I have walked the halls of Apalachee High School many times, years before I watched video of students, arms raised, being escorted out of the building by law enforcement officers in tactical gear. 

I have covered many football games on the Wildcats’ field where students congregated Sept. 4 in the wake of the latest school shooting, which cost the lives of two students and two teachers. 

For most of the years between 2009 and 2016, I covered Barrow County, Georgia, for the Barrow County News. Now, the small northeast Georgia county and its charming small city of Winder are known for the same awful reasons my former home of Littleton, Colorado, is known: as the site of a school shooting. 

It’s an incredible community that adopted me as a part of it, and when I left as the editor of the twice-weekly in 2016, it was one of the hardest moments of my life. Last Wednesday, as I followed the news and looked for updates from friends still in the area, I wished I was there, wished I was able to have attended the candlelight vigil that night at Jug Tavern Park. 

My heart goes out to all of those in Barrow County and to those most affected at Apalachee High School. I know the Chee Nation will withstand even this. 

The tragedy has also made me once again reevaluate the safety of my own kids in the local school system. I noticed one of the important elements of the tragedy was in how quickly it was stopped, which likely kept it from approaching the level of deaths indicative of Parkland, Sandy Hook, Columbine and Uvalde, the shootings everyone can name. The school resource officer, with his life in danger, was able to disarm the 14-year-old shooter. That heroic deputy, combined with the security features of the school (including locking doors on classrooms) and the heroics of teachers and students who blocked off classrooms, are an important takeaway from what happened. 

In this instance, a trained good guy with a gun did most certainly stop a shooting before it could get worse.

Here in Park County School District 1, our safety plan is set to undergo a review. As part of this the district may look into adopting a concealed carry policy for staff as is used in Cody, although they noted at a meeting last month legislation similar to last year’s concealed carry bill will likely appear during this year’s session.

I hope everyone looks to this latest tragedy and remembers the important point, that someone already in the school, armed and trained, was able to react quickly and save lives. 

The solution may be what Cody has instituted, it may also be another SRO (as good as ours is, he can’t be everywhere at once). But the lessons of what happened at Apalachee High School, the good and the bad, ought not to be forgotten.