Following Apalachee High Tragedy, America Must Act: We Need Gun Laws

Louisa Corbett

September 21, 2024

On Sept. 4, student Colt Gray opened fire at Apalachee High School. He killed four people–two students and two teachers–and wounded nine others in what quickly became a national news headline: the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history.

This tragedy is, however, not an anomaly in the United States: in 2024 alone, as of September 5, at least 11,598 people have died from gun violence in America. There have been more than 385 mass shootings* in the US. That’s more than one a day. As of Sept. 13, there have been at least 46 school shootings, or more than one per school week.

As the staggering volume of devastation and violence perpetuates daily news, it can be easy to numb to facts that should shock and outrage, to acquiesce to adapting to a deadly world. But what many Americans–standard citizens and politicians alike–forget is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Mass shootings are undoubtedly an American epidemic. When compared to other developed countries, America’s gun violence and death rates are alarmingly high: between 2000 and 2022, according to the Rockefeller Institute for Government, the US has seen 109 public mass shootings** while the average among European countries and Australia is 2.3–the highest outlier being 6 in France.

What makes America different?

Some would argue that mental health, specifically depression, plays the largest role in triggering mass shootings. That doesn’t explain, then, the fact that Australia and the US have equal rates of depression, 5.9%, and Australia had only one public mass shooting during the same 22-year period in which the US had 109. Furthermore, a study done by Columbia Psychiatry debunked the myth that mental health causes mass shootings when it found that only 5% of mass shootings are linked to severe mental illness, and the 25% linked to nonpsychotic psychiatric illness, like depression, are usually pure coincidence.

When looking at gun policy differences between the US and countries with drastically lower gun fatality rates, we begin to see the importance of regulating gun usage. Australia has one of the strongest gun restriction policies worldwide and, correspondingly, one of the lowest gun violence rates worldwide. The country had seen only one mass shooting since 1996 when it enacted strict gun laws following the Port Arthur shooting that killed 35 people. Just 12 days after the incident, the Australian government cracked down hard on guns: they banned the sale and import of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and instituted a government buyback program.

Meanwhile, in 2024, roughly 120 Americans die every day from gun violence. Parents are scared to send their children to school. Kindergarteners as young as five years old experience anxiety and trauma responses to active shooter drills, in which kids are taught to cower under tables, while staff bang on doors, impersonating gunmen. At my K-12 school, we annually attend assemblies hosted by Campus Safety on school shooting protocol. Then, we return to our classrooms and wait for the sirens.

When shrill, foreboding beeping echoes down the halls, we pull down the shades and board up classroom windows with posters taped on walls. We pile our wooden chairs in a barricade in front of the door. We find heavy, blunt-force objects, like textbooks and full water bottles, and we crouch under the table, behind desks, or in cramped corners until Campus Safety comes around and tells us the drill is over. During the near-twenty minutes when I sit on the floor with my knees against my chest, anxious “what if”s–“what if this wasn’t a drill?” “what if I never saw my parents again?” “what if my teacher died?”–fill my head. And I count myself lucky that I received such comprehensive training that I would be prepared in case of emergency.

But then I remember: it does not have to be this way. We shouldn’t feel lucky when we don’t die at school.

The government needs to do more to regulate gun access in America. Though I recognize all citizens’ Second Amendment right to own firearms, I also recognize that steps, like background checks, buyback systems, and automatic rifle restrictions, can be taken to control gun access without violating this right. And, more importantly,  recognize that people’s lives–children’s lives, parents’ lives, teachers’ lives, siblings’ lives, your life–are more important than the ownership of a metal object.

I don’t want to live in a country where my cause of death is statistically most likely to be a gunshot. I don’t want to leave the house wishing I hugged my sister in case today is our last day living. I want to know that the government values my life and millions of other Americans' lives more than it values power and profit. We need better gun control.

*Defined by Gun Violence Archives as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed

**The Rockefeller Institute for Government uses a different definition to define “public mass shooting” than the Gun Violence Archives, a difference to which we can attribute the significantly lower number of mass shootings than is consistent with GVA data.