It’s once again a harrowing week in America, as the nation grapples with yet another mass school shooting — the campus gunfire incident this year, according to a tally by the folks at the K-12 School Shooting Database. 

Two students and two teachers were killed in Wednesday’s attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the latest victims in a campus firearm death toll that’s surged in the last few years. 

During a campaign stop hours after the attack, Vice President Kamala Harris called the incident “a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies.” 

“We’ve got to stop it.” 

‘Building leaders for 2050’

Six and a half years after David Hogg survived one the nation’s deadliest campus shootings at his Parkland, Florida, high school, his latest campaign to bolster the country’s gun laws has drawn major support from deep-pocketed donors and Democratic Party bigwigs. 

Hogg co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee that’s raised more than $8 million in the past year to help elect young Democrats who support gun control, abortion and other progressive causes. 

My analysis of Federal Election Commission filings and the PAC’s digital ads offers insight into how Hogg has leveraged the trauma and lessons of surviving Parkland to create a well-connected operation to influence state and national elections across the country in November. Leaders We Deserve has already claimed some electoral wins for candidates in Virginia and deep-red Texas.

But the effort, former education secretary and PAC adviser Arne Duncan told me, is much bigger than the upcoming high-stakes presidential election. It’s about building the next generation of Democratic lawmakers. 

“That’s what David’s play is about,” Duncan said. “It’s not about, ‘We’re going to change the entire world tomorrow,’ but it’s, ‘Can we plant a whole bunch of amazing seeds, nurture them, develop them, support them and see what happens.’” 

Read the full analysis here

More on the Georgia shooting

They lost their lives: The victims are two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and math teachers Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall. |

The perp: A 14-year-old student accused of carrying out the attack was taken into custody and will be charged with murder as an adult. | 

The police response: Minutes after the shooting was reported, two school resource officers and other law enforcement arrived on scene. One of the school-based cops confronted the shooter, who was armed with an AR 15-style rifle, and forced his surrender. | 

An emergency alert system created by the security vendor Centegix was credited with alerting first responders to the shooting. The system includes a lanyard with a button that teachers can push to report danger. | 

Police interviewed the alleged gunman and his father more than a year ago, after the FBI received several tips about someone threatening to “shoot up a school” on the social media platform Discord. “The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” according to the federal agency. “The subject denied making the threats online.” |/

Just months after an unprecedented parental conviction in Michigan, Georgia prosecutors allege the father’s actions led to the mass school shooting | ����Ӱ��

The shooter purportedly had a keen interest in past school shootings, most notably the 2018 attack in Parkland. | 

The big picture: This Georgia school shooting was, in many ways, a repeat of past tragedies. The most common scenario is “a surprise attack during morning classes committed by a current student who is allowed to be inside the school.” | 

In other news

California lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation bill that would prohibit schools from serving food with artificial color additives that officials have linked to hyperactivity and other behavioral effects in children. |

A 33-year-old Latvian hacker has been extradited to the U.S. on charges of being a key player in the cybercrime group Karakurt, which has launched wide-scale ransomware attacks on K-12 schools. |

Four states suing the Education Department over new rules to protect LGBTQ+ kids from discrimination have “a substantial likelihood that they will prevail on the merits,” according to a federal appeals court. |

Meanwhile, the Justice Department and 16 states have weighed in on a lawsuit that charges a Georgia book ban targeting LGBTQ+ literature is unconstitutional. |

Nearly 4,000 “dangerous instruments” — including almost 300 weapons — were seized at New York City’s public schools last year. “Dangerous instruments” is a weird way to say stuff like box cutters and pepper spray. |

Despite school discipline reform efforts, racial disparities in student suspensions persist. |

After six people were killed in a Nashville school shooting last year, Tennessee lawmakers passed zero-tolerance rules mandating a one-year expulsion for students who threaten mass violence at school. As a result, students are being expelled “for mildly disruptive behavior,” ProPublica reported, even when officials found “the threat was not credible.” |

ICYMI @The74

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• One New York District’s Old-School Approach to Support Kids’ Well-Being

• Ohio School-to-Prison Pipeline Bolstered by ‘Exclusionary Discipline,’ Absenteeism

Emotional Support

Mika, ����Ӱ�� editor Nicole Ridgway’s pup companion, found a comfy spot on the beach to soak in some of summer’s final rays. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday signed more bills establishing gun safety reforms during a news conference in Royal Oak.

