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According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

Tennessee law allows for the appointment of interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held by local legislative bodies.

In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

It is unclear if or when a special meeting might be called there.

According to Johnson, Jones and Pearson could be reappointed to their seats.

“I think we might have these two young men back very soon,” Johnson said Thursday. “It is my promise to fight like hell to get both of them back.”

Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature by the Shelby County Commissioners, and a lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

Speaking to a crowd following their expulsion, Pearson and Jones insisted they would persist in advocating for gun control measures and encouraged protesters to continue showing up to the Capitol.

The House has only expelled two state representatives in the last 157 years. The first expulsion, in 1980, was of a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent came in 2016 when another member was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move a “nuclear option.”

“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, Kathy Sinback, called the move in a statement a “targeted expulsion of two Black legislators without due process.”

She continued, “It raises questions about the disparate treatment of Black representatives, while continuing the shameful legacy of disenfranchising and silencing the voices of marginalized communities and the Black lawmakers they elect.”

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  • What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

    What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Just hours after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, their pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol of the vacant seats that now need to be filled.

    Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote Thursday. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber.

    All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” after they led a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

    In the wake of a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, Jones said he and other lawmakers were blocked from raising the issue of gun violence on the House floor, with their microphones being cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to WSMV.

    According to the expulsion resolutions, Jones, Pearson and Johnson “began shouting without recognition” during their protest, and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives.”

    Republican leaders in the chamber condemned the lawmakers’ actions and moved quickly to remove their committee assignments and schedule a vote for their expulsion. Jones, Pearson and Johnson decried the Republicans’ actions as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. Jones and Pearson are both young, Black men while Johnson is a White woman.

    As focus now shifts to filling the two new vacancies in the state House, local lawmakers in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts are working to determine their next steps, including possibly returning the ousted lawmakers to the chamber.

    According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

    In the time between when a seat becomes vacant and when a special election can be held, “the legislative body of the replaced legislator’s county of residence at the time of his or her election may elect an interim successor,” the state Constitution says.

    In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting on Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

    Nashville Mayor John Cooper has expressed his support for Jones and said on Twitter he believes the council will send him “right back to continue serving his constituents.”

    Jones told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday that if he’s appointed by the council, he will serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents,” he said.

    For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

    Commission chairman Mickell Lowery plans to call a special meeting regarding Pearson’s expulsion, CNN affiliate WMC reported, but the timing of the meeting isn’t yet known.

    Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature,” and referring to the Shelby County commissioners, he said, “A lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

    No date has been set for a special election but state law provides a time frame for when the governor should schedule them.

    A “writ of election” for “primary elections for nominations by statewide political parties to fill the vacancy” must be scheduled within 55 to 60 days, state code says. And a general election to fill the vacancy must be scheduled within 100 to 107 days.

    According to Tennessee law, a state representative must be at least 21 years old, a US citizen, a resident of the state for at least three years and a resident of their county for one year preceding the election.

    They must also be a qualified voter of the district, which requires a resident to be 18 years old and free of certain felony convictions.

    Both Jones and Pearson meet those qualifications.

    And while the state Constitution says members can be expelled for disorderly behavior with a two-thirds majority vote, they cannot be expelled “a second time for the same offense.”

    If Jones and Pearson are elected again, the Tennessee House Republican Caucus said in a statement it hopes “they will act as the thousands who have come before them – with respect for our institution, their fellow colleagues, and the seat that they hold.”

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  • A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.

    The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.

    A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.

    The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform – and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers – whom most Americans had never heard of – into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.

    The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.

    But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

    Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

    At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

    Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.

    In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.

    One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been “deeply, deeply painful.”

    And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

    The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

    The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

    The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.

    “You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!” he said.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. “The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says ‘not on this House floor, not this way,’” he said. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”

    Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.

    One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones – with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday – had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.

    “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

    The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.

    “I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.

    US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn’t rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.

    “I am not saying race wasn’t (the reason) – but I haven’t looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her,” Cohen told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.

    The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

    “I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

    Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.

    At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.

    The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.

    “It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

    More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.

    This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

    In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.

    “We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

    The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.

    Biden described the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

    “Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe,” he said in a statement.

    Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.

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  • Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN

    Tennessee House expels 1 lawmaker, falls short of ousting another while 3rd awaits vote | CNN


    Nashville
    CNN
     — 

    A vote to expel Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson from Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has failed, a week after she and two other Democrats led a gun reform protest on the House floor. The House earlier expelled Rep. Justin Jones over that protest, which followed a deadly mass shooting at a Nashville school.

