Georgia School Shooting: Domestic Terrorism Conspicuously Missing From Discourse, Criminal Charges

Last week’s deadly mass shooting at a high school in Georgia has been described in myriad terms, many of which have been sympathetic toward a teenager accused of murdering two of his classmates and two teachers while injuring at least nine others.

Colt Gray – who allegedly used a powerful assault rifle to carry out the carnage on Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School – had a “troubled home life,” local news outlet Fox 5 reported.

MORE: We Need To Talk About Colt Gray And His White Privilege After The Georgia School Shooting

WSB-TV, which initially posted a photo of the lone Black victim in the shooting while misidentifying Gray, wanted its readers to know that the prime suspect’s grandfather vaguely blamed his grandson’s “environment” for circumstances that led to the violence.

The New York Post made sure to report that Gray apologized to his mother before going to the school in Winder, a city located about 52 miles northeast of Atlanta, and killing four people and shooting others.

There are plenty of other reports attempting to humanize Gray – who, again, is accused of targeting and killing other humans – as nothing more than a confused boy who acted hastily.

Conspicuously missing from the conversations and reports (and criminal charges) about Gray and the shooting is the topic of domestic terrorism –  particularly involving white suspects – which has routinely been found to be the common denominator for mass shootings in the U.S., both over the course of history and especially in recent years.

Gray stands charged as an adult with four counts of murder while his father, Colin Gray, 54, was arrested on Thursday and charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder for giving the alleged murder weapon to his son as a gift.

But the duo has thus far avoided being accused of domestic terrorism despite Georgia, in particular, having a recent history of applying its domestic terrorism law to cases in which suspects are accused of doing far less than shooting and murdering children and teachers.

Just last year, for example, several peaceful protesters demonstrating against the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, an 85-acre police and firefighter training facility derisively called “Cop City” by its opponents, were prosecuted under Georgia’s domestic terrorism law.

But the law has also been applied to cases involving other mass shootings. Including in 2021 when Robert Aaron Long wa indicted on aggravated assault and domestic terrorism charges in a mass shooting at an Atlanta spa where four women were killed.

“Lady Justice in this community is blind,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told reporters of the charges. “It does not matter your ethnicity, it does not matter the side of the tracks you come from, it does not matter your wealth. You will be treated as an individual with value.”

However, when it comes to Gray, the suspected Apalachee High School shooter, the threshold for similarly bringing domestic terror charges has somehow not been met.

Law enforcement has not announced a motivation for the Apalachee High School shooting.

There is no federal domestic terrorism law on the books.

Past accused domestic terrorists include Payton Gendron, the gunman convicted of targeting and killing Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York; Anthony Quinn Warner, who in 2020 loaded his RV with explosives in downtown Nashville and detonated it Christmas morning, only to kill himself and no one else; Patrick Crucius, who killed at least 15 people at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, in 2019; and Dylann Roof, who killed nine parishioners in a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

There is a precedent for bringing domestic terrorism charges for a school shooting.

Notably, in 2021, Michigan prosecutors charged Ethan Crumbley, 15, with violating the state’s anti-terrorism statute for a shooting spree at Oxford High School in which three students were killed and at least eight others were injured. Months later, Crumbley pleaded guilty to one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder and more than a dozen other related charges.

“We are not aware of any other case anywhere in the country where a mass shooter has been convicted of terrorism on state charges,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said after Crumbley’s guilty plea. “No one has ever been convicted of similar charges under these circumstances, an act of targeted violence like this.”

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for Eastern Michigan who teaches at the University of Michigan law school, told NBC News that such charges could be “a new way” for prosecutors to hold accountable gun violence suspects.

“We may now see, at least, consideration by prosecutors for seeking these charges, because it is important, I think, to recognize the trauma that has been inflicted upon a community,” McQuade said.

Apparently, that is not true in Georgia.

At least one state has taken steps to protect domestic terrorists.

In January, the Idaho state Senate voted 27-8 to pass Senate Bill 1220, which defines “domestic terrorism” and terrorism in general as only being associated with foreign groups, effectively eliminating the possibility of a U.S. citizen facing terrorism charges in the U.S.

This is America.

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