Four people — two teachers and two students — were killed in a school shooting in Georgia on Wednesday, the latest mass shooting in an educational setting and the first major shooting in the U.S. this school year.
The shooting took place at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, in the middle of the school day. The shooter, who was taken into custody by law enforcement shortly after the shooting happened, was identified as a 14-year-old student of the school.
In addition to the four people who were killed, nine people sustained injuries requiring hospitalization as a result of the shooting.
In response to the mass shooting — more than 440 of which have taken place this year alone — President Joe Biden issued a statement expressing sorrow for the victims and calling for Congress to pass gun reforms.
After decades of inaction, Republicans in Congress must finally say ‘enough is enough’ and work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun safety legislation. We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers. These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, respectively, also issued statements reacting to the shooting. Harris’s statement called for more to be done to address gun violence, while Trump’s statement omitted any solutions to the issue.
“It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive,” Harris said during a campaign rally in New Hampshire. “We’ve got to stop it…it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA,” Trump said on his social media website Truth Social. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
Several users on other social media websites were quick to rehash a previous statement from Trump earlier this year, in reaction to a school shooting that happened in Perry, Iowa. While campaigning for the GOP nomination in that state’s caucuses, Trump vastly downplayed the tragedy.
“It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward,” Trump said at the time.
As president, Trump refused to push for gun reform, instead supporting gun lobbyist efforts to keep the status quo of federal gun laws intact, even as more than 100,000 people in the U.S. were killed by guns during his tenure. Trump’s approach has garnered him accolades from the National Rifle Association (NRA), who, in May of this year, endorsed Trump for the 2024 presidential election.
Trump happily accepted the nomination at the NRA’s convention, telling gun owners to vote for him and stating his unequivocal support for a “Second Amendment that is meaningful.”
Polling shows that Trump’s approach is widely rejected by voters, with most in the country in support of many types of gun reforms. A Gallup poll from October 2023, for example, found that 56 percent of Americans favored stricter gun laws, while only 31 percent want gun laws to be kept as they are right now.
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