Backdrop for Georgia mass shooting: Both gaps and progress on school safety

As a 14-year-old Georgia boy allegedly fired his assault-style rifle at classmates Wednesday morning, teachers and two well-trained resource officers at Apalachee High School followed protocol, locking down classrooms and locating the shooter.

Their actions were hailed as heroic and likely lifesaving. But emerging details about the boy’s tragic path to opening fire underscore how growing efforts in U.S. schools to locate and defuse threats often struggle. As a result, four people died and nine others were wounded earlier this week in the worst school shooting in Georgia history.

Colt Gray appeared in court Friday, facing the prospect of being tried as an adult on four murder charges. As his story emerges, it’s a stark portrait of reputed domestic abuse, failed efforts of authority figures, inconsistent weapons laws, and a U.S. society forced to balance widespread alienation with privacy and weapons rights. Colt’s father, Colin Gray, was in court Friday on charges of cruelty to children and second-degree murder for allegedly gifting his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting as a Christmas present last year.

And while experts say national school-safety responses may have stopped scores of potential shootings, the tragedy in Winder, a small city of just under 30,000 people outside Atlanta, underscores how profound the problems are that remain. 

School safety is both reactive and preventive

The shooting shows “how we as a society are trying to deal with this problem in terms of reactive measures versus preventive measures,” says Mark Follman, author of “Trigger Points: Inside the Mission To Stop Mass Shootings in America.” 

Despite resources already poured into this unfathomable American crisis, “It points right back to the question, What could have been done to keep this from happening in the first place?”

The number of school-related threats of violence had dropped to 1,905 during the 2023-2024 academic year, down from a prepandemic high of 3,434, according to research by the Educator’s School Safety Network.

But violent incidents overall continued an upward climb. The network counted 378 violent incidents last year, up from 253 in the 2022-2023 school year.

About half of U.S. schools had armed security staff in the 2020 school year, almost twice the number a decade earlier. Apalachee High School staff members had received panic buttons – fobs worn around their necks that could be pressed to alert local authorities to emergencies at the school –  a week before the shooting. On Wednesday, those alarms were activated, putting the school on lockdown and alerting police. 

Georgia doesn’t require public schools to have such alarms, but six states, including Florida, do. Apalachee High’s building also had automatic locking doors, in case of an emergency. Every school in Georgia is required to have a violence prevention plan in place.

Half of all states now require threat assessment teams, and two-thirds of America’s schools now have such teams in place, according to the Pew Research Center.

Is there an effective defense?

But those teams are not only new and largely inexperienced; they also face jurisdictional and privacy issues.

Making prevention trickier, Georgia is one of 29 states without a red flag law, meaning that police there can’t seize weapons from those in mental distress or who may pose danger.

“The key with threat assessment is you tie it in with physical security, partnerships with law enforcement, coordinating not only physical safety but investigating risks and threats and how you look at response,” says Mario Scalora, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln psychologist who studies targeted violence. “We do this because we all have people we care about in those buildings.”

Strong parental and privacy rights in the United States can also make determining how real or big a threat is more difficult.

Those challenges came into sharp focus this week in Winder, the seat of Barrow County, a fast-growing region nestled between Atlanta and the college town of Athens.

Last year, the FBI received warnings from as far away as Australia about threats made on Discord and linked to Colt’s account.

But two local sheriff’s deputies couldn’t confirm at the time that it was Colt who had made the statements. It is not clear whether information about those threats was relayed when he moved to his new school in August.

Mr. Follman says the events highlight a challenge for threat assessment: “What did the people around him do – and not do – with the information they had?”

Neighbors and family members reported family problems, including drug abuse, neglect, and violence. One neighbor said children, including Colt, were locked out of a house in freezing weather, screaming to be let in.

Colt’s aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post that the boy “had been begging for help from everybody around him.”

None ultimately came. Those who died in this week’s shooting were students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie. The eight students and a teacher who were hurt are expected to recover, authorities say.

Making time, taking responsibility

“What you have to understand is that we are facing a force,” says Aaron Stark, a mental health advocate in Denver. 

He knows. He has been there.

While homeless in 1996, he plotted a mass shooting at a school before a friend offered an alienated, angry, and suicidal Mr. Stark a shower and time to hang out and talk together. The simple act, coupled with his difficulty in procuring a weapon in Colorado, a state with strong gun control laws, defused the plan.

Mr. Stark says his story illuminates how love and responsibility are the chief protagonists against darker impulses of hatred and hurt. When he planned his shooting, his primary goal wasn’t to harm others, he says, but to show his parents “what a monster they had created.”

Mr. Stark says Americans are growing more comfortable talking about mental health, which makes him hopeful.

But getting adults to take responsibility for children in their care continues to be a problem. 

Indeed, if school threat protocols aren’t implemented with trust and goodwill – and understood by all staff members – they won’t work, says Amy Klinger, co-founder of the Educator’s School Safety Network.

Those concerns are likely not lost on those who may have been able to help Colt before he lashed out. 

“For those of us [who work in threat assessment], we feel the pain of another unnecessary loss,” says Professor Scalora, in Lincoln. “We also feel the pain for the people involved, because we understand the costs and implications of this work.”