Georgia doesn't have a mandatory storage law of any kind. We're told this is a problem because it means there's nothing to stop parents from being irresponsible with their guns and allowing their troubled children to have access to them.

Now, mandatory storage laws only work to punish people after the fact as many people are going to be unaware that locking up their guns is required, but we're told we need those or else there are no repercussions for irresponsible parents.

And Georgia has no such law.

Yeah, about that...

Georgia officials charged the father of the suspected Apalachee High gunman with two counts of second-degree murder Thursday — the most severe ever filed against the parent of an alleged school shooter. The arrest came less than 36 hours after two students and a pair of teachers were gunned down with an AR-15-style rifle that, investigators allege, the man allowed his 14-year-old son to possess.

Along with murder, Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children. His son, [the alleged killer], has been charged with four felony counts of murder.

The father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon. His charges are directly connected to the actions of his son,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at an evening news conference where he provided no other details on what led to the charging decision — or its remarkable speed.

There were warning signs before Wednesday’s attack, according to law enforcement officials and family members.

A year ago, local investigators interviewed Gray and his son about alleged online threats the teen had made to shoot up a school, accusations that [the alleged shooter] denied at the time. This week, the boy’s aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post that the teen had been “begging” the adults around him for mental health support in recent months.

Before Thursday’s announcement, the teen’s grandfather, Charles Polhamus, said he wanted Colin Gray charged along with his son.

“If he didn’t have a damn gun,” Polhamus said, “he wouldn’t have gone and killed anybody.”

The alleged killer's family on his mother's side seem to have been rather public about how the boy was severely troubled and had been crying out for help. It seems those cries were literal rather than a euphemism for red flags.

Regardless, those cries were not heeded, which puts at least some responsibility on the parents.

We also have to remember that when the FBI spoke to the family in 2023, Colin Gray told them that he had some hunting rifles but that his son didn't have access to them. Either something changed in that time, which is unlikely, or he lied to the FBI.

Now, I'm not going to absolve the FBI. Ryan Petty has a great piece talking about that from Thursday and you all should read it. However, if Gray lied to agents and local law enforcement, that's on him.

It seems that despite the visit from law enforcement, Colin Gray bought his son an AR-15 for Christmas later that year.

Still, the charges against Gray are significant. He's being charged for murders he actually didn't commit, but we saw this before in Michigan with the Crumbleys. Plus, it's not unusual to charge people with a homicide someone else commits when their own actions contributed. For example, the getaway driver in an armed robbery can be charged with murder even though he stayed in the car.

One can argue this isn't all that different.

Especially since he bought a gun for a kid who was apparently screaming out for help, who had been visited by the FBI after allegedly making a threat to carry out a mass shooting, and absolutely nothing was done.

The problem here wasn't a lack of background checks or the lack of a mandatory storage law. Even an assault weapon ban wouldn't have done anything because Gray would have just bought another gun for his son, most likely. Laws weren't what failed here.

Gray failed. He failed as a parent.

Buying your kid a gun is one thing, but when they need help, get them the freaking help they need. There's no shame in getting that help and the stigma against mental illness needs to be removed. People who need help should get it. This tragedy might have been averted if a 14-year-old who had been crying out for it had actually gotten it.