A Georgia Senate Committee announced Tuesday it is proposing new legislation surrounding gun storage and school safety as part of an effort to reduce gun violence across the state. The bipartisan committee was created to examine secure firearm storage as a way of decreasing gun violence and accidental deaths among children in March 2024, just six months before a 14-year old used an AR-15 rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School, Courthouse News reports. One of the bills proposed by Democratic Senator Elena Parent would require firearms to be locked up around children, with a misdemeanor penalty if one knows or should have known that their gun could be accessed by a minor. It is currently only illegal to "recklessly provide" a firearm to a minor. "When its extremely easy to get guns, there's going to be lots of guns around in the community and on the street, and you will have more shootings and more deaths. And we have to talk about that. I think Georgians know that we have to be honest about gun violence and all of what we need to do," said Parent. She mentioned that Georgia has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, with the state ranked 46th nationally by Everytown for Gun Safety. Georgia also has a gun violence rate much higher than the national average.
More than 300 children were treated in Georgia’s emergency rooms for a firearm wound last year, according to the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Georgia’s law currently allows adult gun owners to carry their weapons openly without a permit and imposes no safe storage requirements. Parent said the proposed legislation would help send a message that guns should be locked away and out of reach from children. "Our laws represent our values and the ways you want people to behave. If its not illegal, why would you expect people to not do it?" said Parent. The senator said she is also pushing a bill to close the state's domestic violence "loophole." While federal law already bars most people convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse from having guns, the state does not have its own prohibition law in place. Parent mentioned that additional funding towards school safety — like the $50 million in the fiscal year 2025 budget for school safety grant as proposed by Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp — is not enough to combat the entire issue. "You could make the school a fortress and that middle schooler who brought a gun to school and ultimately died, all the hardening in the world isn't going to stop that, ya'll," said Parent, referencing an incident that occurred in early January, where a 12-year-old student suffered a self-inflicted gun shot wound at Lindley Middle School and later died.
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