A mass shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., became the state’s deadliest-ever episode of school violence.
The suspected shooter, whom police identified as 14-year-old Colt Gray, killed two teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, using an AR-platform style weapon. At least nine others were reported as being injured in the shooting.
Gray and his family were spoken to by local law enforcement in May 2023 after several anonymous tips were sent to the F.B.I.’s National Threat Operations Center about school shooting threats he made on an online gaming platform. These threats included photographs of guns. Gray denied making the posts and officials found no probable cause for an arrest at the time.
Gray was taken overnight to the Regional Youth Detention Center in Gainesville, Ga., about 30 miles from where the shooting took place. Barrow County District schools canceled classes for the rest of the week as investigators worked to discover any other potential threats to students in the Winder area and the entire state of Georgia.
The Marquette Wire Editorial Board stands with the victims of this tragedy and expresses its deepest condolences for all victims and their families of those afflicted by gun violence.
10 mass shootings have occurred in September alone, and while not all of them make headlines, each one is a tragedy.
These horrific acts of violence have become so normalized in our country, but we do not have to accept them as a permanent facet of modern life. This event could have been prevented and we need to act quickly to end this wanton destruction. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said that this is not the time for “politics or policy,” but we need federal gun control legislation if we want to see real change.
This assault was carried out using a weapon of war that had no place in the hands of a teenage boy. Our federal government needs to increase regulations or outright ban assault style weapons to prevent the massive loss of life they can cause.
State governments and local authorities also need to play a bigger role at ending gun violence. Local authorities need to be proactive at detecting early warning signs of violent behavior, and state governments need to tighten up their individual gun control laws.
Georgia has some of the most relaxed gun control laws in the country. It is ranked just 46 in the country and labeled a national failure by Everytown Research & Policy, a gun violence prevention organization. When compared to other states like California and New York that have much stronger gun control laws, Georgia sees far more incidences of gun violence despite having a much less dense population.
Wisconsin has made progress at improving its own gun safety legislation but is still missing key laws that could make our communities safer. Wisconsin still lacks a law requiring background checks for all gun sales and an Extreme Risk law.
The state continues to see alarming rates of gun violence, especially in the city of Milwaukee. Spectrum News 1 reports that the city saw 169 gun homicides and 838 non-fatal shootings in 2023. While these numbers are trending downward every year, that fact can provide no consolation to those impacted by this violence.
In the wake of this horrific event, vice presidential candidate JD Vance declared mass shootings a sad “fact of life,” but they do not have to be something we accept and expect will continue to happen.
With comprehensive gun safety legislation, we can prevent these tragedies. This is the time to talk policy, and it is time to fix this uniquely American problem.
Editorial topics by the Marquette Wire are decided at meetings between members of the executive board. The editorial is crafted with leadership by the executive opinions editor. The executive board consists of the director of the Wire, managing editor of Print Production, general manager of MURadio and executive print editors.
