ATLANTA – Even the reddest of red states can promote safe firearm storage without stepping on the Second Amendment, officials from two red states told Georgia lawmakers this week.
Republican state Rep. Steve Eliason of Utah and Kathy Martinez-Prather, director of the Texas School Safety Center, testified before the Georgia Senate Safe Firearm Storage Study Committee about steps they’ve taken in their states to encourage gun owners to lock up their firearms without imposing mandates.
“Safe storage is low-hanging fruit … one of the easiest things we can do,” said Volkan Topalli, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Georgia State University, who appeared with the out-of-state witnesses at a hearing Oct. 10. “Safe storage is not opposing Second Amendment rights.”
The Georgia Senate created the study committee back in March, but the issue of safe firearms storage took on greater urgency last month when two students and two teachers were shot to death at Apalachee High School near Winder.
Another student at the school, 14-year-old Colt Gray, was arrested at the scene and charged with the murders, while his father, Colin Gray, also faces criminal charges for allegedly letting his son possess the AR-15 style rifle used in the killings.
The mass shooting at Apalachee High School was among 11 gun-related incidents that have occurred on school grounds in Georgia this year, second-most in the country, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun-violence prevention organization in the nation.
“Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for children and teens in America,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the group’s senior director of research. “We have to do better.”
The Texas School Safety Center was established in 1999 in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Columbine High School, where two students killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded 21 others in less than 20 minutes, an episode that sparked a trend of mass school shootings that continues today.
Martinez-Prather said the center’s mission is to provide research, training, and technical assistance to schools looking to create a safe and secure environment. The center reviews every emergency operations plan individual schools develop and produces educational materials on safe firearm storage for distribution to the schools at least several times a year, she said.
Since preventing school violence is not what teachers are accustomed to, the center fills that role, Martinez-Prather said.
“Educators do not get into education to be emergency managers,” she said. “School safety has always been a back-burner conversation.”
Eliason said the Utah legislature has passed a series of bills aimed at safe firearm storage with strong bipartisan majorities going back to 2013.
The Utah measures have used a variety of approaches. Under some of the bills, the state has bought and distributed trigger locks and biometric gun safes. Others have established tip lines that allow callers aware that a student may be planning a school attack to notify authorities.
“They’re preventable when communities detect early warning signs and intervene,” Eliason said.
Utah’s school safety legislation also includes a mental health component. A School Safety Crisis Line lets students who feel they may become a threat to themselves or others contact someone who can help.
“Every school shooter has some sort of mental health issue in their life,” Eliason said. “Students can talk to a licensed clinical social worker 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Another bill Utah lawmakers have passed allows people suffering mental health issues to put their name on a restricted list so they can’t buy firearms for whatever period of time they feel they need.
“Preventing access to firearms and getting mental health treatment go hand in hand,” Eliason said. “If you’re not focusing on both, you’re not getting to the root of the issue.”
Eliason said the key to Utah’s approach to safe firearm storage is that it’s voluntary. Since it doesn’t involve mandates, the state’s gun lobby has supported the bills, he said.
“They realize that working together, we can save gun owners’ lives,” he said.
Georgia Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, the study committee’s chairman, said he was impressed with the Texas firearm safety program and may propose something similar for Georgia. The panel is due to make recommendations, including any legislation it might introduce, before the General Assembly convenes for the 2025 session in January.