    The third Democrat involved, Justin Pearson, also faces a possible vote on his removal from office Thursday.

    The vote over rules violations for Johnson was 65-30. Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds majority of the total membership. The vote for Jones split along party lines, 72-25.

    Protesters flooded the state Capitol on Thursday as the legislators were set to take up three resolutions filed by GOP lawmakers Monday seeking to expel Jones, of Nashville, Johnson of Knoxville and Pearson of Memphis, a step the state House has taken only twice since the 1860s.

    “There comes a time where people get sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Jones said in a speech prior to a vote on his expulsion. “And so my colleagues, I say that what we did was act in our responsibility as legislators to serve and give voice to the grievances of people who have been silenced.”

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons,” he said, “and you respond with an assault on democracy.”

    Jones added: “How can you bring dishonor to an already dishonorable house?”

    Jones’ vote took place after two hours of debate that included Jones answering questions regarding his actions during a protest last Thursday over calls for gun violence legislation. Johnson’s vote followed about an hour and a half of discussion.

    Throughout the day, crowds have gathered outside and inside the building. Following the vote to expel Jones, those inside the Capitol gallery raised their fists and erupted in boos.

    After a Democratic motion to adjourn until Monday was voted down, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton admonished the people in the balcony for yelling, saying if their “disruptive behavior” continued they would clear the area of everyone but the media.

    “That’s the one warning,” he said.

    Cheers filled the Capitol following the failed vote to expel Johnson.

    “We did what we needed to do,” Johnson said to reporters outside the chamber.

    Johnson thanked the crowd that was gathered around the building and encouraged them to vote. “Keep showing up, standing up and speaking out and we will be with you,” she added.

    Johnson, who is White, was asked why there was a difference in the outcome for her and Jones, who is Black-Filipino.

    “I will answer your question. It might have to do with the color of our skin,” she said.

    President Joe Biden criticized the proceedings in Nashville in a tweet.

    “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” he wrote.

    The three lawmakers led a protest on the House floor last Thursday without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported, using a bullhorn as demonstrators at the state Capitol called on lawmakers to take action to prevent further gun violence after a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville left three 9-year-olds and three adults dead. Each lawmaker was removed from their committee assignments following last week’s demonstrations.

    Discussion Thursday began with Republicans playing footage of the protest last week, showing Jones, Johnson and Pearson standing in the well of the House and using the bullhorn to address their colleagues and protesters in the gallery.

    Democrats were opposed to having the footage played, arguing it was unfair because they had not seen the video themselves and did not know the extent to which it had been edited.

    Democratic Whip Jason Powell, who represents Nashville, said he was “outraged” and “expelling Justin Jones is not the answer.”

    He angrily said the House was spending too much time on the expulsion issue.

    “I had to leave here Monday night after this resolution was introduced and go to my son’s Little League field and see red ribbons surrounding the outfield in memory of William Kinney who was murdered and I am outraged, and we should all be outraged,” he said, his voice rising. “We need to do something and expelling Justin Jones is not the answer. It is a threat to democracy.”

    More about the three representatives:

    Rep. Justin Pearson:District: 86
    Age: 28
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Environmental, racial and economic justice
    Of note: Successfully blocked oil pipeline from being built in south Memphis
    Recent awards: The Root’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans (2022)Rep. Gloria Johnson:District: 90
    Age: 60
    In office: 2013-2015, 2019-
    Issues: Education, jobs, health care
    Of note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion
    Recent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:District: 52
    Age: 27
    In office: 2023-
    Issues: Health care, environmental justice
    Of note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-in
    Recent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)

    “This is not just about losing my job,” Jones told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday, saying constituents of the three representatives “are being taken and silenced by a party that is acting like authoritarians.”

    As he left the Capitol on Thursday, Jones said he is not sure what his next steps are following his expulsion.

    “I will continue to show up to this Capitol with these young people whether I’m in that chamber or outside,” Jones told reporters.

    In the last 157 years, the House has expelled only two lawmakers, which requires a two-thirds vote: In 1980, after a representative was found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and in 2016, when another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

    This week, Sexton said the three Democrats’ actions “are and always will be unacceptable” and broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”

    Sexton said peaceful protesters have always been welcomed to the capitol to have their voices heard on any issue, but that the actions of the Democratic lawmakers had detracted from that process.

    “In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones,” Sexton said in a series of tweets Monday.

    “We cannot allow the actions of the three members to distract us from protecting our children. We will get through this together, and it will require talking about all solutions,” Sexton said.

    During the discussion Thursday, Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move to expel the “nuclear option.”

