Georgia school shooting: Harris seeks action, Trump slams 'sick monster'

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has implored Americans to bring a halt to the "epidemic of gun violence" plaguing the United States, after a mass shooting at a Georgia high school left four dead.

The US vice president also reiterated on Wednesday her call for an assault-weapons ban and support for the further tightening of US gun safety laws.

"This is just a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies," Harris said of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the latest spasm of gun violence to impact a country that has already seen hundreds of mass shootings this year.

"And it's just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive," she added.

"We have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. It doesn't have to be this way," Harris said.

Harris, a onetime prosecutor and attorney general of California and former US senator, called on Congress to "finally" pass an assault weapons ban, similar to the one current President Joe Biden helped write as a senator and get passed into law in 1994.

14-year-old suspect in police custody

Republican US presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump called the perpetrator "sick and deranged monster."

"Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA," the former president posted on his Truth Social platform. "These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster."

Georgia authorities have said that the suspect in Wednesday's shooting will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, according to Reuters news agency.

The suspect was a 14-year-old student and two of the four people killed were fellow pupils, authorities said.

"Of those that are deceased, two were students and two were teachers here at the school," said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "The shooter is in custody... He is a fourteen year old student here at the high school."

The school shooting was just the latest among dozens across the US in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills in classrooms.