I live in Georgia. Long experience means my expectations of any substantive response to last Wednesday’s massacre of two teachers and two students by a well-armed 14-year-old in the exurban community of Winder are rather limited.
By Letters to the Editor
According to Senate Bill 350, passed in 2012 by the GOP-controlled General Assembly, the gun cannot be destroyed. Cities and counties must auction off the guns confiscated by local law enforcement during criminal investigations within six months. Municipalities cannot go through the motions, holding the auctions but rejecting all bids. Unlike its victims, according to the Georgia code, the gun used to kill four people in Winder must live on.
(Law enforcement agencies are required to do their best to reunite “innocent parties” with weapons that were stolen from them and then used to commit crimes. In a scenario in which a school shooter stole a weapon from a parent who was not subsequently charged in relation to the crime, S.B. 350 could require the gun used in a massacre to be returned to the parent who purchased it in the first place.)
Money can be made from guns used in notorious crimes. In 2014, the pistol used in a 1972 assassination attempt on Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) fetched $28,750.
As distasteful as this law is, it contains no enforcement provisions. No fines penalize local governments that ignore it, as many certainly do, including the city of Atlanta, which has an archive of weapons that it cannot destroy but dares not set loose on its streets. And there remains the fear that some damned fool or another will force the issue in court.
In the strictest sense, Georgia’s firearm preservation law is symbolic. It is the lowest of low-hanging fruit in the debate over gun safety. And yet precisely because of this symbolic nature, Georgia’s legislature has resisted all attempts to repeal it. I suppose that once a tool has achieved the aura of godliness, dethroning it becomes all but impossible.
Under Georgia law, a wooden baseball bat used to kill can be burned. If a knife slashes, it can be melted down. A crowbar, too. But under Georgia law, a gun is more equal than other tools. Not only must it be preserved, but also it must be allowed to find a new life with a new owner, regardless of its past. Under Georgia law, the gun has become sacred. Not the possession of it, which has its own constitutional protections, but the thing itself.
Elsewhere, people might still say that cleanliness is next to godliness. In my state, cleanliness has been replaced by a military-style rifle capable of firing a high-velocity .233-caliber round. I want my governor, my state lawmakers and my presidential candidates to address this with more than thoughts and prayers. I want them to acknowledge the fact that, according to Georgia law, the weapon employed in last week’s school murders could someday kill again.
Jim Galloway, Kennesaw, Ga.
The media’s role
I wish reporters covering a school shooting would add a question to their list of queries for communities: How many families with kids at your school have guns at home?
Our focus on the mental health of students is critical. Seeking to understand any issues a kid might have, plus providing counseling, is important. That said, while we deal with such issues and try to help all kids, let’s simply attack the biggest risk: that a kid wrestling with such issues will turn to readily available tools that allow him to make the biggest statement possible — the guns in his own home.
A simple question: How many of you, sad and grieving yet again, have guns at home? This doesn’t have to be cruel or accusatory, just part of the script in covering these now-routine tragedies.
Tom Martella, Washington
Our ‘well regulated Militia’
The recent massacres involving privately owned guns are the latest in the string of homicides related to the Second Amendment in our Bill of Rights. It is past time to stop ignoring the first clause of the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The latest massacre of innocent civilians, in Winder, shouts for recognition and enforcement of the entire Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment was enacted at a time when our early American free state needed security on a daily basis but had no distinct organization acting as a “well regulated Militia” on which to rely for that sense of safety and order. Our ancestors were their own well regulated Militia and brought their own weapons along.
Today, we have our well regulated Militia in the form of the National Guard. As I was watching the coverage of the Apalachee campus, I saw what appeared to be several uniformed troops, armed with military rifles, moving to their assigned spots to prevent further violence. We no longer need civilians to step in to do this vital job.
Our country has too many weapons in civilian hands. Each massacre finds public hand-wringing about why someone does not do something. Well, each of us can: a letter to a newspaper, social media posts and emails to lawmakers are some examples of how to reach out.
Express your opinion. Together, we will get something done.
John A. Janega, Reston
14 is not adulthood
I am horrified, as are we all, by the killing of four people and wounding of nine more by a 14-year-old boy at a high school in Winder, Ga. This is a tragedy, by any definition.
But another tragedy is about to follow it, as local authorities intend to charge Colt Gray, the teenager who is alleged to have committed the crime, as an adult. We know from a large body of child development research that a 14-year-old boy is in the throes of the most intense phase of adolescence. He is not an adult. The Post reported that, according to his aunt, he “was begging for help from everybody around him,” and the boy’s grandmother had reached out to the school for mental health resources.
It would be a tragedy if he were locked in a cell and forgotten. He deserves the chance to mature as he is able, to receive mental health treatment and education, to have the possibility of a life outside a prison cell, even if that is only possible decades from now. I would like to believe that we have matured enough as human beings to let go of “a life for a life” as the only response available when a child in great pain ends the lives of others.
Charlotte Kendall, Orlando
The ‘pursuit of Happiness’?
Over the years, I have seen coverage of distraught parents outside school gates watching and praying as child-size body bags are carried out. I have viewed terrified college students running for their lives to avoid being caught in the rifle sight of a discontented classmate. I have read reports of employers who sack a member of staff and sit at their desk in trepidation that the employee might return the next morning, firearm in hand. Music festivals, nightclubs, community gatherings and even church congregations have become targets for anyone with a personal grievance and a semiautomatic. Police have recorded numerous cases of drive-by shootings resulting in the tragic deaths of innocent bystanders and chronicled the frequency of family feuds leading to lethal slaughter while, because of the epidemic of gun-related violence, those with sufficient funds and fearful for their safety are choosing to cosset themselves behind the sanctuary of gated communities.
I ask, as an uncomprehending and humble Brit, is there someone who could explain to me how these images and stories can be reconciled with the phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?
Paul Harris, London
Lower the flags
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) ordered that my state lower all our flags in remembrance of those killed in Israel (including an American citizen), so I propose that we make this a national priority: Let’s lower the American flag everywhere every time an American is shot down and killed here at home. Perhaps seeing Old Glory at half-staff will motivate us all to stop the carnage.
Here, we have that power. Here, we have that moral obligation. I wonder how long it would take for the meaning of those lowered flags to sink in. How long will it be before guns are outlawed here in the land of the free?
Scot Walker, Falls Church
