Written by Thomas Williams, posted by Mr. Silton
September 4th, Wednesday; Highschoolers walking to class, worrying about their next test, talking to friends, competing with each other over who has the better outfit. They laugh, and fight, and yell, but all of their sounds are drowned out by gunshots. 4 dead, 9 hospitalized. How could this happen?
In Appallace High School in Georgia, 14 year old Colt Gray fired his AR-15 rifle into 2 students and 2 teachers, killing them, hospitalizing 9, and injuring many more both physically and psychologically - many students following the event have had post-traumatic stress.
The Gun:
How could a 14 year old have access to a rifle “capable of shattering bone?”
Georgia law states that no minor shall be allowed to purchase a gun, but though there are regulations illegalizing the carry of handguns by a minor, there are no such regulations for rifles or shotguns. Even further, Georgian law has recently passed a law permitting the permitless carry of previously stated weapons. What does this lead to? A completely legal carry of the rifle into the school.
The Buildup:
Colt Grey was not secretive with his plans. According to the FBI, way back in May of 2023, Colt had sent online posts about plans to enact a school shooting. Upon investigation, investigators found that they didn’t have enough evidence to enact arrest, so they released him. We knew the danger posed by Colt, yet couldn’t/didn’t act on it. This is the issue with our current bureaucracy: When danger isn’t taken seriously, people die.
Following the shooting, a search of his home revealed a major interest in previous school shootings as well. This said, why would his father allow him to take the rifle? Police and investigators currently suspect that Colin had bought the gun for his son as a gift and as such was more lenient than he should have been - Just as the police had been
The Response:
Democrats:
Following the shooting, President Biden, Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris, and VP Candidate Tim Walz have all come forward.
Biden, upon acknowledging the tragedy, immediately called for a ban of assault weapons on a federal level as well as required universal background checks. This falls in line with a similar reaction of Biden’s after the Uvalde Elementary shooting in Texas, where again an AR-15 rifle was used to kill 19 children of ages 9 to 11, and 2 teachers. Following this, Biden also called for a ban of assault weapons, yet the warning was not heeded and the tragedy was repeated.
Harris remarks on how college students have widely had to practice school shooting drills. Stating “it does not have to be this way,” Harris goes off script asking that our schools should not be in a situation where shootings are so common that such drills are necessary.
Walz, a coach and father, is outraged. On Twitter/X he stated that “This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids — they deserve better.”
Republicans:
Both Trump and JD Vance have also made responses to the tragedy soon after.
Trump in a Fox News Town Hall interview stated that the world is “sick and angry” and vows to “heal it” the best he can, bringing the incident to light in the otherwise politically focused news station
JD Vance however, in contrast to the others, claimed that shootings are just a “fact of life”, leading to public outrage as his view is essentially resigning himself to letting kids die even when he should be thinking of using his potential power to do something - in other words, if elected Vance doesn’t see it prevalent to try and stop school shootings, as it’s “inevitable” anyways.
The Public: And what can be done
It is important to understand that this is a new case, and as such likely to change greatly over time, however its existence is a reminder of our failure to adapt to the mental health landscape.
According to Forbes, Georgian mental health care is the second worst in the nation, which when combined with easy access to firearms and a lacking permit system, has led to this tragedy. With current policies, this event will almost certainly continue and worsen, as it has noticeably done in the last 6 years.
People are in danger, this issue is worsening, and states are only making it easier to get guns. What is happening? Well, partizan politics. The safety of citizens should come first, and making gun control a party splitting policy is a bad idea - people will now always feel like there are two equal sides, when one is clearly more important.
This is the issue with our country’s political divide: Issues get turned into slogans, until suddenly another school gets shot and more children die. Don’t vote for the party, vote for gun control.
Sources:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-school-shooting-gun/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-shooting-georgia-apalachee-high-school/
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/uvalde-aj-martinez-survivor-robb-elementary/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c049yw352r1o
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-school-shooting-suspect-colt-gray-what-we-know/
https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/state/georgia/article288359665.html
Written by Thomas Williams
4 comments:
This situation could've been avoided for many reasons. It was stated that Colt Gray's mother even called the school that same day before the shooting had occurred, notifying the school that there was an extreme emergency involving her son. She told the school to go immediately find and check on him. The school did take action but pulled the wrong student out of class because both students had almost identical names. That error cost the lives of two students and two teachers, leaving countless others traumatized. It is frustrating to think that this all could have been prevented if there were stricter gun control laws and better attention to students' mental health. It was also reported that Colt Gray had made references to school shootings, which some students and teachers had heard of. However, the school didn't take these signs seriously enough, which allowed this tragedy to unfold. We must improve mental health support, and implement effective gun control measures, especially in schools, where safety should be a priority.
As Thomas mentioned in his blog, it is frustrating to see government officials’ immediate action, like Biden, compared to the actual actions they take. Besides the officials that are against gun controls, there are other officials that clearly present themselves as supporting gun control, yet do not make a difference. There is a core relationship between the number of regulations for gun control and the gun violence that occurs. A federal law that takes severe precautions in obtaining arms in the first place (moreover for a minor), should be something that has to happen now. As I write this comment, a news came up about what seems to be another assassination attempt of Donald Trump in Florida while he was playing golf. Similar to Georgia, Florida has lenient gun laws with no background check, need for concealed carry permit, and the list goes on. To prevent losses of innocent lives, I think it is imperative to implement gun controls at a federal level for its consistency.
Whenever I see something like this happen, the most immediate thing I see wrong is bandwagon. All of these responses from the president, vice president and former president never come across as genuine because nothing gets done to fix it, it only gets worse. And it happens every couple of months. Some city has a mass shooting, the president claims they are regulating gun control, a week later nothing gets changed. The US gun ownership rate per 100 people is nearly 3 times the amount of other big companies and the homicide rates also reflect this data. And while mass shootings have gone down slightly since the Biden Administration, we can’t keep letting these things happen. While there is the office for gun prevention that created the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that is supposed to keep guns out of the hands of those under 21. However, in cases like this they still get access to guns, and we don’t take proper precautions to keep this kind of violence out of schools.
We often laugh or make fun of the ways we barricade the doors or live out in a classroom together for days during our drills but the more we laugh, the more mass shootings are still happening all the time. The drills are in place to protect us from a corrupt system where children in our country are not safe at school. We need to be more proactive on gun control and taking JD Vance’s approach of “it’s a fact of life” is extremely disturbing and isn’t gonna make our youth feel safe. Even though we feel like the Bay Area is a generally safe area, any kind of tragedy can happen at any time. We need to act now and prevent gun violence in America and I think this is going to be a heavy topic debated this election, because it’s not just our rights, it’s our lives.
It is so saddening to see situations like this keep happening. School shootings should not become something normalized. That is why it is so important more is done about gun control and regulation. More should be done to stop people especially teenagers, from being able to obtain a gun. Preventing gun violence should be a top priority in America because if it is not more and more events like this will happen. Officials shouldn't wait for events like this to happen to take action. They should take action now to prevent any events like this in the future.
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