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    The move to expel the trio drew protesters to the Capitol Thursday morning, with many wanting to express both their opposition to the lawmakers’ removal from office – chants of “We stand with the Tennessee three,” were heard outside – as well as support for gun reform legislation.

    To some, the vote to expel Johnson, Jones and Pearson was a distraction from the real issue: Keeping children safe.

    “I want people to know this is not a political issue, it’s a child issue,” Deborah Castellano, a first-grade teacher in Nashville, told CNN. “If you wash away Democrat, Republican, it’s about kids and do we want them to be safe or not. I will stand in front of children and protect as many as I can with my body … but we shouldn’t have to, and those kids shouldn’t be afraid.”

    Paul Slentz, a retired United Methodist pastor, knows two of the lawmakers personally, he said, adding it was wrong for them to face a vote for their expulsion.

    “They’re good people,” Slentz told CNN affiliate WSMV in an interview outside the Capitol. “They have strong moral convictions. They are people of faith.”

    Each of the resolutions says the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” saying they “began shouting without recognition” and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives” for just under an hour Thursday morning.

    The resolutions seek to remove the lawmakers from office under Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution, which says, in part, the House can set its own rules and “punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

    Republicans control the Tennessee House of Representatives by a wide margin, with 75 members to Democrats’ 23. One seat is vacant.

    The code allows for the appointment of interim members of the House until the seats of the expelled are filled by an election.

    Pearson has acknowledged he and his two colleagues may have broken House rules, both in a letter sent to House members this week and in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, acknowledging they “spoke out of order” when they walked to the well of the House.

    “We broke a House rule,” he said, “but it does not meet the threshold for actually expelling members of the House who were duly elected by their district, who sent us here to serve, and now they’re being disenfranchised by the Republican party of the state of Tennessee.”

    House Democrats expressed solidarity with Johnson, Jones and Pearson in a statement, while Rep. Sam McKenzie, of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the move “political retribution.”

    “We fundamentally object to any effort to expel members for making their voices heard to end gun violence,” McKenzie said.

    The move to expel the lawmakers also drew condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, whose executive director, Kathy Sinback, called expulsion “an extreme measure” infrequently used, “because its strips voters of representation by the people they elected.”

    “Instead of rushing to expel members for expressing their ethical convictions about crucial social issues,” Sinback said, “House leadership should turn to solving the real challenges facing our state.”

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  • Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

    Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

    Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to connect with a trained counselor or visit 988lifeline.org.



    CNN
     — 

    Investigators found a suicide note when they executed a search warrant at the home of the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville school last week, along with more weapons and ammunition, according to an inventory of items seized.

    The search warrant and the list of items found were released Tuesday, just over a week after the shooter, former student Audrey Hale, opened fire at The Covenant School, killing three 9-year-olds and three adults.

    The warrant, executed the same day as the shooting, shows authorities also found several Covenant School yearbooks and a school photo, in addition to the shooter’s journals. Some of the journals are described as being related to “school shootings; firearm courses,” the list indicates.

    A total of 47 items were seized, according to the list.

    Hale, 28, fired 152 rounds in the attack, which was planned “over a period of months,” police said in a news release Monday. Hale “considered the actions of other mass murderers,” that release said, and “acted totally alone.”

    Hale, who police said was under care for an emotional disorder, had legally purchased seven guns and hidden them at home, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake previously said.

    Hale was armed with three guns during the attack, which ended after Nashville officers arrived on the scene and confronted the shooter.

    Two officers opened fire – a moment captured in bodycam footage later released by police – and killed Hale at 10:27 a.m., 14 minutes after the shooter entered the private Christian school, according to Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron.

    Police continue to work to determine a motive for the attack, but they said previously that writings left behind by Hale – which continue to be reviewed by police and the FBI – made clear it was “calculated and planned.”

    Hale targeted the school and Covenant Presbyterian Church, to which the school is attached, police said, but it’s believed the victims were fired upon at random.

    Those victims were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9 years old, as well as school custodian Mike Hill, 61, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, who was head of the school.

    Four police officers who responded to the shooting described to reporters Tuesday how their training guided them as they hunted the shooter.

    Officer Rex Engelbert praised two staff members “who stayed on the scene and didn’t run.” They gave him the concise information he needed, as well as “the exact key I needed to enter the building,” he said.

    Engelbert and Detective Sgt. Jeff Mathes became part of a team that cleared classrooms and searched for the shooter. When they reached the first-floor atrium they took gunfire from the shooter.

    “We were still unsure where that was, but our job is to go towards it, so we went through a pair of double doors,” Mathes said.

