It was the morning of Sept. 4, 2024, when Georgia’s deadliest school shooting was underway at Apalachee High School in Winder.
Thanks to a recently upgraded school security system, a fast-acting school resource officer, and local law enforcement, the mass murder was halted at four fatalities, with serious injuries to nine others.
My firstborn was — and is — a schoolteacher living nearby.
I was frozen in time for several moments as I heard news of the shooting. My daughter and her mother are both career educators. My younger child, in a DeKalb County public school, has come to accept school shooter drills as part of her new normal.
I may never understand or forgive the shooter, teenager Colt Gray, or reduce my disdain for the judgment of a father who reportedly gifted a 14-year-old a semi-automatic firearm.
All that said, I do not blame the gun.
Across our nation, in the thousands, if not millions, our young men are broken. I will come back to that. But we know from long operating military bases, protecting heads of state, and even enhanced corporate security since 9/11, if we harden and better secure the targets, we greatly increase their safety and security, simultaneously decreasing the success chances of a random or planned act of violence.
I want to recognize and thank Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Lt. Governor Burt Jones, House Speaker Jon Burns, and the members of both Georgia legislative chambers who overwhelmingly supported a nearly half-billion-dollar investment in improved school and campus security.
Smaller efforts have already been made, with enhancements completed in two categories: hiring or placing school resource officers and/or creating a locked, secured central entrance point with metal detectors and camera systems.
Yet, though this should seem obvious to most anyone, bad guys generally don’t walk in the front door or stand in front of security cameras.
As long as there are side entrances, loading docks, doors propped by students tired of pushing a buzzer to re-enter their own school, etc., an easy path typically remains for bad actors.
While I don’t relish that our children are being taught how to run, secure themselves, and be quiet to avoid shooter attention, I know from speaking with other shooting survivors that these tactics work.
We have also seen technological advances in security cameras, in terms of both imagery and the more modern inclusion of sound.
Every school system in the state should invest in networked, monitored camera systems at every school building entrance and exit, as well as in hallways and larger common areas.
Our governor and General Assembly made dual investments, providing substantial funding to harden school targets and improve security systems, as well as another significant investment in mental health, including the addition of school counselors to assist in identifying and treating mental health symptoms and challenges before they become severe, within our schools.
Most debate for the past several decades has focused on the gun safety/ gun control side of the geometrically expanding tragedy. The average male “tween” and teen has consumed thousands of hours of violent video gaming, movies, and frequently even pornography intended for more mature audiences. The internet is filled with dark and cult cultures that seem to reward manifestos of anger at the world with recognition and even some strange sense of belonging.
For most young men I encounter in high school and college, eye contact, handshakes, and even the normal social interactions of daily life seem quite foreign.
This has concerned me for more than a decade, and while I mentor and even take away phones or tablets on occasion, our society and the broader community need to step in more here as well.
We can turn our schools into Fort Knox, at considerable expense of limited resources, or we can make sensible security enhancements while working to reduce the feelings of isolation and rejection expressed by so many of these broken young men.
For Colt Gray, we are too late, but for potentially hundreds more with similar feelings of anger, suicide, or leaving their mark by taking innocent lives, we still have time. Therefore, we are hardening the targets, which is a good thing.
Now, let’s go strengthen and better support our young men.
There is still time for that, too.