UGA and Athens community consider implications of gun legislation

May 5, 2021 — Georgia’s 2021 legislative session and federal executive orders involving gun laws have prompted discussion among University of Georgia students and the Athens community.

No legislation either promoting or restricting access to guns passed the Georgia General Assembly during this year’s session, leaving state legislators at a stalemate. Despite this, the debate around gun access continues to rage in the state.

Gun sales across the country boomed during the coronavirus pandemic, with federal background checks issued in 2020 up by more than 10 million from 2019.

Following a pair of mass shootings in March, one killing eight in the Atlanta area and another killing 10 in Boulder, Colorado, President Joe Biden issued several executive orders to tighten gun control. These orders involve targeting the spread of untraceable ghost guns, reducing the use of stabilizing braces on concealed weapons, creating a national “red flag” law, investing in community violence intervention programs, renewing an annual report on firearms trafficking and appointing a director to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Georgia legislation

Moms Demand Action hosted a Zoom legislative session review on April 14 in which Georgia State Sen. Michelle Au said she thought public safety and gun legislation were intertwined.

“It's always mystified me why we've presented it as this partisan divide because it is very clearly a public health and public safety issue,” Au said. She said if gun violence were treated as any other risk factor that affects many people, it would be fixed rapidly.

Au introduced several bills during the 2021 legislative session that aimed to curb gun violence by implementing tighter restrictions on gun purchases. A woman of Asian descent, Au was particularly moved to take legislative action following the three Atlanta-area spa shootings on March 16, where the majority of deaths were women of Asian descent.

Au said the Asian American and Pacific Islander Georgia legislators got together to discuss taking action and “did not want to just talk about this issue, but wanted to actually carry it through to something that was actually going to be productive and to keep our communities safer.”

The firearm used in the March 16 Atlanta shootings had been purchased only hours before the shootings occurred, inspiring Au to propose Senate Bill 309, which would require a mandatory five-day waiting period between the purchase and transfer of certain firearms, similar to requirements held by several other states.

Au said waiting periods seek to defuse crimes of passion, and Emma Jones, the Athens Chapter Leader of Moms Demand Action, a nationwide movement that advocates for public safety measures to prevent gun violence, said they are crucial to lowering gun suicide rates.

“A lot of people who are contemplating suicide will go purchase a gun and then very shortly thereafter kill themselves,” Jones said. “If you can delay that, they have time to get help and to get out of [a] crisis.”

Background checks

Every gun sale through a Federal Firearms Licensee is required by federal law to involve a background check, which is Franklin Gun Shop owner Mark Franklin’s argument as to why waiting periods are unnecessary. Biden’s April 8 speech mentioned the “gun show loophole,” which refers to the fact that private gun sales, including some sales at gun shows, do not federally require a background check.

State law on private sales varies across the country. Thirteen states require universal background checks, meaning background checks on all gun sales, not just those through a federally-licensed seller. Georgia is not one of those states.

Au introduced Senate Bill 179 during the legislative session to try to reduce this loophole in Georgia. The bill calls for a universal background check system to be enacted.

“It's something we already do. We don't have to invent it. We don't have to come up with any system,” Jones said. “We just have to make sure that every gun sale goes through a criminal background check, which doesn't seem like a big ask.”

Opposing restriction fights

Though Au is on a mission to tighten gun control in Georgia, other state legislators introduced multiple bills during the session that would loosen restrictions.

House Bill 218, for example, would allow nonresidents of Georgia to carry a firearm as long as they are licensed in another state. Georgia’s current reciprocity system honors permits only from states that honor Georgia’s permits.

Franklin said Georgia’s permitting laws are “pretty relaxed” compared to other states, and he believes it should remain that way because “they can't put limitations on constitutional rights.”

Moms Demand Action worked with Au to amend HB 218 and have it sent back for review. After the Atlanta spa shootings, the bill was not brought back up by legislators.

Despite no restrictions to gun access passing in the state, Jones said she was pleased that no bills loosening restrictions passed, either.

“Inaction is kind of a win for us because for years, a gun lobby got their bills passed with no problem,” Jones said. “For the past four years, they have not managed to get a single what we call ‘bad gun bill’ through, and we like to take credit for that.”

Federal legislation

Dalton Sherrod, vice president of UGA’s chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit organization whose aim is to educate students about free markets and limited government, said he is concerned about government overreach following Biden’s executive orders.

“Members of the executive branch have no grounds speaking on whether amendments are absolute,” Sherrod said, referring to comments from Biden’s April 8 speech in which the orders were outlined. “The founders would’ve been terrified by that thought.”

Other community members rallied behind Biden’s actions. Jones said she thinks all of the executive orders will help save lives.

“The ones that will probably have the biggest impact in Georgia are the funding for community violence interruption programs,” Jones said. “Those are very important for people living in places where violence is rampant on an everyday basis. They need community intervention right here, right now.”

Contrarily, Franklin says the gun-specific agenda items are senseless. His shop sells kits that can be purchased without a background check and include parts that can be used to assemble guns at home, known as ghost guns because of their lack of serial number and ability to be traced.

A ghost gun was used in a high school shooting in Santa Clarita, California, that killed two students in 2019. Franklin says the kits account for such a small part of his sales, though, and that ghost guns are hard enough to assemble that they don’t pose a real threat to the public.

“Ban them, or don’t ban them. We don't care,” Franklin said. “We laugh when they come up. It's more of a hobbyist thing.”

As a whole, Franklin said he does not believe guns and crime are correlated and therefore does not think gun control helps assure public safety.

“Saying guns cause crime would be like saying chocolate cake causes obesity,” Franklin said. “Guns are used in crime, but criminals cause crime.”