    Detective Michael Collazo, who heard the shooter might be on the second floor, joined the group.

    “At some point around that time frame is when we started hearing the first shots … that’s when everything kind of kicked into overdrive for us, “Collazo said.

    After they went up a stairwell and down a second-floor hallway, they encountered a victim on the floor.

    “Doing what our training tells us to do in those situations and following the stimulus, all of us stepped over a victim. To this day, don’t know how I did that morally, but training is what kicked in,” Mathes said.

    Smoke was filling the building and the fire alarm was blaring, Collazo said. Then there was a gunshot to their right.

    He asked Engelbert, who had a scope on his rifle, to lead the team toward the gunshot. Engelbert said things were unfolding “very similar to the training we receive.”

    “We then proceeded continually towards the sounds of gunfire and then once we got near the shooter, the shooter was neutralized,” Mathes said.

    The school shooting – the deadliest since 21 people, including 19 children, were killed at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last May – renewed debate over the scourge of American gun violence, access to firearms and school safety, a fight that spilled over into the state legislature this week.

    Tennessee House Republicans on Monday took steps toward expelling three Democratic state representatives who participated in protests at the state Capitol last Thursday calling for more gun control in the wake of the deadly mass shooting.

    A vote on whether to expel the three members – Reps. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis – is slated for Thursday, according to The Tennessean.

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  • As more details emerge about how the Nashville school shooting unfolded, expert says the quick thinking of teachers saved lives | CNN

    As more details emerge about how the Nashville school shooting unfolded, expert says the quick thinking of teachers saved lives | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    As more details emerge about how a deadly mass shooting unfolded inside a private Christian school in Nashville, a former police officer who provided active shooter training at the school said the quick-thinking actions of teachers who locked down classrooms helped save lives.

    The shooter who got into The Covenant School on Monday fired multiple rounds into several classrooms but didn’t hit any students inside the classrooms, “because the teachers knew exactly what to do, how to fortify their doors and where to place their children in those rooms,” security consultant Brink Fidler told CNN.

    “Their ability to execute literally flawlessly under that amount of stress while somebody trying to murder them and their children, that is what made the difference here,” Fidler said.

    “These teachers are the reason those kids went home to their families,” he added.

    Six people were killed in the Monday morning school shooting. They were three 9-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs. The adults killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian, police said.

    All of the victims who were struck by gunfire had been in an open area or hallway, said Fidler, who did a walk-through of the school with officials Wednesday.

    “The only victims this shooter was able to get to were victims that were stuck in some sort of open area or hallway,” Fidler said. “Several were able to evarocuate safely. The ones that couldn’t do that safely did exactly what they were taught and trained to do.”

    While the shooter had targeted the school, it’s believed the victims were fired upon at random, police have said.

    Also credited with saving lives are the officers who rushed into the school and fatally shot the attacker, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, ending the 14 minutes of terror that unfolded at the school.

    “We had heroic officers that went in harm’s way to stop this and we could have been talking about more tragedy than what we are,” Drake told CNN Wednesday.

    The law enforcement response in Nashville stands in contrast with the response in Uvalde, Texas, where there was a delay of more than an hour before authorities confronted and killed the gunman. The attack in Uvalde left 21 people dead.

    Monday’s school shooting in Nashville was the deadliest US school shooting since last May’s massacre in Uvalde. It also marked the 19th shooting at a school or university in just the past three months that left at least one person wounded, a CNN count shows.

    A Nashville city councilman also said a witness told him Koonce, the head of The Covenant School, spent her last moments trying to protect the children in her care.

    “The witness said Katherine Koonce was on a Zoom call, heard the shots and abruptly ended the Zoom call and left the office. The assumption from there is that she headed towards the shooter,” Councilman Russ Pulley said. He did not identify the witness.

    Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said he can’t confirm how Koonce died but said, “I do know she was in the hallway by herself. There was a confrontation, I’m sure. You can tell the way she is lying in the hallway.”

    Fidler said that Koonce had been adamant about training school staff on how to respond during an active shooter situation.

    “She understood the severity of the topic and the severity of the teachers needing to have the knowledge of what to do in that situation,” he said.

    Koonce and the other victims were honored at a citywide vigil in Nashville Wednesday, where residents came together to pray and grieve.

    “It’s such a tragedy and felt so deeply by everyone here,” Nashville resident Eliza Hughes said. “Nashville is a close tight-knit community. We definitely feel the tragedy. It’s an awful situation.”

    After the shooting, police found that Hale had detailed maps of The Covenant School – which the shooter had attended as a child – and “quite a bit” of writings related to the shooting, according to the police chief.

