As students plan walkouts, Georgia school shooting absent in Harris-Trump debate
Sam Hauff was 14 when the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 prompted nationwide school walkouts.
Still in middle school, she led a walkout chanting, “Not one more” just next door to Apalachee High School, the school from which she would later graduate in 2021.
Now six years later, Hauff’s cause has become more personal after four people were killed in a mass shooting at her high school, in her hometown of Winder.
“I just hope within these next few weeks that we don’t let Apalachee just become a name on a list,” she said. “I’m looking to politicians, and I am begging them to do something about this (gun violence) epidemic, this plague that is striking our country and is now striking my community.”
Two teachers and two students were gunned down at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last week. The suspect, a 14-year-old student, is also accused of shooting and injuring nine others. Students at other high schools in the county returned to school Tuesday. The district has not announced when Apalachee High students will return to school.
While the Barrow County community is still reeling after the shooting, the incident was absent from Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. None of the moderators’ questions referenced the shooting or gun reform, and although guns were brought up, neither candidate mentioned Apalachee.
“I found that really disappointing,” Hauff said. “I wanted to hear about red flag laws. I wanted to hear about mental health background checks. I wanted to hear about mental health waiting periods. I wanted to hear about safe storage laws.
“If we’re not protecting our most vulnerable population, which is our children, we’re not protecting anyone at all.”
In deep red Barrow County, located between Atlanta and Athens, Hauff is not in the majority in calling for gun reform, she said. In the 2020 presidential election, over 70% backed Trump out of nearly 38,000 voters.
“I know that it is a difficult conversation to have, because people in our community are very loyal to a party, but personally, I am loyal to human rights,” she said. “I am loyal to whatever will stop children from dying in schools, and that is, unfortunately, not the consensus.”
At a candlelight vigil in Winder last week, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins spoke to the community he represents and said lawmakers can’t “legislate evil and hate away.” He praised the school’s emergency response plans that were in place and saved lives.
“We are just God-fearing, hardworking, blue-collar people who get up everyday, go to work, raise your kids, provide for your family — people that just want to be left alone,” Collins said. “Occasionally, bad things, tragedy happens, and no matter what, in six minutes, we lost four people.”
Hauff said more can, and should, be done to prevent school shootings: “We can’t change what happened, but we can change the future.”
Students in high schools across Georgia are planning a statewide school walkout Sept. 20 to “demand common sense gun safety measures in Georgia.” The walkout is being led by the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition and March For Our Lives, an organization founded in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
“We refuse to accept a world where Governor Kemp offers thoughts and prayers when it is his policy failures that created the conditions for this tragedy to take place,” the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition posted on social media. “Students deserve a legislature which invests in our safety and our mental and physical well-being over playing political games.”
