by Jay Bookman, Georgia Recorder [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

September 19, 2024

When nursing student Laken Riley was tragically murdered here in Georgia last February, allegedly at the hands of a Venezuelan immigrant, Gov. Brian Kemp and his fellow Republicans didn’t hesitate. 

They knew immediately who was at fault, and knew exactly what steps needed to be taken.

Kemp, for example, used Fox News and social media to pin the murder on the Biden administration. 

“Joe Biden’s failed policies have turned every state into a border state, and I’m demanding information from him so we can protect our people when the federal government won’t,” Kemp said on X, formerly Twitter.

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican congressman who represents the Athens area where the Riley murder occurred, was equally quick to respond.

“The blood of Laken Riley is on the hands of Joe Biden, (Homeland Secretary) Alejandro Mayorkas, and the government of Athens-Clarke County,” Collins wrote on X.

However, when four innocent people – two students and two teachers – were murdered in Collins’ district this month, allegedly by a 14-year-old student armed with an assault rifle, Kemp, Collins and most of their fellow Republicans acted stupefied at who to blame or what public officials could possibly do to address it. 

They didn’t even think the problem of school shootings worthy of discussion.

For example, when Kamala Harris responded by calling the shooting “senseless” and noting that “it does not have to be this way,” Collins acted offended. 

“In my opinion, it’s not the right time to talk about what we see out there,” Collins said. “We’ve got to get back to God in this country, we have really gotten away from that from a moral standpoint. There’s a lot of issues out there, (Harris) is dead wrong to bring that up at this time. It’s just not the right time.”

Kemp has taken a similar head-in-the-sand approach.

“I’m very interested in making sure we learn all the facts, certainly before I try and weigh in on … policy issues,” the governor said more than a week after the shooting.

We will never know “all the facts,” and apparently the right time to debate such issues is never. But here’s a few facts we do know for sure:

Repeated studies prove that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. 
America has far more guns in civilian hands than any other industrialized nation, and far more people are killed with guns in America than in any other country. If more guns in more hands made us safer, we would be the safest country on the planet, but the opposite is true. (Or maybe, as Collins seems to suggest, countries such as France, Japan, Great Britain and Germany, with much lower homicide rates, just enjoy God’s favor more than we do?)
The leading cause of childhood death in this country is firearms.
Homicide rates are significantly higher in red states with lax gun-safety laws than in blue states with more strict gun laws.

It’s also worth noting that in a 2018 campaign ad, Kemp posed with a shotgun in his lap, surrounded by assault weapons and other firearms, as he queried a young boy about dating his daughter. Apparently, our governor deemed that an appropriate use of deadly firearms.

And in a 2022 campaign ad for Congress, Collins also posed with an assault weapon as he claimed that the 2020 election in Georgia had been stolen from Donald Trump and it was time to set things right.

“Georgians are sick and tired of weak-kneed, spineless politicians who won’t fight for Trump and get to the bottom of 2020 and fix our elections,” he says in the ad. “Well, if they won’t do it, Mike Collins will.” 

He then wheels and fires at a target, which explodes on impact. Apparently, Collins has no qualms about modeling the use of firearms as an instrument of political change. 

This is not a rational situation. This is a cultural sickness. Guns are being marketed, by manufacturers and politicians alike, as the solution to crime, to political disputes, to lack of self-esteem, to doubts about gun owner’s masculinity. To many, guns have become a cult object, and if protecting that cult object means we have to act helpless in the face of mass shootings that kill dozens and school shootings that slaughter helpless children, well, those are sacrifices that the Gun God insists be paid, and too many are willing to do so. 

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.