A 14-year-old student opened fire Wednesday at a high school in Winder, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, killing two fellow students — both also 14 years old — and two teachers, while injuring at least nine others. The teen shooter, who used an AR-platform-style weapon in his deadly rampage, surrendered to school resource officers and faces multiple murder charges as an adult. The violence in Georgia marks the deadliest U.S. school shooting of 2024 and comes after the teenager was interviewed by police last year following tips to the FBI about online threats of a school shooting.

“We were shocked, of course, but we were not surprised,” says Georgia state Representative Dr. Michelle Au, a practicing physician in Atlanta. She had proposed a gun safety bill that was blocked by Republicans in the state who hold both legislative chambers and the governor’s office. “Georgia actually has some of the most lax gun laws in the country, which is of course correlated with having a very high incidence of preventable gun violence.”

We also speak with Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention organization Brady, who says hard-line Republican lawmakers with “extreme” views of the Second Amendment are “fine with it being a death sentence to their fellow Americans.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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