Single pic sends shockwaves across the world
In the wake of America’s 384th mass shooting this year, a depressing picture has cropped up online. Here’s why it’s enraging people across the world.
In the wake of America’s 384th mass shooting this year, there was one reaction that stood out.
Congressman Mike Collins, who represents the district rocked by the horrific school shooting that left two students and two teachers dead, took to X to share his immediate thoughts.
“Very sad to confirm there have been four fatalities from the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder,” the Republican wrote.
“Many others wounded, but not all gun-related or life-threatening injuries, some from efforts to flee danger.”
Not all gun-related.
His strange insistence on clarifying that some of the students who were injured as they desperately fled for their lives had not been shot went down like a lead balloon online.
Fed-up Americans were quick to dig up clips showing Collins’ controversial stance on guns.
In a resurfaced 2022 interview, he was asked if he was open to “any compromise to gun control legislation”.
“We don’t have a gun control problem in this country, we don’t have a gun problem in this country,” Collins said.
“We have a cultural problem where we have removed God from every facet of our life, be it from schools, prayer, even television.”
Rep. Mike Collins, who represents the district where the school shooting happened today in GA, was asked in 2022 if he favored ANY gun laws including red flag laws. The answer is no, he said God is the answer. pic.twitter.com/K2zzNi4o11
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 4, 2024
Just two weeks before the shooting, Vice President Kamala Harris took to X to share a simple text graphic reading “ban assault weapons”.
Collins had a one-word response for her. “No”.
And he’s not alone in those views.
Georgian Governor Brian Kemp, who said he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms” after learning of the shooting, has been one of the nation’s biggest gun advocates.
As a result, the state has some of the laxest gun control laws in the country.
In 2022, Kemp signed a bill into law that allowed Georgians to carry handguns in public without a license or background check.
Just one year earlier his state was given a failing grade on gun control by a gun safety advocacy group.
“I’ll wear this ‘F’ as a badge of honour,” he proudly declared in response.
During his campaign for governor, Kemp sparked widespread fury with an advert that showed him clutching an enormous shotgun while talking to a boy about dating one of his daughters.
The pattern of defending the second amendment and refusing to debate gun control laws is not new in Georgia.
Last year, Georgian Representative Andrew Clyde was spotted handing out lapel pins shaped like AR-15 rifles to fellow Republican lawmakers.
The stunt was less than two months after a crazed woman stormed her old school in Nashville and gunned down six people using the very same gun.
“Instead of addressing gun violence head-on and taking action to save lives, certain members of Congress have decided that flaunting AR-15 pins days after multiple mass shootings is a clever way to support Second Amendment rights,” gun control advocate Adzi Vokhiwa wrote.
“In all actuality, this statement is an insult to the victims of Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, Uvalde, Parkland, Buffalo, and countless other mass shootings across our country.”
Republican Paulina Luna was also spotted wearing the assault rifle pin as her state, Florida, reeled from a mass shooting that left 11 dead just two days earlier.
Clyde, who owns a gun shop in Athens, Georgia, doubled down despite widespread backlash.
“I hear that this little pin that I’ve been giving out on the House floor has been triggering some of my Democratic colleagues,” he gloated.
“Well, I give it out to remind people of the Second Amendment of the Constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties.”
Last year, as a symbol of their commitment to gun extremism, some Republican members of Congress proudly wore these lapel pins shaped like an AR-15, the same weapon a 14 year old just used to kill two students and two teachers in a Georgia high school. pic.twitter.com/H6nphRaLOp
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 5, 2024
Aussie commentator and author Glenn Mitchell’s reaction to the school shooting captured what many were thinking.
“I truly do not understand the United States,” he wrote.
“All over social media today there are calls from US citizens for an armed presence at every school across the country - whether that be teachers or security guards.
“How can a civilised nation reach that point?”
Is it really about the 2nd Amendment?
— Rep. Jimmy Gomez (@RepJimmyGomez) February 3, 2023
Funny how you didn’t mention you own the No. 4-ranked gun store in GA.
