Earlier this month, Mayor Kelly Girtz announced that, for the first time, Athens had made it through half the year without a single murder. “This has been a team effort with ACCPD, every community support organization, and every resident,” he posted on social media. “We continue to strive for improvements, but this is a huge accomplishment.”
That does not mean, however, that Athens no longer has a gun violence problem. From 2021–2024, there were 436 shootings in Athens, wounding or killing 138 people, according to the gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action.
“We still have these issues,” Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Tiffany Taylor told Flagpole following a town hall meeting on gun violence July 26 at the Miriam Moore Community Center. “With the efforts we’ve put into place, it’s good to see a decline, but we still have a long way to go.”
Taylor has been touched by gun violence both as a mother and an elected official. Last year, her teenage son snuck out of the house to go to an unsupervised house party, where a cousin accidentally shot him in the chest while playing with a gun. That incident came on the heels of a drive-by shooting in her district where gang members killed a 3-year-old.
During the pandemic, Taylor started the nonprofit Mothers of Black Sons to help Black boys in her neighborhood socialize while homeschooling. But when schools reopened, she said she noticed a change in her son. “His friends were a lot cooler than me,” she said. “Whatever they said trumps Mom.”
Taylor and other speakers stressed the importance of proper gun storage and teaching children to handle firearms safely. “The mentality is, the bigger the gun, the more of a man you are, or if you can shoot a gun, that makes you a man,” she said.
In schools, Danny Malec, executive director of the Georgia Conflict Center, advocated for a restorative justice approach. The nonprofit worked with former district attorney Deborah Gonzalez, and had a contract with the Clarke County School District to adjudicate disputes between students from 2019–2021. “We saw a 50% reduction in violence and aggression,” Malec said. “Then there was no budget for that anymore, and we saw violence and aggression [return].”
While Malec suggested addressing the root causes of violence, like poverty, and Taylor addressed the need for community centers and youth programs in every neighborhood, there is little Athens-Clarke County can do legislatively to regulate guns. At one point, Moms Demand Action approached Girtz about passing an ordinance requiring guns to be stored in a lockbox, but the county attorney advised him that it would be unconstitutional under Georgia’s “pre-emption law,” which prohibits local governments from passing restrictive gun laws, according to gun safety activist Marisue Hilliard. Savannah did pass such a law, and is arguing in court that pre-emption does not apply to storage, she said.
Meanwhile, on the state level, the legislature continues to pass laws loosening restrictions on guns, such as permitless carry and allowing guns on many parts of college campuses. “Even though Moms Demand Action is nonpartisan, I’m going to tell you what the problem is: Georgia is dominated by Republicans,” said Hilliard, who ran against state Sen. Bill Cowsert (R-Athens) in 2018. (Cowsert was one of the few Republicans who voted against campus carry in 2017.)
Moms Demand Action supports four gun laws currently in the legislature’s hopper: One would make it a crime to leave a loaded gun within reach of a minor; one would provide a tax credit for gun storage devices; one would require background checks for nearly all firearms transfers; and one would require a three-day waiting period for most gun purchases.
“The only way we’re going to get good gun laws is to elect more Democrats,” Hilliard said. She urged attendees to call elected officials, donate to or volunteer for candidates who support such laws, or to run for office themselves. Taylor also excoriated Republicans for shredding the social safety net.
About 50 people attended the town hall meeting, including commissioners Melissa Link and Dexter Fisher. Lamar Handy, founder of the DL Handy Foundation, lamented that most of them were white, even though gun violence affects the Black community more. “Not having a lot of African Americans here to listen to this, it bothers me,” he said.
Handy’s organization sponsored the second annual “Rally Up, Guns Down” event at Walker Park the following day, where morticians paraded their hearses to illustrate that they’ve buried too many victims of gun violence, whether murders, suicides, accidents or mental health crises. “Our young people are losing their lives, losing their freedom at an all-time high,” he said.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