    The FBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and police have been combing through the maps and writings Hale left, including looking at a notebook, Drake said.

    Authorities have called the attack “calculated,” with Drake saying Wednesday that the maps “did have a display of entry into the school, a route that would be taken for whatever was going to be carried out.”

    The shooter is also believed to have had weapons training and had arrived at the school heavily armed and prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement, police have said.

    But as details of the pre-planning are uncovered, it’s still unclear what motivated the attack. Drake said police have met with the school and found no indication that Hale had any problems while attending The Covenant.

    Hale had been under care for an emotional disorder and legally bought seven guns in the past three years, but they were kept hidden from Hale’s parents, Drake said. Three of the weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, were used in the attack Monday.

    Tennessee does not have a “red flag” law that would allow a judge to temporarily seize guns from someone who is believed to be a threat to themselves or others.

    The police chief said law enforcement was not contacted about the shooter previously, and Hale was never committed to an institution.

    Hale’s childhood friend, Averianna Patton, told CNN on Tuesday the killer sent her disturbing messages minutes before the attack, saying “I’m planning to die today” and it would be on the news.

    Patton called the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in Nashville but was on hold for “maybe like 7 minutes,” she said. By then, the shooting had already started.

    Asked about the messages, Drake told CNN, “If their timeline was accurate, the actual call came in after the officer had already arrived on the scene. So, it plays no bearing on that.”

    “The moment we got the call, we responded immediately to the scene. Officers pulled up, were taking gunfire, pulled the gun out, went inside, did not wait,” Drake said.

    The shooter entered the school by firing at glass doors and climbing through to get inside, surveillance video shows. The first call about the shooting came in at 10:13 a.m., and police arrived on scene at 10:24 a.m., according to the police chief.

    Body-camera footage from the first responding officers shows them rushing in and clearing classrooms before racing to the second floor of the school, where an officer armed with an assault-style rifle shot the assailant multiple times. The shooter was dead at 10:27 a.m., police said.

    Police have referred to Hale as a “female shooter,” and later said Hale was transgender. Hale used male pronouns on a social media profile, a spokesperson told CNN when asked to clarify.

    The Covenant School shooting victims (top row) Katherine Koonce, Mike Hill, Cynthia Peak, (bottom row) Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney.

    Nashville residents came together for a citywide vigil Wednesday to mourn the victims, pray and sharex in the heartache.

    First lady Jill Biden was in attendance, as was singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, who performed her song “I Shall Believe” to the grieving crowd.

    “Nashville has had its worst today,” Mayor John Cooper told the crowd. “Our heart is broken. Our city united as we mourn together.”

    The police chief also addressed the community, saying that a school shooting like the one officers faced at The Covenant School on Monday is a moment officers have trained for but hoped would never come.

    “Our police officers have cried and are crying with Nashville and the world,” Drake said.

    As the community grieves, families are mourning loved ones lost in the shooting.

    First Lady Jill Biden at the Nashville Remembers candlelight vigil Wednesday.

    William, one of the children killed, had an “unflappable spirit,” friends of the Kinney family shared on GoFundMe.

    Hallie’s aunt Kara Arnold said the 9-year-old had “a love for life that kept her smiling and running and jumping and playing and always on the go.”

    Evelyn’s family called her “a shining light in this world.”

    The family of Hill, a father of seven children and grandfather to 14, remembered his love for cooking and spending time with his family.

    “Violence has visited our city and brought heartache and pain. In the midst of sorrow, we are yet looking for hope,” said Tennessee Representative Rev. Harold M. Love, Jr. as he ended the vigil with a prayer.

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  • Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else | CNN

    Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Guns are the leading cause of death for US children and teens, since surpassing car accidents in 2020.

    Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database. Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year. That’s about five children lost for every 100,000 children in the United States. In no other comparable country are firearms within the top four causes of mortality among children, according to a KFF analysis.

    The shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville on Monday, marks the 16th shooting this year in grades K-12 and the deadliest since the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last year, according to a CNN analysis of school shooting data. Six people — three children and three adults — were killed.

    There have been 130 mass shootings so far in 2023, the highest number of shootings recorded at this point in any year since at least 2013, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

    Child and teen mortality overall surged during the Covid-19 pandemic — driven not by Covid-19 deaths but by fatal injuries, according to a new study in JAMA. Firearms accounted for nearly half of the increase in mortality in 2020.

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  • Covenant School shooter was under care for emotional disorder and hid guns at home, police say | CNN

    Covenant School shooter was under care for emotional disorder and hid guns at home, police say | CNN

    Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    The 28-year-old who killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville was under care for an emotional disorder and had legally bought seven firearms that were hidden at home, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Tuesday.

