What Will It Take for Georgia to Finally Strengthen Its Gun Laws?
Within a matter of days last week, Georgia experienced two high-profile shootings.
Although hundreds of miles apart, they were both linked by the same dangerous truth: Georgia has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, and its lawmakers have repeatedly refused to strengthen them.
On Wednesday, August 6, an active-duty soldier opened fire on fellow service members at Fort Stewart, an Army post located in the southeastern part of the state. He injured at least five people before being taken into custody. Following the shooting, fellow soldiers noted he had endured persistent bullying for his stutter, but otherwise demonstrated no specific warning signs.
Just two days later, on Friday August 8, a man armed with multiple firearms unleashed a barrage of bullets outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, next to the campus of Emory University. Close to 200 rounds tore into six CDC buildings, leaving more than 500 shell casings scattered across the scene. The shooter fatally shot a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot.
These tragedies are not inevitable. They are the predictable result of policy choices that put the gun lobby’s agenda ahead of public safety.
For over a decade, Georgia has earned an F on the GIFFORDS Annual Gun Law Scorecard, highlighting the state’s poor gun laws. And as the Scorecard reflects, states with poor gun laws consistently have higher gun death rates.
Georgia ranked 13th on a list of states with the weakest gun laws in our most recent Scorecard, while also having a gun death rate that is 35% higher than the national average. More than 2,000 people died from gun violence in the state last year—meaning that, on average, someone died from gun violence every four hours.
Georgia’s gun laws are riddled with dangerous gaps—the policies proven to save lives in other states are simply absent here.
What Georgia Does Well
- Certain open carry regulations
- Certain child access prevention laws
- Handgun dealer regulation
What Georgia Is Missing
- Universal background checks
- Gun owner licensing
- Extreme risk protection orders
- Domestic violence gun laws
- Assault weapon restrictions
- Large-capacity magazine ban
- Waiting periods
- Concealed carry permitting
- Community violence intervention funding
The shooter in Atlanta, for example, had repeatedly expressed thoughts of suicide—something law enforcement was aware of through multiple reports. Many states have tools like red flag laws (also known as extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs), which empower law enforcement to temporarily remove firearms from people in crisis, to prevent tragedies like this before they happen.
Other laws, like waiting periods and universal background checks, work hand-in-hand with ERPOs to help keep guns away from people in crisis or those acting impulsively, while also ensuring those prohibited from owning firearms cannot get them. But Georgia, of course, has none of these laws.
Moreover, Georgia can—and should—pass laws that limit buying guns and ammunition in bulk to avoid stockpiling, require guns to be safely stored to prevent access by children and other prohibited persons, and hold the gun industry accountable for its irresponsible and dangerous behavior.
Instead, however, Georgia has prioritized allowing anyone to carry a concealed gun in public—no training required. The state has also passed laws to protect the gun industry by threatening to penalize banks that refuse to finance their businesses.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Two shootings in one week should be more than a tragedy; it should be a mandate for action. We know that commonsense public safety measures save lives—we just need Georgia lawmakers to pass them.
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The gun safety movement is on the march: Americans from different background are united in standing up for safer schools and communities. Join us to make your voice heard and power our next wave of victories.
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SPOTLIGHT
GUN LAW SCORECARD
The data is clear: States with stronger gun laws have less gun violence. See how your state compares in our annual ranking.
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