Mason Schermerhorn is a 14-year-old Black child who was tragically killed during a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
After tears, expressions of condolences and prayers, a gun-addicted country will continue to do almost nothing to save lives. This is a society devoid of spiritual values and dominated by gun madness.
“As chairman of the Senate Study Committee on Safe Firearm Storage, I am committed to finding solutions to stop these tragedies before they occur. This is not about infringing on Second Amendment rights but protecting our children and their safety,” said state senator Emanuel Jones.
“The technology exists today to secure firearms effectively, ensuring that they do not fall into the hands of those who should not have access to them, particularly children. On average, 1,927 people die by guns in Georgia each year—these are not just numbers; they are lives lost and families shattered,” said the Black lawmaker.
He called Georgia the 8th worst in the nation in dealing with gun safety. He told CNN a bill offering tax credit for safe storage devices failed to pass in Georgia’s legislature. States with civil liability and criminal penalties have seen a drop in these incidents, he added.
School resource officers reportedly confronted the shooter, who surrendered and was taken into custody. CNN, however, reported the school received a warning about a shooting but didn’t immediately go into lockdown.
According to press reports, the alleged shooter was on the FBI’s radar after online tips about plans to commit a school shooting surfaced last year. They turned the tips over to a local sheriff, who visited the boy and his father. The father said there were hunting guns in the home but the boy, who denied making threats, had no unsupervised access to them.
The sheriff’s office told schools to keep watching the boy but had no legal reason to arrest him or do anything else.
By Sept. 5, the legal analysis had changed.
The Associated Press said, “Colin Gray, 54, the father of Colt Gray, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.”
“In Georgia, second-degree murder means that a person has caused the death of another person while committing second-degree cruelty to children, regardless of intent. It is punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison, while malice murder and felony murder carry a minimum sentence of life. Involuntary manslaughter means that someone unintentionally caused the death of another person,” said the newswire.
Officials charged his 14-year-old son as an adult with four counts of murder in the Sept. 4 shootings.
“Arrest warrants obtained by the AP accuse him of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle in the attack,” said the newswire.
“It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer—the same definition used by the FBI.”
“Authorities were still looking into how the suspect obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school in Barrow County,” said the Associated Press.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the shooter took the lives of two students and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie. Christian Angulo was the other student killed. According to the county sheriff, eight students and one teacher were injured, taken to hospitals and should survive.
Adding insult to a painful tragedy, WSB-TV in Atlanta published a photo of Myron, the shooting victim, and misidentified him as the person accused of his murder.
An aunt said the accused killer had been crying out for help and adults failed him.
“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,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
In a message posted to social media, former President Donald Trump said: “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
The Associated Press reported Sept. 5 on both statements and words from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. “This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event,” he said.
This crisis, however, will not be resolved by political statements in a country with a long history of violence at home and abroad. The violence starts at the top and ends with children as victims. This country needs a healing but between her love affair with firearms, the power of lobbyists to buy allies and scare off or replace critics, healing is far off.
“We live in a world in which each year is filled more and more with violence. Violence once was orchestrated by elites or governments to take over nations and the raw materials of nations, to overthrow governments, kings and rulers who stood in the way of access to those minerals and precious stones that would lead a nation to great wealth.
“This violence has gone all the way down in the society to children, especially in the United States of America, where murder, robbery, assault and rape are committed every so many seconds.
However, these crimes are now being committed by children,” observed the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in a message delivered October 16, 1998, in Washington, D.C., during the observance of the Holy Day of Atonement. His message was entitled, “The Healing for a Sin Sick Nation: Atonement.”
The Minister pointed to the atonement process as a way to help heal America. “The Holy Day of Atonement is not a 24-hour day, but it ushers in a period of grace and mercy that allows those of us who have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of Allah (God) to acknowledge our shortcomings, confess them, repent of them, atone for them, accept forgiveness and then, the process of reconciling ourselves to Allah (God) and to those whom we have offended allows us to become whole and wholesome and it gives us a chance to make a new start,” the Minister explained.
“This period of time that Allah (God) has given for humanity to reconcile itself with Allah (God) and with self, that we may avert the consequences of our actions, is a great period indeed. It is a period of time during which every human being should strive to take advantage of the Great Mercy of Allah (God),” he added.
The Holy Qur’an warns us to never despair of the mercy of Allah (God). If a wicked nation abandons her evil ways and submits to the Divine Supreme Being that nation may have a delay in or avoid destruction.
The Holy Qur’an also tells us that those who see themselves as powerful do not love good advisors. They lean to their own understanding, which leads to self-destruction. America is clearly unraveling and rushing headlong to her own demise, so we can expect more tragedy, loss and death.