    The parents of the shooter, Audrey Hale, spoke to police and said they knew Hale had bought and sold one weapon and believed that was the extent of it.

    “The parents felt (Hale) should not own weapons,” the chief said.

    On Monday morning, Hale left home with a red bag, and the parents asked what was inside but were dismissed, Drake said.

    Three of the weapons were used in the attack Monday. Police also said Tuesday they did not know a motive.

    The shooter targeted the school and church in the attack but did not specifically target any of the six people killed, police spokesman Don Aaron said. He also said Hale’s writings mentioned a mall near the school as another possible target.

    Live updates: Nashville Covenant School shooting

    The news conference came a day after Hale, a former student at the Covenant School, stormed into the elementary school and killed six people before being fatally shot by responding police officers.

    The attack was the 19th shooting at an American school or university in 2023 in which at least one person was wounded, according to a CNN tally, and the deadliest since the May attack in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead. There have been 42 K-12 school shootings since Uvalde.

    The victims included three 9-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of lead church pastor Chad Scruggs. Also killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, believed to be a substitute teacher; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian, police said.

    Earlier Tuesday, police released body-camera footage from the two officers who rushed into the Covenant School on Monday and fatally shot the mass shooter.

    The footage is from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, who police said fatally shot the attacker on Monday at 10:27 a.m. The videos show a group of five officers entered the school amid wailing fire alarms and immediately went into several rooms to look for the suspect.

    They heard gunfire on the second floor and so hustled up the stairs as the bangs grew louder, the video shows. The officers approached the sound of gunfire and Engelbert, armed with an assault-style rifle, rounded a corner and fired multiple times at a person near a large window, who dropped to the ground, the video shows.

    Collazo then pushed forward and appeared to shoot the person on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling “Stop moving!” The officers finally approached the person, moved a gun away and then radioed “Suspect down! Suspect down!”

    The video adds further insight into the timeline of the shooting and the police response. The first 911 call about the shooting came in at 10:13 a.m., and the shooter was killed 14 minutes later, according to police. The bodycam footage of Engelbert entering the school and shooting the attacker lasts about three to four minutes.

    The Covenant school is a private Christian school educating about 200 students from Pre-K through 6th grade. The school is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, its website states.

    Nashville Mayor John Cooper told CNN the swift police response prevented further disaster.

    “It could have been worse without this great response,” the mayor of the police response. “This was very planned and numerous sites were investigated.”

    The police chief similarly praised the response as swift.

    “I was hoping this day would never ever come here in the city. But we will never wait to make entry and to go in and to stop a threat especially when it deals with our children,” Drake said in a Monday news conference.

    This undated picture provided by the Metro Nashville Police Department shows Audrey Elizabeth Hale.

    Police said the shooting was targeted, closely planned and outlined in documents from the shooter.

    Hale left writings pertaining to the shooting and had scouted a second possible attack location in Nashville, “but because of a threat assessment by the suspect – there’s too much security – decided not to,” Drake said on Monday.

    The shooter left behind “drawn out” maps of the school detailing “how this was all going to take place,” he added.

    The writings revealed the attack at the Christian school “was calculated and planned,” police said. The shooter was “someone that had multiple rounds of ammunition, prepared for confrontation with law enforcement, prepared to do more harm than was actually done,” Drake said.

    Three weapons – an AR-15, a Kel-Tec SUB 2000, and a handgun – were found at the school, he said. A search warrant executed at Hale’s home led to the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence, according to police.

    “They found a lot of documents. This was clearly planned,” Mayor Cooper said. “There was a lot of ammunition. There were guns.”

    Police have referred to Hale as a “female shooter,” and at an evening news conference added Hale was transgender. Hale used male pronouns on a social media profile, a spokesperson told CNN when asked to clarify.

    Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN. Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper, a LinkedIn profile says.

    nashville teammate lemon split

    Former teammate of Nashville school shooter got unusual Instagram messages before rampage

    Information from police and from the shooter’s childhood friend helped illuminate a timeline of the deadly attack.

    Just before 10 a.m. Monday, the shooter sent an ominous message to a childhood friend, the friend told CNN on Tuesday. In an Instagram message to Averianna Patton, a Nashville radio host, just before 10 a.m. Monday, the shooter said “I’m planning to die today” and that it would be on the news.

    “One day this will make more sense,” Hale wrote. “I’ve left more than enough evidence behind. But something bad is about to happen.”

