Georgia marked the second anniversary of the deadly 2024 Apalachee High School shooting as Apalachee Remembrance Day while drawing calls for state leaders to move beyond commemorations and enact measures to prevent another tragedy.

Gov. Brian Kemp gathered with Apalachee High School families, community members affected by the 2024 shooting and law enforcement Thursday after issuing a proclamation marking Sept. 4, 2026, as a day of remembrance, honoring the victims and celebrating law enforcement for their response to the school shooting. The Sept. 4, 2024, shooting in the Winder high school left two students and two teachers dead and nine other students injured.

“Two years on, the pain of Sept. 4 is still here, and it will continue to be for quite some time. But the people of Winder and Barrow County are also still here, showing up every day, working to help each other and putting one foot in front of the other as we all move forward while never forgetting,” Kemp said at a press conference Thursday.

“To all the first responders here today who were there on Sept. 4, as parents of three daughters, Marty and I want to say thank you,” he added, referring to first lady Marty Kemp. “Thank you for rushing toward the danger to save the lives of children, teachers and staff. To all the families who are with us, who were impacted directly or indirectly by that shooting, thank you as well for your courage, for your perseverance, and for your enduring strength through the tears of heartfelt pain.” 

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Layla Contreras, whose sister and mother were inside the school building during the attack, now leads Change for Chee, a community group advocating for preventative safety laws. She said she was grateful for Kemp’s proclamation but said that state leaders need to accompany the ceremonial day with legislative action. She added that Georgia Democrats and Republicans should be more focused on finding a middle ground on measures to prevent the next shooting because “we can have the best reactionary response we can have, and we saw that during Apalachee’s shooting.”

 “Those are reactive measures. We want proactive measures,” she said.

In 2025, Kemp signed a school safety bill that combined measures including requirements for information sharing between districts and the installation of panic buttons in schools, but critics said the bill did nothing to prevent children from acquiring guns and bringing them to school.

Contreras, saying that the state needs a “multi-layered” approach to addressing gun safety, pointing to bipartisan measures she was disappointed that failed to become law in the years since the shooting, like a bill mandating weapon detection systems at public schools sponsored by state House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, a Mulberry Republican, and bills either providing a tax credit for safety devices like trigger locks or gun safes or mandating firearm safe storage sponsored by Johns Creek Democrat state Rep. Michelle Au.

Georgia Democrats renew push for safe gun storage on school shooting anniversary

“I think they should pair safe storage laws and metal detectors and weapon detections together. I think together that would help with being able to define again what safety looks like,” Contreras said.

Au plans to reintroduce the measures again in the upcoming legislative session and said in an interview that she hopes the legislation at least gets a committee hearing, which is the first step before it can be voted on by the full House.

“I will bring it back as often, and every year that it requires, and until it passes or until the legislature gives it the fair hearing it deserves,” Au said, calling it a “conspicuous omission” that in the two years since the shooting there was “absolutely no discussion in the legislature on an issue that I think anyone would reasonably ask, which is ‘how could this 14-year-old get access to this gun in the first place?’”

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