Georgia’s House Speaker to address school violence in next General Assembly session

ATLANTA — Georgia’s House Speaker Jon Burns is telling Channel 2 Action News about his plans to fight school violence during the next legislative session.

Channel 2′s Richard Elliot spoke with both Republicans and Democrats at the State Capitol about their proposed changes.

Despite some significant differences, there’s agreement on a few measures, including gun safety storage legislation.

“I’m still offering our prayers for those families and praying for those to heal,” said Burns, reflecting on the tragedy at Apalachee High School that happened two weeks ago.

Burns, whose wife was a school principal, shared his concerns for student safety.

Burns sent a letter to the House Republican Caucus outlining his plans for the next session.

These include evaluating new security systems and technology to detect weapons before they enter schools, expanding mental health services for students, offering tax incentives for safe gun storage devices, and increasing penalties for making terroristic threats.

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He also wants to implement more laws holding parents responsible for their children’s criminal actions.

“We’ll take a hard look at making sure that parents have a responsibility, but we’re also going to look at just the avalanche of terrorist threats that are coming into the school system now,” Burns said.

Democratic State Senator Elena Parent supports the gun safety storage laws but insists the Republican majority needs to consider red flag laws and universal background checks to ensure student safety.

“It’s extraordinarily tragic and also sadly utterly predictable,” Parent said. “I hope it will cause some of my Republican colleagues to think more deeply about joining us in some gun violence prevention legislation.”

When asked about these proposals, Burns said he prefers to focus on issues he believes can get passed, such as the gun storage safety law.

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