    Patton told CNN’s Don Lemon she was the shooter’s childhood basketball teammate and “knew her well when we were kids” but hadn’t spoken in years and is unsure why she received the message. Disturbed by its content, she called a suicide prevention line and the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office at 10:13 a.m.

    At that very minute, police in Nashville also got a 911 call of an active shooter inside Covenant School and rushed there.

    The moment school shooter Audrey Hale arrived at the Covenant School was captured in 2 minutes of surveillance video released by Metro Nashville Police.

    Armed with three firearms, the shooter got into the school by firing through glass doors and climbing through to get inside, surveillance video released by Metro Nashville Police shows. Pointing an assault-style weapon, the shooter walked through the school’s hallways, the video shows.

    As the first five officers arrived, they heard gunfire from the second floor. The shooter was “firing through a window at arriving police cars,” police said in the news release.

    Police went upstairs, where two officers opened fire, killing the shooter at 10:27 a.m., police spokesperson Don Aaron said.

    After the shooter was dead, children were evacuated from the school and taken in buses to be reunited with their families. They held hands and walked in a line out of the school, where community members embraced, video showed.

    “This school prepared for this with active shooter training for a reason,” Nashville Metropolitan Councilman Russ Pulley told CNN. “We don’t like to think that this is ever going to happen to us. But experience has taught us that we need to be prepared because in this day and time it is the reality of where we are.”

    Patton, meanwhile, had “called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14 a.m. and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home,” she told CNN affiliate WTVF. An officer did not come to her home until about 3:30 p.m., she said.

    Students from the Covenant School hold hands Monday after getting off a bus to meet their parents at a reunification site after a mass shooting at the school in Nashville.

    Two Covenant School employees are among the victims of Monday’s mass shooting, according to the school.

    Katherine Koonce was identified as the head of the school, its website says. She attended Vanderbilt University and Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville and got her master’s degree from Georgia State University.

    Sissy Goff, one of Koonce’s friends, went to the reunification center after the shooting and suspected something was wrong when she didn’t see Koonce there.

    “Knowing her, she’s so kind and strong and such a voice of reason and just security for people that she would have been there in front handling everything, so I had a feeling,” Goff said.

    She said Koonce was a calming influence and even got a dog named “Covie” who greeted students before and after school.

    “Parents are so anxious, kids are so anxious, and Katherine had such a centering voice for people,” Goff said.

    Mike Hill was identified in the staff section of the Covenant Presbyterian Church’s website as facilities/kitchen staff. Hill, 61, was a custodian at the school, per police. A friend confirmed his image to CNN.

    Cynthia Peak, 61, was believed to be a substitute teacher, police said Monday.

    The family of Evelyn Dieckhaus, one of the 9-year-old victims, provided a statement to CNN affiliate KMOV.

    “Our hearts are completely broken. We cannot believe this has happened. Evelyn was a shining light in this world. We appreciate all the love and support but ask for space as we grieve,” the family said.

    The Covenant School issued a statement Monday night grieving the shooting.

    “Our community is heartbroken. We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our school and church. We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing,” the school said in a statement.

    “Law enforcement is conducting its investigation, and while we understand there is a lot of interest and there will be a lot of discussion about and speculation surrounding what happened, we will continue to prioritize the well-being of our community.

    “We appreciate the outpouring of support we have received, and we are tremendously grateful to the first responders who acted quickly to protect our students, faculty and staff. We ask for privacy as our community grapples with this terrible tragedy – for our students, parents, faculty and staff,” the statement said.

    Cooper, the Nashville mayor, said he is “overwhelmed at the thought of the loss of these families, of the future lost by these children and their families.”

    “The leading cause of kids’ death now is guns and gunfire and that is unacceptable,” Cooper said.

    A recent study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in December backs that point, finding that homicide is a leading cause of death for children in the United States and the overall rate has increased an average of 4.3% each year for nearly a decade.

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  • Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics

    Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Monday’s deadly school shooting in Nashville has sparked a familiar cycle of condolences and calls to action among lawmakers in Washington, but both sides of the aisle have been quick to concede that the recent violence is probably not enough to sway a divided Congress to move substantive gun control efforts forward.

    After three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, President Joe Biden asserted that he’s done all he can do to address gun control and urged members on Capitol Hill to act. But the shooting, so far, has not compelled lawmakers in Washington – particularly Republican leadership and some members representing Tennessee – to push forward gun control, signaling no end to the impasse within the GOP-controlled House and nearly deadlocked Senate.

    The Nashville incident was just among the latest in 130 mass shooting incidents so far this year, according to data from the national Gun Violence Archive.

    White House officials are not currently planning a major push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said. But Biden and White House officials will continue to urge Congress to act.