“No Michigander should fear going to school, work, the grocery store, or their own home because of gun violence,” said Whitmer. “Extreme risk protection orders have been proven to reduce suicides, save lives, and keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and violent criminals.”

Whitmer, a Democrat, called the measure “common sense action to reduce gun violence and keep families and communities safe.”

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She �������Ա����, sponsored by state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak), that creates the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act — otherwise known as a “red flag” law.

, sponsored by state Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Novi), prohibits someone from purchasing new firearms while under an extreme risk protection order. , sponsored by state Rep. Julie Brixie (D-Meridian Twp.), provides for service of process for extreme risk protection order actions and waive court fees. , sponsored by state Rep. Stephanie Young (D-Detroit), places sentencing guidelines for making a false statement in support of an extreme risk protection order.

The bills were part of a Democratic package introduced after the Feb. 13 mass shooting at Michigan State University that killed three students.

Last month at MSU, Whitmer the first bills in the package that require safe storage of firearms and ammunition and background checks.

Former U.S. Rep.  of Arizona, a 2011 gun violence survivor, attended the Royal Oak event, as well as Attorney General Dana Nessel, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and Michigan State University student Troy Forbush, who survived the Feb. 13 campus shooting.

McMorrow, who helped to host the event, said that “countless families across Michigan are devastated by the epidemic of gun violence.”

“The data is clear that extreme risk protection orders are a commonsense, effective tool to keep guns out of the hands of those who may hurt themselves or others and are already employed by 19 states across the country,” said McMorrow.

Dylan Morris, an Oxford High School senior who survived the  in 2021 and later founded “No Future Without Today,” testified in support of the gun safety legislation and described the signing as “historic.”

“This a huge accomplishment today, especially in preventing the continued proliferation of suicides, mass shootings and everyday community violence,” said Morris.

With Ohio passing legislation that will make it easier for teachers to carry guns in school, educators and youth are sounding the alarm that the bill could make classrooms less safe — particularly for Black and Hispanic students.

“I have no doubt in my mind, it increases the likelihood of school violence,” said Julie Holderbaum, a high school English teacher in Minerva, Ohio. “I have no doubt it would lead to more tragedies.”

The law could raise the stakes on disciplinary policies that already target youth of color at rates disproportionate to white students, said Deborah Temkin, a school safety expert at .

“There is very much a possibility for disproportionate use of force in the event that the decision to use a gun has to be made,” she told ����Ӱ��. “Making a decision in a split second relies inherently on your biases.”

Gov. Mike DeWine the bill into law June 13. It does not require districts to arm teachers, but gives school boards the option to do so while slashing the required training hours from over 700 to 24.

Ohio joins at least nine other states in explicitly allowing non-security school personnel to carry firearms on school grounds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some of those states set no minimum training requirement for armed teachers, but of those that do, Ohio ties Wyoming for the lowest requirement at 24 total hours. Florida, where in 2017 a teen gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and staff, requires the most initial training, at 144 hours.

The Florida also mandates that armed teachers must first undergo at least 12 hours of diversity training, a nod to the possibility that educators carrying weapons could be prone to racial bias.

���󾱴�’s includes no such requirement. 

In the legislation’s , constituents submitted over 380 written comments; 360 opposed the measure while just 20 favored it. Among the voices urging lawmakers to reject was Kavita Parikh, co-founder of Students Demand Action Toledo. She emphasized that it could harm Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Asian-American students.

“Arming teachers could lead to a negative culture of fear for students, especially students of color. As students of color are disproportionately disciplined, the notion of arming teachers has also been connected to decreasing high school graduation and college enrollment for these students,” she wrote.

‘You don’t pick threats based upon color’

Nationwide, GOP efforts to “harden” schools in response to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, have over the negative impact of disciplinary policies and school security staff on students of color. Even in preschool, a disproportionate share of Black students face suspensions, starting a chain of events known as the that increases their risk of entering the juvenile justice system later in life.

Several state legislators who backed the Ohio bill told ����Ӱ�� either they do not believe racial disparities to be a possible outcome of arming teachers or that they did not consider the issue in the first place.

