by Jill Nolin and Ross Williams, Georgia Recorder March 31, 2025
A bill originally designed to encourage safe gun storage now includes a controversial tax break on firearm purchases, and a proposed database that was seen as the central element of a school safety bill has been dropped in response to privacy concerns.
The compromises were forged as lawmakers head into the final week of the 2025 legislative session – the first since a 14-year-old accused gunman killed two other students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in September.
Lawmakers have until this Friday to send bills to the governor, who then has 40 days to decide whether to sign them into law.
Safe storage incentive spliced with sales tax holiday for guns, accessories
A House bill that would have created a $300 income tax break for firearm safes and other safe storage devices now only applies to gun safety training.
And the bill – which had passed overwhelmingly in the House and with bipartisan support – has been spliced together with a Senate bill creating a sales tax holiday in October for the purchase of firearms, ammunition and other accessories, like scopes and magazines – as well as gun safes.
The Senate Finance Committee advanced the measure Friday.
Rep. Mark Newton (right), an Augusta Republican, and Dallas Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte talk about a compromise they struck over rival proposals to offer tax breaks for gun safes and firearms. The Senate Finance Committee advanced the bill over the objection of some Democrats. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder
A similar version of the Senate bill, sponsored by Dallas Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte, passed in the Senate this session with a party-line vote. The proposal originally called for an 11-day tax holiday, but it has been shrunk to a four-day window under the compromise.
The House proposal stalled largely over concerns among Second Amendment advocates that the tax incentive would create a registry or a record of who benefited from it.
Rep. Mark Newton, an Augusta Republican who is the bill’s sponsor, said Friday that the proposal is a way to promote gun safety training in a “Second Amendment-friendly way” while also saving taxpayers money.
Democrats immediately objected.
“We took a responsible gun ownership bill and turned it into a gun proliferation bill,” Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat, said after the committee vote Friday.
Republicans dismissed those concerns.
“Isn’t true if you’re going to buy a safe that you need to buy a gun to put in it,” said Sen. Steve Gooch, a Dahlonega Republican who serves as Senate majority leader.
Not all Democrats opposed the bill, though. Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, a Marietta Democrat, voted for it because he said sees it as “a start.”
“Anything that will promote gun safety is a good start,” Rhett said.
House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican, told reporters Friday that he still thought “the larger picture is being accomplished, and that’s to ensure that we have gun storage, gun safety devices that are available to Georgians.”
“I just want to see us get something done,” Burns said.
Gun safety advocates who spoke at an already-planned press conference at the state Capitol Friday blasted the compromise. Rep. Michelle Au, a Johns Creek Democrat who has pushed for gun storage requirements, said HB 79 has been “essentially completely neutered.”
“I’m not exactly sure what this bill aims to do at this point,” Au said Friday. “I don’t know if they think that the activists who are here and the students and the families that are listening are stupid enough to think that this is action on gun safety.”
Heather Hallett, the founder and director of Georgia Majority for Gun Safety, said the House measure went from a promotion of safe storage to “a tax bill related to guns and related gun products.”
“We have a problem with safe storage (in Georgia) and the fact that our Legislature, after the worst school shooting in Georgia’s history, cannot unequivocally take up some legislation to say Georgians should adopt safe storage practices – that’s a real statement of where our Legislature stands on gun safety,” Hallett said.
House Republicans have also revived a controversial Senate proposal that targets a Savannah ordinance penalizing gun owners who leave their firearms in unlocked vehicles. If passed, someone facing a fine would be able to sue the city for as much as $25,000 in damages. That measure was added to Senate Bill 204 last week.
Database cut from high-priority school safety bill
Burns’ signature school safety bill passed unanimously through a Senate committee Thursday, but with some key elements stripped out.
One of the most controversial aspects of House Bill 268 was the creation of a statewide database of information on students who might pose a threat to school safety. That provision was removed after an outcry from parents and child advocates who worried that youthful mistakes or behaviors caused by disabilities could follow a student and harm their future opportunities.
Sen. Bill Cowsert. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
“An amazing number of parents, particularly of teenage boys, who, by definition, they are immature and compulsive and do dumb things were fearful that their child might end up having a stigma attached to them of having a record that would go with them permanently about some stupid comment, threat, or behavior they had done as a teenager when, in fact, they were really not criminal, never engaged in criminal behavior, just immature behavior,” said Athens Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate.
The bill, which is 57 pages long, still touches myriad aspects of school safety. It would require public schools to implement a panic button system and share data with local law enforcement including school maps.
It would also require schools to more quickly share data when a student transfers, a response to the Apalachee shooting in which the accused gunman had allegedly been interviewed by the FBI in connection with shooting threats at a different school in another district more than a year before the attack.
“You can see this is an extraordinarily comprehensive approach to addressing the known problems we have with school violence,” Cowsert said Thursday to his Senate colleagues. “And hopefully, with God’s help, we won’t have another Apalachee in this state.”
The bill will have to go back to both the House and Senate by April 4 if it is to become law this year.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Burns was comfortable with the bill’s chances and about the database being removed from the bill.
“This is a great process we have up here,” he said. “I think we all come together, we deal with the facts, sometimes we have a little different viewpoints, and final passage of anything is never the final statement on it. So, we look forward to working with the Senate next week, and I believe they’ll get school safety across the finish line, and I know that it will offer protections for our students in Georgia for a safe learning place.”
Though the measure passed the Senate committee unanimously, some still hope to see the bill changed before it heads to the chambers.
Rep. Michelle Au speaks at a press conference Friday. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
Some child advocates say parts of the bill calling for trial as an adult for teenagers charged with making terroristic threats against a school could sweep children, especially children of color, into the justice system for youthful behavior.
