(Georgia Recorder) — Georgia House Democrats urged Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the state Legislature following a shooting in Barrow County’s Apalachee High School Wednesday that left two students and two teachers dead.
“Convene a special session so we can pass laws to address the urgent public health epidemic of gun violence in our state,” said Rep. Saira Draper of Atlanta at a Capitol press conference Friday. “Every day that goes by that we do not pass modest gun safety reforms, the very reforms that could have prevented the tragedy in Winder, is a day you will tell the people of Georgia that you are beholden to the gun lobby and that the gun lobby is more important to you than our kids.”
State lawmakers meet every January for a regular session that lasts about three months to pass new state laws. The governor can also call for a special session during the off season to deal with urgent matters, but this is rare.
Colt Gray, a 14-year-old Apalachee student has been arrested in connection with the attack, which took the lives of 14-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and math teachers Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall. The suspect’s father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, has also been arrested in connection with the shooting. Gray is accused of giving his son the AR-15 rifle used in the attack just months after the family was interviewed by law enforcement regarding threatening social media posts targeting another school in Jackson County.
Nine others were hospitalized in the attack but are expected to make full recoveries, according to the Barrow County Sheriff’s office.
The meeting grew emotional when a couple of mothers in the crowd expressed frustration with the number of gun deaths among children.
Alpharetta mom, Stella Silva-Garcia, fought back tears as she said she was afraid to take her son Lucas to his middle school because of threats made on social media.
“I had to take my son the day after the shooting and drop him off and there were two patrol cars and a resource officer parked in the entrance of carpool,” she said. “I cried all day because I couldn’t believe that this was happening in our community.”
Silva-Garcia shared an image of a handgun with text over it listing several north Fulton schools and the words “your next. (sic)”
“How do we know it’s a hoax? How do we know that all those schools aren’t going to be targeted today?” she said. “I’ve looked online today. I have friends in Gainesville. I have friends in Buckhead. I have friends who have said online that their schools received this threat as well. How do you go to bed at night and reassure your child that it’s okay to go to school the next day? You are traumatizing a generation of children.”
The Alpharetta Department of Public Safety said they are aware of the social media posts and have increased their presence around Alpharetta schools.
House Minority Leader James Beverly named a list of bills he said would benefit gun safety and mental health, but he said Republicans in the legislature never let them come to a vote.
“How can we deliberate if our bills aren’t being heard in committee or subcommittee? These bills would address the health care crisis, the pandemic or gun violence, by providing schools with grants for wellness and health, and preventing individuals under 21 years old from acquiring them, but we can’t even begin to have these conversations.”
Some of the bills were clearly non-starters in a conservative-dominated legislature, such as an assault weapons ban, but Beverly said even bills with bipartisan agreement, like a $300 tax credit meant to encourage people to buy gun safety items like safes or trigger locks, could not reach final passage. That bill passed the House 162-3 but didn’t get a final vote in the Senate.
Gun safety advocates celebrated in 2023 when another storage bill received a committee hearing, though not a vote. That bill would have made it a crime to allow a gun to get into the hands of an unsupervised child if the child uses it to injure or kill someone, with some exceptions.
The bill’s author, Johns Creek Democratic Rep. Michelle Au, said the bill may have prevented the attack if law enforcement had been able to ensure any guns in the home were stored safely during the initial contact in response to the teen’s alleged threats.
“That’s what having passed HB 161 could have enabled us to do,” she said. “That was a missed opportunity. I know that lots of people point to the fact that the father has now been arrested, as an abdication of our responsibility to be like, ‘oh we already have the law, it’s already illegal to furnish a firearm to a minor. However, when it comes to public health issues, we have to focus on prevention, not just punishment after the fact, not just intervention in the school with an armed guard, but how do we prevent these incidents from happening in the first place? The way we do that is to prevent access from the minor to a firearm.”
Au, who is also a physician, said gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death for children and teens in the U.S., and data shows safe storage laws lead to fewer kids being injured or killed by guns.
“So here’s what I ask of our Republican majority, while they still hold that majority: next session, we are going to bring back the Pediatric Health Safe Storage Act,” she said. “I would like this bill to be assigned to the Public Health Committee, where it belongs. I would like this bill to be heard, and I would like for it to come to a vote, just like every other bill. We had the opportunity to do that this last term, and we did it. We had a chance to act, and we chose to do nothing.”
“I think about this all the time, every time I hear another story about a child accessing and being injured by, or killed by, an unsecured gun, and I wonder if some of my colleagues who were ‘monitoring the situation closely’ this Wednesday have had those same thoughts,” she added, referencing social media posts from several elected Republicans.
A special session is not likely, and Kemp’s office declined to comment on specific policies.
“As the governor has said before, now is the time for investigation and to mourn those we’ve lost, not politics, and the governor is ensuring that law enforcement and the Wildcat community continue to have the resources they need for as long as they need it,” said Kemp spokesperson Garrison Douglas in an email.
Republican lawmakers say they have pushed measures in recent years aimed at hardening schools’ defenses, including dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars in the state budget to school safety, passing into law a bill requiring intruder alert drills and establishing and promoting training in school safety and gang deterrence.
