Read what Georgians have to say about guns, safety after school shooting

The deadly shooting at Apalachee High School has amplified the conversation in Georgia about school safety and gun policy.

They’ve written about how scary it is to be in schools these days and how “thoughts and prayers” alone are not enough. Here’s what they have to say in guest opinion columns in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

- They said, ‘It could have been worse.’ Not for parents burying their sons by Melissa Marten, a Cobb County parent

- ‘Mom, we are under a hard lockdown’ by Debra Shigley, a lawyer, mother and candidate for Georgia House District 47

- Our voices can no longer be whispers of grief, but shouts for action on guns by Otha Thornton, a Georgia native and past National PTA president

- ‘I am 17 and I no longer feel safe at school’ by Dunwoody High School student Daniel Herrera

- In our political cowardness on guns, teachers left to take bullets for kids by T. Jameson Brewer and Westry Whitaker, associate professors at the University of North Georgia

- We cannot give up when we know these deaths are preventable by Sofia Chaudhary and Anna L. Rodenbough, both pediatric care physicians

- Kevlar in our children’s backpacks isn’t the answer to school shootings by Sharron M. Close, a clinical professor at Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

- Let’s talk about mental illness. Not guns. Never guns by Corey Ryan Forrester

- School shootings demand collective action by all of us by East Forsyth High School teacher Allison Webb

Credit: Mike Luckovich

- ‘Why do I have to hide mommy?’ My kindergartener’s first lockdown drill by Nicole Williams

- Do. Something. On. Guns. and The Republican-made gun safety crisis in Georgia schools by Patricia Murphy

- Lax gun laws and lax parents can create a deadly combination and I wondered where the first 2024-25 school shooting would be. Never thought here by Maureen Downey

- Nice stationery! by Mike Luckovitch

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