I’m Embarrassed by My First Reaction to the Horrific Georgia School Shooting — & It Was a Real Wake-up Call

When the news broke that an active shooter situation was taking place at a Georgia high school on Wednesday, I panicked. As a mom of three living in Texas, where guns are worshipped more than Jesus, a sick sense of dread overtook all my senses. I closed out Instagram, where I first saw the news, turned off my phone, and actively tried to push it out of my mind. “Everything’s OK, everyone will be fine,” I thought, and — selfishly — “It’s not happening at my kids’ schools.” After I picked up my second grader, kindergartener, and toddler, though, my heart cracked in half thinking about the parents who would not get to do the same. That burying-my-head-in-the-sand thing I was doing to ignore this devastating tragedy? That may be easier in the moment, but it’s not going to help anybody — or stop these horrific incidents from happening.

Talking To Your Kids About School Shootings: A Parent's Guide

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed that a 14-year-old student shot and killed his classmates at Apalachee High School in Winder, killing two 14-year-old kids, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, two adult teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, and injuring at least nine other people, per Associated Press . This is the deadliest episode of school violence in Georgia’s history, per The New York Times , and the 30 ^th mass killing in this year alone, according to a database created by AP, USA Today , and Northeastern University.

Officers responded to the shooting within minutes and the suspected gunman surrendered and was taken into custody, where he will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, per ABC News . To be clear, this wasn’t just the work of an evil teenager who went off the rails. Every single politician who enabled the state’s lax gun laws and person who participated in a culture of fetishizing guns is partially to blame as well.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety , Georgia has some of the weakest gun laws in the entire country, which are seemingly getting weaker every year. Legislature passed a law requiring colleges and universities to allow guns on campus in 2017; passed permitless carry legislation in 2022; and maintains a “Shoot First” law that allows a person to kill another in a public area, even when they can safely walk away from danger. The state does not require that firearms be stored locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition to protect children, and it does not ban assault-style weapons, like the kind used in Wednesday’s mass shooting.

The FBI released a statement about the tragic incident, revealing that they “received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time” in May 2023. These threats included photos of guns. The FBI worked with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, identifying Gray as a possible suspect. They interviewed him and his father.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject,” the statement read. Because they had no probable cause for arrest, there was nothing else they could do. Does that not make you sick? This child had been planning a mass shooting, posting pictures with guns, but because he and his dad denied it, there was nothing else law enforcement could do.

Seeing how this could have been prevented with stricter gun laws fills me with a fire like nothing else. This is why we have to vote. This is why we need leaders in our country that don’t glorify guns, but instead, care about our nation’s children and take action to protect them. As a mom, that’s who I want in office — not someone who would rather protect a father’s right to display his hunting rifles within easy reach of his teen son. I would rather good guys have less effective guns — or fewer guns in general — than make it easier for the bad guys to obtain dangerous firearms.

President Joe Biden issued a statement after the tragedy, calling to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. “Jill [Biden] and I are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence and thinking of all of the survivors whose lives are forever changed,” he wrote in part. “What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart. Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic nominee for president, spoke about the incident during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Wednesday. “This is just a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies, and it’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive,” she said in part, per The Guardian . “It’s senseless. It is. We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. You know, it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

She’s right: It doesn’t have to be this way. And hiding from the news or turning it off because it didn’t happen to someone you know will not fix the problem. Nothing will erase the pain and life-altering devastation the community of Winder went through yesterday, but working to change the tide and stop these senseless acts of violence can help protect more people in the future. Thoughts and prayers don’t matter if they aren’t accompanied by action. The first step is opening our eyes to what is happening, so we can work toward meaningful change together.

And if you need help talking to your kids about school shootings, check out this helpful guide HERE .

“ Before you go, read about Gianna Floyd’s White House visit , from ice cream to police reform . “