JASPER, Ga. — Georgia lawmakers are sure to see more gun legislation when they meet in January. Much of it will be fueled by the fatal mass shooting at Barrow County's Apalachee High School this month.
And Republican lawmakers – who mostly ignored more than two dozen gun bills this year – are likely to mostly disregard them again.
At a firing range in Pickens County, Stephen Page of Canton brought five handguns for a few percussive practice rounds. When he hears people say they want to curb gun access with what they might call sensible gun laws, Page is wary.
"Politicians," he snorted. "'Oh, this is sensible. This is sensible.' And then all of a sudden, nobody has the right to carry guns."
Page was shooting at Appalachian Gun and Pawn. In 2018, the store hosted a big rally for then-candidate for governor Brian Kemp, whose campaign commercials portrayed the Republican as a gun enthusiast.
Kemp won Pickens County in 2018 and 2022 with a staggering 85 percent of the vote.
Kemp led the effort to eliminate Georgia’s permit requirement to carry a handgun.
"We were given our Second Amendment rights for a reason, and there's a reason they should stay the way they are," Cassie Rasco of Jasper told us Wednesday. Rasco had enrolled her 10-year-old son Chase in a three-day firearms camp at the gun store.
When Democrats want to rein in gun access, Rasco, Page, and many other Georgians will be part of an electorate quietly backing the Republicans in opposition.
This gun store automatically supplies its buyers with locks that can prevent a handgun from firing. It sells lock boxes for storage. But its owners say the law should not require safe storage – even if children are in the house.
"There’s the debate as if somebody breaks into your house, are you going to be of sound mind enough to unlock your handgun and defend your life?" asked Josh Fitts, a co-owner of Appalachian Gun and Pawn.
Rasco, Chase's mother, told us: "I see both sides. You know, if an intruder came in my home and my guns are across in another room locked up in a safe, how safe am I going to actually be?"
Voters here were among those nationwide who felt the horror of the fatal mass shooting this month at Apalachee High School. A 14-year-old who, police say, took the unlocked family assault rifle to school now faces four murder charges.
But even gun enthusiasts disagree sometimes. Some of them say common sense – and a twenty-first-century perspective – is missing from Georgia’s gun laws.
Jeff and Lynette Johnson of Fannin County say the 18th century-era Second Amendment didn’t envision semi-automatic rifles nor video games that popularize gun violence.
"I believe in the red flag laws. One hundred percent. And safe storage," said Jeff Johnson. "Why do I need a childproof top on my medicine? Well, gosh, if I have to have it on my penicillin, maybe I should have it on my handgun too."
Jerry Daniels is the gun store’s general manager and is wary of any new restrictive gun law. "I'm open-minded; I'll listen to anybody," he said. But "who does it inconvenience? The law-abiding citizens."
And they are the voters who will have the ear of many of the Georgia politicians who will get asked to restrict gun access in next year’s legislature.