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Tim Wesselman, Georgia Recorder
This week will mark 11 years since a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary forever changed the lives of more than 20 families.
A young man with military-style firepower killed 20 children and six adults in less than five minutes. The mass shooting in Connecticut came three weeks after Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, then a single mother with no political experience to mention, was notified she would join the ranks of thousands of parents who each year learn their child was killed by gun fire.
In her case, a man who did not like the music playing from a car in which her son was riding, fired shots at the car and killed her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis.
She recalled the event a year ago as she stood on the floor of Congress to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting and provide her peers a first-hand account of what it is to love and lose a child to gun violence.
“Being a parent is like that. If everything goes right, if we do everything we can for our children, the very worst can still happen,” she testified.
Congresswoman McBath represents what can happen when a parent decides to turn tragedy into a mission for change. Prior to running for Congress, she was active in the Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Gun Sense Action for America, which built grassroots support for gun reform in the months and years after Sandy Hook.
In 2018, she became the first Democrat elected to the redrawn 6th Congressional District and she won re-election to District 7 in 2022, according to Ballotpedia. Her electoral success belies what many believe about the dangers of running on a gun-reform platform.
Considering her success in supporting gun reform legislation in Congress, it would be tempting to believe our state has made great strides towards ensuring no other parent has to receive the news once delivered to her.
Truthfully, we have not. The Sandy Hook tragedy has been repeated at campuses from Parkland, Fla. to Uvalde, Texas and hundreds of other campuses nationwide.
As tragedies continued to take more young lives after the Sandy Hook shooting, media reports over the years have seemed to focus on “heroes” and “cowards” at the scene or “good guys” and “bad guys” with guns.
In the last five years, gun violence has skyrocketed to kill more children than disease, accidents and all other forms of death. This has happened as Georgia and other states have loosened already lax gun laws and consumers purchased, according to The Hill, about 60 million new guns between 2020 and 2022. Yet, virtually nothing is being done to protect children in Georgia and other conservative-led states from gun violence.
There have been some bright points. Last year, the now-bankrupt Remington Arms was forced to pay survivors of the Sandy Hook massacre $73 million. Also, President Biden, with the help of McBath and others, successfully urged Congress, led by a Democrat majority in both houses, to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The bill’s sponsor, Florida Republican Sen. Marc Rubio, led a small GOP faction supporting the law which brings once-in-a-generation gun reform.
However, in April of last year, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and a Republican majority state Legislature loosened the last of the regulations on the right to carry a hidden gun. Kemp sat in front of a Douglasville sporting goods store with a small group of gun advocates to sign the “permitless carry” bill into law at a time when an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed 70%.
Passage of this law ranked Georgia near last in the nation for gun safety measures, according to Everytown Research and Policy data. Everytown, the parent organization for Moms Demand Action, notes Georgia has a dangerous Shoot First law that allows for shooting an aggressor in public spaces even when it is possible to walk away safely. Despite a call from nearly four dozen Georgia mayors for enhanced background checks and support for “red flag” laws that keep guns from those who present a risk of harm to themselves or others, state legislators have balked at such reform, Fresh Take Georgia reports.
News outlets near my home in Albany, a community of fewer than 70,000 people, have reported several fatal shootings in recent weeks. Also in the news this fall, football games in at least two Southwest Georgia communities were rescheduled due to concerns of violence. The Albany Police Department Saturday responded to community concerns about recent shootings by releasing a statement that extra precautions were being taken to ensure the annual Christmas parade would be safe.
For those who want to ensure fewer parents receive the news delivered to McBath, there are two options.
We can continue to blame criminals for child deaths caused by legally-purchased guns, or we can demand legislators place the value of human life first.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.
