Seven shot, five dead, one day. Let’s talk about guns.

The younger man, a 20-year-old with a history of arrests and violent behavior, shot 43-year-old Melvin James Dodson, described as a friendly regular who may have had a few too many. Dodson would later die from his injuries.

Later that day, a teacher at Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta picked up a backpack left on the gym floor. The student who owned it rushed the teacher and assaulted her trying to retrieve it. Inside was a handgun, say police.

Within minutes of that incident came word of a DeKalb home-invasion in which a father and his 4-year-old son cowered in a closet after four teen-aged burglars kicked in the door to their apartment. One burglar opened the closet. The father shot and killed him. The others fled but were later arrested.

Before dinner, Channel 2 Action News reported that an 11-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself when he discovered a handgun while playing in a Norcross home. His 9-year-old playmate was unharmed. Physically at least.

And the night ended with four people shot in Elberton, Ga. A man shot his girlfriend and a woman who was helping her escape him. He fired at their car as they sped away. They both survived gunshots. But the man turned the gun on his girlfriend’s 17-year-old daughter, who was left behind. He killed her before killing himself.

Five incidents. Seven shot. Five dead. Just another Friday in Georgia that illustrates our relationship with guns. A firearm in one household saves a child. A firearm in another leaves one dead. An argument among strangers ends in death. An incident between lovers ends the same way, with an innocent child gunned down out of spite.

What’s remarkable is how unremarkable these incidents have become.

It’s one of the reasons a group of reporters and editors here at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, lead by Senior Editor Richard Halicks, want to lead a meaningful, public discussion about guns.

The political debate over guns is at an impasse. There’s a hopeless deadlock — fueled by monied interests, partisan politics and fear. The shrillest voices, who either want sweeping new laws to ban guns or want to dismantle all restrictions and allow unfettered access to them, drown out the rest of us. America, and Georgia, are somewhere in the middle.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution would like to lead a conversation aimed at pragmatism and accountability.

So let's have that conversation. To that end, we built a web page, Armed Georgia, that is a landing spot for an occasional series of reporting that will provide information, exploration and debate on gun ownership in Georgia that reflects the vast middle ground. In Georgia, we own guns. So let's talk about how we use them. Let's talk about what's working and what's not working. Our goal is to create a full and illuminating conversation that lays out the facts about how guns are used and misused, manufactured, procured, regulated and tracked in Georgia. How do those laws and regulations serve us? And what can we do better?

In our first installment, veteran reporter Rhonda Cook shows how Georgia gives discretion to judges on how and when to apply a federal law that prohibits anyone convicted of domestic violence from owning firearms. How this law is applied in Georgia depends on where you live. This reporting underscores how even widely agreed-upon gun restrictions, adopted at the federal level, can be confusing, unevenly enforced, influenced by politics and subject to differing views on the absolute nature of the Second Amendment.

It also shows that when it comes to guns, there are few agnostics.

So let me be clear about where I stand. It might help explain why I think this project is timely and worthwhile.

I am a gun owner. I come from a Southern family of gun owners, the son of a Marine who believes in his right to bear arms. When I joined the military, I showed up to basic training at NTC San Diego in 1989 ready to pass my firearms test. My daddy saw to it. He expected his sons to protect his home when he was away.

But I also remember the night when I was about 10 years old and we learned the awful news that my uncle was shot and killed in a dispute at a pool hall. Not long after, a cousin who drove a cab was killed in an armed robbery. And my good friend, Christopher Davis, who drove a cab to supplement his job selling insurance, was also killed by armed robbers. He was 27 and newly married.

That leaves me in the middle. I like my gun. But I want to make sure we are doing enough to keep them out of the hands of criminals, away from children and out of our schools.

So while a string of gun incidents on one Friday reminded me that tackling this subject is timely and necessary, an awful shooting the next day affirms its urgency.

A 6-year-old boy was shot in the chest while he was riding his bike near his Gwinnett home. Police are still on the hunt for who could have possibly targeted such a young child.

Fortunately, he survived. But if we start dismissing such shootings as just another Saturday in Georgia, then we’re in trouble. Let’s talk.