Georgia school shooting stirs debate about safe storage laws for guns

Just a couple of weeks ago, a special panel of Georgia state senators convened to study potential laws aimed at keeping firearms safely locked up and out of the hands of children.

A day after a 14-year-old was charged in a deadly shooting at his Georgia high school, that same panel gathered again Thursday to discuss safe gun storage policies. The 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 provide a solution to the all-too-frequent occurrence of mass shootings at schools and public places.

The Georgia school shooting marked the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings.

Under federal law, no one younger than 18 can legally purchase a rifle or other long gun from a licensed firearm dealer. Yet authorities say Colt Gray used a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School near Winder, just outside of Atlanta. Nine others were injured.

His father, Colin Gray, was charged Thursday with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in connection with his son's actions and for "allowing him to possess a weapon,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are wrestling with what to do.

“While we sit here and mourn the families and the kids, what are we doing about it?" state Sen. David Lucas, a Democratic member of the study committee, rhetorically asked. "Are we talking? Or are we doing something to try to make sure that legislation is passed in order to give us some kind of relief when it comes to guns?”

Republican state Sen. Frank Ginn, a panel member whose district includes Apalachee High School, said he agreed that "we need to take some action on things.” But Ginn said the focus should on be on mental health.

“Firearms are not the enemy," Ginn said. "The enemy is the mentally deranged.”

Firearm storage

A recent report by the RAND Gun Policy in America Initiative found supportive evidence that safe gun-storage laws reduce firearm 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 firearms or penalizing them if a child gains access to an unsecured gun, according Everytown for Gun Safety, a national advocacy group that works to fight gun violence. Georgia is not among them.

But Georgia lawmakers have considered a variety of firearms storage proposals.

In February, Georgia's Senate passed legislation that sought to promote safe firearm storage by exempting gun safes and other firearm safety devices from state sales tax. A couple 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 firearms security devices or the costs of instructional courses on safe firearms handling.

But neither chamber signed off on the other's approach.

Republican state Rep. Mark Newton, a lead sponsor of the proposed income tax credit, said Thursday that he hopes senators will take a close look at the plan during the 2025 legislative session.

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

This year’s rival bills both “had strong support and demonstrated the desire to incentivize gun safety,” Republican state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, the sponsor of the Senate version, said Thursday. “I am certain that we will be continuing the conversation next session.”

Meanwhile, Democrats gained little traction on legislation that would have created a misdemeanor crime for negligently failing to secure firearms accessed by children.

However, in a test case that’s being challenged in court, the Democratic-led city of Savannah enacted an ordinance that imposes fines and possibly jail time for people who leave guns inside unlocked cars.

School safety

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 July 1 includes more than $100 million in ongoing funding, enough to provide $47,000 a year to each public school to address safety needs. Schools can use that for whatever security purpose they believe is most pressing, though Kemp has said previously that he wants it to help underwrite a security officer for each school.

Kemp called the shooting “our worst nightmare.” But he declined to discuss what state government could have done differently.

“Look, we’ve done a tremendous amount on school safety,” Kemp told reporters outside Apalachee High School on Wednesday night.

Apalachee High School had recently equipped teachers and staff with wearable panic alert buttons as part of its safety efforts. A school employee used the alert during Wednesday's shooting, automatically summoning authorities to the scene. The school safety company Centegix said its CrisisAlert system is used at about 12,000 sites nationwide, primarily in K-12 schools.

After numerous high-profile shootings, school security has become a multibillion-dollar industry in the U.S., with some companies lobbying policymakers to write their particular corporate solutions into state law.

Legislatures in some states, including Iowa, Nebraska and Tennessee, passed laws this year expanding the potential for armed personnel in schools. It's been legal for Georgia school districts to let employees carry guns for years, but very few of the state’s 180 districts are known to have enacted such policies.

Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, traveled last year to an elementary school in Winder to outline a plan to pay up to $10,000 annually to teachers who hold a firearms training certificate and carry guns in schools. But the proposal went nowhere in the Legislature.

Red flag laws

The teenager charged in the Georgia shooting had previously been interviewed by a sheriff's investigator following a tip from the FBI that the boy, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up 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 arrests were made because of “inconsistent information” on the Discord account.

In some states, concerns about the potential for someone to cause harm with a gun can provide grounds for authorities to temporarily remove firearms from a home. Twenty-one states have extreme risk protection laws, sometimes referred to as red-flag laws. Georgia is not among them.

Resistance to such laws has grown in Republican-led legislatures. After a deadly shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee pushed for a statewide measure that would allow some version of extreme risk protection orders. But the GOP-led Legislature declined to pass it.

An AP analysis found many U.S. states barely use their red flag laws, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Amy contributed from Atlanta.