ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers plan to redouble their efforts to pass a bill requiring guns stored in homes with children to be locked away -- just one day after two students and two teachers were shot dead and nine others were injured in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.
"Do the hard things. Stop with just thoughts and prayers," Sarah Walker said Thursday, shortly after she had tearfully told state lawmakers they need to get serious now about passing a gun storage law – a law she said might very well have prevented Wednesday’s deadly school shooting at Barrow County’s Apalachee High School.
"When people say you can’t make it political – it is political. This cannot continue to happen," Walker, of Georgia Moms for Change, told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday. The hearing had been scheduled prior to the school shooting.
Democrats introduced the Pediatric Safe Storage Act last session – which would have held adults responsible if children below age 18 in their household accessed unsecured firearms and killed or injured themselves or someone else.
Though it’s unclear how Apalachee High student Colt Gray allegedly accessed an AR-style rifle on Wednesday – killing four people and injuring nine – backers of such legislation say this is one of the scenarios they intended to prevent.
"The Safe Storage Act would have prevented the events of yesterday altogether," said state Rep. Yasmin Neal (D-Jonesboro), who was a co-sponsor of the bill.
Republicans opposing the bill said it represented an unreasonable impediment to their Second Amendment rights.
"Is it really a safe storage?" Republican Colton Moore (R-Trenton) argued in February 2023 that such a law would hinder a gun owner’s ability to quickly access a gun for self-defense.
"If I don’t have the ability to access that, then that’s not really bringing safety to the situation,” Moore said in 2023.
Republicans allowed a public hearing on the measure but would not allow a committee vote. It never got to the floor of either legislative chamber.
Critics like Walker say rigid adherence to gun lobby arguments may have cost four people their lives in Barrow County.
"Once we get past the money and realize its about protecting our children, then we can get real change. So yes, I am angry," Walker said.
Neal thinks when a new legislature convenes with new members in January 2025, the Safe Storage Act will have a better chance to be enacted into law.