“It’s not anything that I’ve thought about whatsoever,” state Rep. Tom Young, who co-sponsored the bill. Like Young, the overwhelming majority of GOP legislators who backed the bill are white. 

“No matter who, a threat is a threat. … You don’t pick threats based upon color,” he said.

Ohio, however, is the site of at least two police killings infamous for alleged racial bias. White officers shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 and 13-year-old Tyre King in 2016, both Black boys who were holding toy guns.

At the time, DeWine, then attorney general, called for an of police training on how to correctly identify an active shooter. 

Now as governor, his support for the new measure rolls back the preparation required for teachers to arm themselves on campus and respond to threats. 

“My office worked with the General Assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training. House Bill 99 accomplishes these goals, and I thank the General Assembly for passing this bill to protect Ohio children and teachers,” DeWine said in a statement to ����Ӱ��.

The specified 24 hours of training are “ideal” for school staff, said DeWine’s Press Secretary Dan Tierney. He did not comment on whether the omission of anti-bias requirements was an oversight, nor on what changed the governor’s mind since calling for increased police training in 2014.

The legislation comes after a June 2021 Ohio Supreme Court decision interpreted an already existing state law on arming teachers to mean school staff were required first to complete over 700 hours of training before carrying guns. While the new bill drops that number to 24, school districts can set a higher bar if they choose. Districts that adopt the policies will have to inform community members that an adult on campus is armed.

Among those opposed to the bill are the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio and numerous other groups.

The state did not have any known incidents of gun misuse, nor of teachers unfairly targeting students of color before the 2021 court ruling, Rep. Thomas Hall, the bill’s sponsor, pointed out in a message to ����Ӱ��.

‘Almost instant accessibility’

With a having gone into effect statewide June 13, teachers in districts that allow them to be armed could come to school with their gun tucked into a pocket, waistband or holster.

“What we don’t want, in my personal opinion, is for [teachers] to have to run down the hall to a locker and grab a weapon. That kind of defeats the purpose. … I would want to have [guns] in the classroom, if it’s the case of a teacher, so that they have access if somebody were to attack an individual classroom,” state Sen. Jerry Cirino, a co-sponsor of the bill, told ����Ӱ��.

“We’re going to have to find the right methods so that we have almost instant accessibility, because that’s how [school shootings] happen,” he continued, “but also not make it possible for a weapon to be grabbed by the wrong person in school, even accidentally.”

Firearms getting into the wrong hands is a concern held by many of the bill’s opponents. In other states, guns brought to school by teachers have ended up . In one case, a loaded gun fell out of the waistband of a Florida substitute teacher while he was on the playground.

Districts may adopt their own individual protocols for gun safety and storage under the guidance of a statewide advisory team, explained Hall.

He emphasized that the legislation includes mandated de-escalation training to avoid gun use as a means for resolving issues like school fights. 

Cirino, however, said he thinks there could be some circumstances where trained personnel would use firearms not on outside intruders, but on students — including when youth bring knives or guns to school.

When a student is wielding “any weapon that would be capable of threatening somebody’s life or serious injury, I think there could be a justification for an administrator or teacher to use a weapon,” he said.

He expects large buildings to have 10-12 staff carrying guns and smaller ones to have “not more than a half dozen” in districts that adopt the policies. Other legislators, like Rep. Young, stressed that he only expects smaller rural districts who do not have school resource officers on staff to move forward with arming educators.

Holderbaum, the Minerva English teacher, has been thinking about the potential real-world implications of the legislation in her 1,800-student district. 

A few years ago, her school did a police demonstration with live gunshots in the gym so staff could recognize the sound. From her classroom, she said, the noise seemed like bleachers being pulled out. It troubled her that the sound didn’t seem out of the ordinary. If teachers were wielding guns, she wondered, how would they differentiate between everyday noises from the gym or cafeteria and gunshots? Would they have to step into the hallway with their finger on the trigger every time they heard something loud? 

Doing so, she thinks, would create a culture of fear at school that undermines learning and student well-being.

“If I’m in the middle of teaching Emily Dickinson poetry and I hear this noise and I decide to draw a loaded gun and go into the hallway, that’s going to traumatize my kids,” she said. 

“I don’t want that to become commonplace where they’re used to seeing a teacher pull a gun out.”