Not only are you mocking gun violence survivors during #GVSurvivors Week, but you’re making a profit off of mass shootings too. https://t.co/ykegFm8wuX
Suspected 14yo shooter pictured for first time
Meanwhile, the first image of accused school shooter Colt Gray has emerged — as his aunt said the 14-year-old was “begging for help” prior to the shooting.
The picture, published by 11 Alive news, shows a smiling Gray wearing a thick necklace and a red Georgia Bulldogs T-shirt in a yearbook photo from 2022, showing the alleged gunman at the age of 12 or 13.
Gray was taken into custody Wednesday minutes after he allegedly opened fire in Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., killing two fellow students and two teachers, according to authorities.
Nine others were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.
His aunt, Annie Brown, told the Washington Post on Thursday that the boy had been “begging for help from everybody around him.”
She said he had been struggling with his mental health prior to the shooting.“The adults around him failed him,” she lamented.
Colt’s dark history
Colt had been brought to the FBI’s attention more than a year ago for threats to commit a school shooting, the agency said.
He was taken into custody after Wednesday’s shooting and will be tried as an adult on murder charges, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
“Our school resource officer engaged him,” county sheriff Jud Smith told reporters, referring to law enforcement officers employed to work at US schools.
“The shooter quickly realised that if he did not give up that it would end with an OIS - an officer-involved shooting. He gave up, got on the ground, and the deputy took him into custody.”
Smith said police did not yet know if the shooter singled out specific people as targets, adding later that the nine wounded were expected to recover.
The two students killed were also 14 years old, authorities said.
‘Still not safe’
After the suspected shooter was brought to the attention of the FBI, the county sheriff’s office interviewed his father and the then 13-year-old suspect, who denied the threats, before flagging the child to school officials for monitoring.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Chris Hosey said the shooter used an “AR-platform style weapon” and that authorities were investigating how he brought the gun into the school.
Some in the school initially thought it was just another shooter drill, one student told AFP, referring to the exercises common in US schools.
“Everyone just thought it was a fake drill until my teacher said we didn’t get an email,” Alexsandra Romeo said.
“She got us all in a little corner and everyone was just hugging each other, I had some of my friends crying. Until two police officers came in with their guns and told us that this is not a drill and that we’re still not safe.” Another student, 17-year-old Stephanie Folgar, described hearing “loud bangs” and panicking students hiding in the bathrooms and closet.
“It’s scary knowing that that could’ve been you,” she said.
One student told local media that he saw blood on the floor and a body as he was led out of the building by authorities.
The shooting occurred near the town of Winder, about 70 kilometres northeast of Atlanta, the state capital.
Earlier, school authorities were reported to have sent a message to parents saying they were enforcing a “hard lockdown after reports of gunfire.”
After the all-clear was given, parents were invited to the school to be reunited with their children, with long lines of vehicles visible outside.
Gun violence ‘epidemic’
School shootings have become a sadly regular occurrence in the United States, where about a third of adults own a firearm and regulations on purchasing even powerful military-style rifles are lax.
Polls show a majority of voters favor stricter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the powerful gun ownership lobby is opposed to additional restrictions and lawmakers have repeatedly failed to act.
Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire after the shooting, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was time to end the “epidemic of gun violence.”
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said the perpetrator of the shooting was a “sick and deranged monster.”
This year, there have been at least 384 mass shootings -- defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded -- across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
At least 11,557 people have been killed in firearms violence in the United States this year, according to the GVA.
- With AFP
Chilling image seconds after alleged murder
Images have shown the chilling scene inside a home where a teenage girl allegedly killed her mother with a handgun.
‘Gibberish’: Trump’s answer baffles viewers
Asked a simple question, by a friendly voter, Donald Trump embarked on an eight-minute rant. It demonstrates a real problem in the media’s coverage of him.
‘Human’: Melania on her naked pictures
The former first lady said she stands “proudly behind” the images, and accused “the media” of scrutinising her “celebration of the human form”.