Public officials must do more than offer their condolences when tragedies like what happened in Winder, the deadliest mass shooting ever at a Georgia school, rip out a community’s heart and terrorize its children. Long before these tragedies occur, they must be willing to use readily available data to promote policies that have worked to reduce gun access and violence in cities and towns across the nation.
Mass shootings in the U.S. are occurring at the once-unimaginable rate of more than 600 a year, often sadly at schools where we send our children to be nurtured and educated. We have become numb to those shootings, but this one hit me particularly hard. Maybe that was because I began my career as a teacher in an Atlanta high school where an angry student shot an assistant principal, rendering him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was because the tragedy occurred about 50 miles northeast from where I live in Atlanta. Or maybe it was my incidental history with Winder that begun the day I drove there in 1974 to purchase my first Georgia vehicle. I never forgot the fear and apprehension I felt driving outside the safety and security of Atlanta to a destination that, with about 6,600 residents, felt like a quaint Old South antebellum town.
Today, Winder’s population has grown to about 18,000 and is far more diverse, but it still retains a small-town character. The mass shootings have brought national attention and notoriety to the city. But like in other instances, much of the coverage has been sensational and lacking in context. And, as to be expected, politicians have weighed in with their usual partisan posturing and scapegoating, referring to Gray as a “monster” and his acts as “evil.” State officials have even said that they intend to try him as an adult, a decision that would make him eligible for a life sentence if convicted.
In a rare instance, the father of the suspect has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and other crimes. The criminal background of Colt’s mother, including her arrests and convictions for drug and other offenses, has been publicized as if those things had something to do with the alleged crimes of her son. While the state and media have placed a lot of emphasis on the suspect’s family, few have taken the time to consider the larger context of this situation and that of other active shootings in America: What is the relationship between easy access to guns, particularly assault weapons, and the numbers of homicides and mass shootings?
According to Everytown, a think tank focused on gun violence, there is definitely a relationship, one that is supported by data. Its 2024 report on the strength of state gun laws ranks Georgia fifth from the bottom. The authors write, “If Georgia had the gun death rate of our National Leaders — the eight states with the strongest gun safety laws — we could save 17,987 lives in the next decade.” The report concludes that what it calls “national failures,” the 14 states with the weakest gun laws, have a rate of gun violence two and a half times higher than those it considers gun safety leaders.
The report also provides suggestions for effective gun policies based on five “foundational” laws: requiring background checks and/or permits to purchase a weapon; mandating permits to carry a concealed weapon; allowing for quick intervention when someone constitutes an extreme risk to himself or society; eliminating “shoot first” laws, which allow people to use firearms even when they could safely walk away from a threatening situation; and requiring secure firearm storage or child access prevention measures. If several of those laws, particularly those related to extreme risk and secure storage, had been in place prior to the Winder shooting, they might have made a difference. The study further calls out Georgia for eliminating its last foundational law in 2022, when Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill allowing concealed weapons to be carried in public without permits.
While it would be unreasonable to lay the blame for mass shootings and gun violence at the feet of conservative politicians like Kemp, it is fair game to criticize their policies that I believe have made matters worse. Explaining why he thought lifting the concealed-carry permit requirement was important, Kemp stated that the new law “makes sure that law abiding Georgians — including our daughters and your family, too — can protect themselves without having to ask permission from state government.” The question I would ask him is whether the freedom to arm oneself with minimum involvement of the government outweighs the greater need of society to keep more guns, particularly assault weapons, away from criminals and mentally unstable individuals.
I don’t know what Kemp and other conservatives would say, but I do know that in tragedies like what occurred in Winder, the governor and other public officials must serve as comforters-in-chief. To have credibility performing that role — and speaking to the larger societal problems of gun violence — they must do more than tell us to pack a concealed weapon and keep an AR-15 in order to preserve the Second Amendment.
As we develop better policies to reduce the quantity and types of guns in our communities, we must also invest in mental health and drop the stigma associated with that. We should invest in technologies like the panic buttons worn by teachers at Apalachee High that experts credit with saving lives. Above all, we must invest in making schools emotionally and physically safe environments where our children learn life’s lessons and how to become successful adults. All public officials should be able to agree on this.
This has been updated to correct an editor's error stating that Colin Gray could face the death penalty if tried and convicted as an adult. The maximum sentence is life in prison.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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