Making Red Flag Laws Work

The mass shooting in Georgia has deeply affected me, mainly because gun laws are failing to protect innocents from these events and keep guns away from dangerous people. While I do wish that the FBI and local law enforcement could have done more while investigating in 2023, in this situation it is a failing on the shooter’s family’s part. The FBI told them to keep the guns away from the shooter, but they did not, and that later lead to the school shootings. The father knew that the shooter was dangerous, yet he gave him the gun, even after the local authorities told him to lock up the guns and then only followed up once. There was little action taken by the shooter and the shooter’s father, and this bothered me.

Why did the authorities only follow up with the shooter’s family once and why was a red flag never put up? I do believe that the shooter’s interest in previous shootings and his threats to shoot schools up was a warning that action needed to be taken, yet none was. Once again, this is making me curious as to why the authorities only followed up once with the shooter’s family and why a red flag was never put up, despite there being obvious signs that this needed to happen. What else could the authorities have done? Some say that there was nothing else they could have done.

I disagree.

While I am not familiar with Georgia's gun laws, more could have been done after the investigation was completed in 2023. There could have been more check-ins from the police. The father could have listened and locked up the guns, and this could have led to the shooter not bringing a gun to the school and killing anyone. The father buying an AR gun for his son, especially right after being investigated by the FBI, makes me wonder, knowing that his son was facing challenges at school. The father did say that they had hunting rifles in their house, yet the suspect was not allowed to use them unsupervised. Did this apply to the AR rifle that was purchased?

This has struck the nation as a tragedy. I wholeheartedly support the families and school. I do believe that we can learn from this shooting and can move forward, knowing what went wrong here and that we can move forwards with new policies in place.

It is time to strengthen the red flag system. It is time that red flags are used by courts and local authorities more often, not every time, just so that there are fewer tragedies like Apalachee High School in the future.

That may be what we can learn from the Georgia shooting--the deadliest school shooting in the state's history.

Editor's Note: Our agreement with our young contributors and their parents is to protect their privacy by only using their first names and grades in school. This is River's first contribution.

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