PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As the nation comes to grips with yet another school shooting , gun safety advocates are renewing their pleas for more awareness regarding the mental health impacts on students and proper gun storage at home.
On Wednesday, authorities said 14-year-old Colt Gray opened fire in his Winder, Georgia high school, which left four dead and nine injured . He has been charged as an adult.
According to arrest warrants, Colt is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill two students and two teachers at the school, located just outside Atlanta. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school.
Also charged is the boy’s father, 54-year-old Colin Gray. He is charged with counts of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. It’s the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings.
In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting . They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021 . The Georgia shooting has also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and has parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.
According to Philadelphia pediatrician Dr. Vivek Ashok, a firearm safety liaison for the Pennsylvania American Academy of Pediatrics, the mental health impacts on children witnessing these incidents, even indirectly, are palpable.
“Especially what I see in my primary care practice, the children have increased rates of anxiety, of depression. Some go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said.
Most of them deal with fear and anxiety, he said, because schools are supposed to be safe spaces.
“I think oftentimes the feelings of anxiety and depression are magnified in isolation,” Ashok added. “So even just having a family member or parents to talk about this is really important.”
Wednesday’s attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut ; Parkland, Florida ; and Uvalde, Texas . The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws.
David Austin, the Moms Demand Action South Jersey lead of the Be SMART gun safety advocacy group, said between 80% and 90% of the firearms used in school shootings come from the shooter’s own home, a family member’s home, or, in some cases, a friend’s home.
Austin said guns in the home must be properly stored. He said a hidden gun is not a safely stored gun, and long guns like the AR-style rifle used in the Georgia school shooting should be kept in biometric safes.
“Unload the weapon and store the gun in a storage box, a locked container or in a gun safe of some kind separate from the ammunition,” he advised.
Austin noted it’s up to adults to secure their firearms, but shockingly, some prefer not to.
“People feel like if somebody comes bashing through the front door or through the window, they need to be able to get their loaded firearm quickly. That’s the answer that we get,” he said.
The Georgia school shooting was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
“Kids are going to find your gun,” Austin stressed. “Anybody who remembers their own childhood knows that you find stuff that your parents don’t want you to find, because that’s what kids do.
“So hiding it isn’t securing it. … If you’re going to insist on keeping the gun loaded, then at the very least, it has to be in a locked container.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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