Au said she is grateful that Burns is prioritizing safety in schools, but she’s disappointed the bill makes no mention of firearms despite concerns about the danger of shootings.
“When we talked about the cell phone bans in schools, which was presented as a bill to increase student performance and concentration and reduce distractions in schools, most of the objections I heard about that bill reverted back to the argument about school safety and how are kids going to call us if there’s a school shooting?” she said.
Au was referring to House Bill 340, a ban on personal devices for students through middle school, which passed both chambers and is awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature. Several lawmakers indicated that they agree with the principle of removing cell phones in schools to increase student focus but said the idea of a child not being able to call 911 or text loved ones in case of an emergency gave them pause.
“Everyone’s thinking about it,” Au said. “I it’s a really conspicuous omission therefore to have any legislative push, an omnibus bill that has many different aspects to it addressing school safety, but to leave out the most obvious piece of it that any parent or any student will tell you is top of mind.”
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www.thecentersquare.com – By Thérèse Boudreaux | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-01 14:18:00
(The Center Square) – A Biden-era rule placing greater constraints on millions of legal American gun owners could be struck down if newly introduced Republican legislation becomes law.
Companion bills introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., would undo a 2023 ruling by the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that classified pistols modified with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles and thus placed them under the National Firearms Act.
The action required all owners of pistols modified with stabilizing braces to pay a $200 fee, register their name with the U.S. Department of Justice and obtain federal approval to construct or transfer a short-barreled rifle or short-barreled shotgun.
“‘Shall not be infringed’ is crystal clear – and the Biden-era abuses of the Constitutionally protected rights of gun owners across the country need to be undone,” Marshall said in a statement Tuesday. “The SHORT Act takes a step toward rolling back nonsensical regulations that the National Firearms Act has placed upon gun owners.”
A 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that between 10 and 40 million stabilizing braces and similar components are in civilian hands. Supporters of the rule say it will increase safety.
Both the Gun Owners of America and the National Association of Gun Rights, who called the Biden-era rule unconstitutional when it was implemented, expressed support for the legislation.
“The SHORT Act is a long overdue step toward restoring the rights of Americans, freeing gun owners from the burdensome and outdated regulations of the National Firearms Act,” NAGR political affairs director Hunter King said. “By removing short-barreled rifles, shotguns, and similar firearms from egregious federal regulations, gun owners would be able to exercise their Second Amendment freedoms without oppressive government interference.”
SUMMARY: Georgia lawmakers have agreed on a school safety bill, following the Apalachee High shooting. House Bill 268 would create a statewide alert system to track students investigated for violent threats or actions at school. Initially, the bill included records from law enforcement, schools, and child welfare, but these were excluded after pushback. The database, run by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, would be accessible only to selected school officials. Critics fear it could unfairly target minority students. The system’s implementation depends on funding, with lawmakers at odds over the $25 million proposed for its development.
The Senate and House gave final approval to House Bill 268 on Monday.
Georgia is the only state with the death penalty that requires defendants to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are intellectually disabled to be spared execution – a high legal standard that no one charged with intentional murder has cleared.
But that would change under a bill that is now sitting on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk that would lower the standard of proof.
Advocates have pushed for the change for two decades, but a south Georgia lawmaker, Glennville Republican state Rep. Bill Werkheiser, was able to convince his colleagues that the state’s law was incompatible with the constitution’s prohibition against executing people who are intellectually disabled.
Werkheiser often pointed to a 2021 Georgia Supreme Court case where a judge wrote in a dissenting opinion that using the highest possible burden of proof increases the risk that someone with an intellectual disability is executed.
House Bill 123 lowers the standard of proof for proving someone has an intellectual disability to a preponderance of the evidence, ending Georgia’s outlier status as the only state that requires beyond a reasonable doubt.
The measure also creates a pre-trial hearing where a judge would focus only on the question of whether the defendant is intellectually disabled. Today, a jury is determining whether a defendant is intellectually disabled at the same time they are hearing grisly details about the alleged crime and deciding the person’s guilt or innocence.
The bill was changed in the Senate to require 60 days of information sharing between the prosecution and defense before the newly created pretrial hearing. Prosecutors had fought the pretrial hearing, arguing it was adding another step in an already lengthy legal process.
And it also now requires defendants who prove they are intellectually disabled but are found guilty will be sentenced to life in prison or life without the possibility of parole. Defense attorneys and others opposed adding life without the possibility of parole as an option.
“A life sentence in Georgia must be served for a minimum 30 years before a person can even be considered for parole, and that’s considered, not necessarily released,” Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director and policy advocate with the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said to lawmakers last month.
The bill sailed through the Senate Monday and was finalized by the end of the day in the House. The proposal also drew support from Catholic groups and a tag-team advocacy effort from the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities and Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The Southern Center for Human Rights, which has long advocated for changes to Georgia’s law, celebrated the bill’s passage Monday and is already planning the party.
“This change will put Georgia in line with twenty-six other states that have protections for people with intellectual disability,” said Terrica Redfield Ganzy, the center’s executive director. “We are deeply grateful to Chairman Werkheiser for his compassion and leadership on this issue. It is our honor to partner with him on this effort.”
Werkheiser, who chairs the House Industry and Labor Committee, has developed a special interest in the state’s prison system and the people involved in it, recently visiting all the state’s prisons. He sponsored a version of the bill last year that went nowhere and spent the last year working to work through reservations about the changes.
He thanked House leadership and the lawmakers in the committees who spent time this session getting the bill done.
“There were so many advocacy groups that joined along the way that were not only encouraging, but provided assistance in so many ways. It was a team effort from so many,” Werkheiser said Monday.
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