people died in the killings.

Under federal law, no one under 18 can legally buy a rifle or other long gun from a licensed gun dealer. But 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 other people were injured.

His father, Colin Gray, was charged Thursday with second-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with his son’s actions, as well as “permission to possess a weapon,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are wrestling with the question of what to do.

“While we sit here and mourn the loss of families and children, what do we do about it?” asked State Senator David Lucas, a Democratic member of the investigative committee, rhetorically. “Do we talk? Or do we take action to make sure that legislation is passed that gives us some relief on guns?”

Republican Sen. Frank Ginn, a member of the panel whose district includes Apalachee High School, agreed that “we need to do something.” But the focus needs to be on mental health, Ginn said.

“Guns are not the enemy,” Ginn said. “The enemy is the mentally ill.”

Storage of firearms

A recent report from the RAND Gun Policy in America Initiative provides evidence that safe gun storage laws reduce the number of gunshot injuries and deaths among young people.

A total of 26 states — including Democratic-led California and New York and Republican-led Florida and Texas — have passed laws requiring gun owners to lock away their weapons or penalizing them if a child gains access to an unsecured gun, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a national advocacy group that campaigns against gun violence. Georgia is not one of them.

But lawmakers in the state of Georgia have considered various proposals for storing firearms.

In February, the Georgia Senate passed a bill to encourage safe firearm storage by exempting gun safes and other firearm security devices from state sales tax. A few weeks later, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would provide a state income tax credit of up to $300 for the purchase of gun safes, trigger locks, other firearm security devices or the cost of training on safe firearm handling.

But neither chamber approved the other’s approach.

Republican Rep. Mark Newton, one of the main sponsors of the proposed earned income tax credit, said Thursday he hoped senators would take a close look at the plan during the 2025 legislative session.

The Senate Committee on Safe Storage of Firearms is considering proposals for next year.

This year’s competing bills “both had strong support and demonstrated a desire to incentivize gun safety,” Republican Senator Kay Kirkpatrick, who introduced the Senate version, said Thursday. “I’m sure we’ll continue the conversation next session.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have had little traction on a bill that would have criminalized negligent failure to secure firearms to which children have access.

However, in a precedent-setting case currently being challenged in court, the Democratic-governed city of Savannah passed an ordinance that imposes fines and possible jail time for people who leave guns in unlocked cars.

Safety at school

State lawmakers and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp have approved several rounds of school safety grants totaling $184 million in recent years.

The state budget, which took effect July 1, includes over $100 million in ongoing funding, enough to provide each public school with $47,000 annually for security. Schools can use the money for whatever security purpose they deem most urgent, although Kemp has previously said he wants to use it to fund a security officer for each school.

Kemp called the shooting “our worst nightmare,” but declined to comment on what the state government could have done differently.

“Look, we have done a tremendous amount to ensure safety at schools,” Kemp told reporters outside Apalachee High School on Wednesday evening.

Apalachee High School had recently equipped teachers and staff with portable panic alarm buttons as part of its security measures. A school employee used the alarm during Wednesday’s shooting and automatically called police to the scene. School security company Centegix said its CrisisAlert system is used in about 12,000 locations nationwide, mostly elementary and secondary schools.

After numerous high-profile school shootings, school safety has become a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States, and some companies are lobbying politicians to get their special corporate solutions included in state laws.

In some states, including Iowa, Nebraska and Tennessee, legislatures passed laws this year expanding the ability for armed staff in schools. Georgia school districts have been legal for years to allow employees to carry guns, but very few of the state’s 180 districts have passed such laws.

Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor Burt Jones visited a Winder elementary school last year to introduce a plan to pay teachers who have a gun license and carry weapons in school up to $10,000 annually, but the proposal failed to pass the legislature.

Red Flag Laws

The teen charged in the Georgia shooting had previously been questioned by a sheriff’s investigator after the FBI received a tip that the boy, then 13, “may have threatened to raid a middle 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 an investigator wrote that no arrest was made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account.

In some states, concerns that someone with a firearm might cause harm can be grounds for 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 is growing in Republican-led legislatures. After a deadly shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, pushed for a statewide measure that would allow for some form of extreme risk protection orders. But the Republican-led legislature refused to pass it.

According to an AP analysis, many U.S. states rarely enforce their red flag laws, a trend attributed to a lack of knowledge of the laws and resistance from some authorities to enforcing them.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Amy contributed from Atlanta.