    Biden on Tuesday told CNN’s MJ Lee, “I can’t do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably.”

    “I have done the full extent of my executive authority – to do on my own, anything about guns …The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so I think the Congress could be passing an assault weapon ban,” he added.

    Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of “ghost guns” and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. He also signed a bipartisan bill in 2022 which expands background checks and provides federal funding for so-called “red flag laws” – although it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for.

    White House officials have been sober about the political realities Democrats face with the current makeup of Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden’s term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage.

    Many Republicans in Congress, including those in positions of leadership and in the Tennessee delegation, have either been reluctant to use the deadly violence in Nashville as a potential springboard for reform or they’ve outright rejected calls for additional action on further regulating guns, arguing that there isn’t an appetite for tougher restrictions.

    On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would not answer questions on whether any congressional action should be taken on guns after the shooting in Nashville. And House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana who survived being shot in 2017, demurred when asked if the most recent school shooting in Nashville would move Congress to address any sort of reforms.

    “I really get angry when I see people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts,” he said when asked if his conference was prepared to do anything to address the spate of mass shootings, mentioning only improving mental health and securing schools.

    “Let’s get the facts. And let’s work to see if there’s something that we can do to help secure schools,” he added. “We’ve talked about things that we can do and it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law abiding citizens. … And that’s not the answer, by the way.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis, a key GOP negotiator in last year’s bipartisan gun legislation, said on Tuesday that he doesn’t see a path forward on new gun legislation. Instead, he believes that lawmakers need to focus on implementing what has already been signed into law.

    “The full implementation is going to take months and years,” Tillis said of the gun bill that passed last summer. “There is a lot of unimplemented or to be implemented provisions in there. Let’s talk about that first.”

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican whose committee has jurisdiction over gun policy, said Tuesday that he doesn’t think Congress should take action to limit assault weapons, though he declined to say why it’s okay to ban fully automatic rifles but not semi-automatic weapons.

    “The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” he continued. “I believe in the Second Amendment and we shouldn’t penalize law-abiding American citizens.”

    Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been involved in past negotiations on gun legislation, said: “I don’t know if there’s much space to do more, but I’ll certainly look and see.”

    Graham said he is opposed to a ban on AR-15s – which was one of the weapons the Nashville suspect used during Monday’s shooting – noting that he owns one himself and arguing that it would “be hard to implement a national red flag law.”

    Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju why he wouldn’t support a ban of AR-15s, Andy Ogles, who represents the district where Monday’s shooting took place, replied, “Why not talk about the real issue facing the country – and that’s mental health.” And Sen. Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee Republican, refused to discuss calls to ban AR-15s after the Nashville shooting.

    “The tragedy that happened in my state was the result of a depraved person and somebody very very sick. And the result has been absolutely devastating for the people in my community. Right now with the victims, the family and the people in my community – we are all mourning right now,” Hagerty told CNN.

    Asked about banning those weapons, he added: “I’m certain politics will wave into everything. But right now I’m not focused on the politics of the situation. I’m focused on the victims.

    Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett told reporters that “laws don’t work” to curb gun violence.

    “We want to legislate evil – it’s just not gonna happen,” he said. “If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem. They are the problem.”

    Asked by CNN why private citizens need AR-15s, Burchett pointed to self-defense. He also argued that even though other countries don’t observe the United States’ high frequency of shootings, “other countries don’t have our freedom either … And when people abuse that freedom, that’s what happens.”

    Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are slamming House Republicans for their disinterest.

    “As a country and as a Congress, we can do better and we know that, so shame on Speaker McCarthy for not bringing something up, for not announcing that we can and do more. All we’re going to get are thoughts and prayers out of their Twitter accounts, and that’s not enough” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said during a press conference.

    On the other side of the Capitol, however, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters that he is “not very hopeful” that the Senate can pass gun legislation this Congress.

    “I’m not very hopeful, yet we have to try,” he said.

    Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to force a vote on a semi-automatic weapons ban to put Republicans on the record.

    “We need a fight in Congress, and I’m prepared to conduct that fight, others are as well,” he told CNN. “And ultimately the American people deserve to know where each of us stands on common sense gun violence prevention.”

    Schumer would not say whether he intends to put legislation banning assault weapons on the Senate floor for a vote this Congress. There is nowhere close to enough support to overcome a legislative filibuster.

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  • ‘There is no universal school safety solution.’ Nashville attack renews debate over how best to protect students | CNN

    ‘There is no universal school safety solution.’ Nashville attack renews debate over how best to protect students | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Semiautomatic gunfire echoed in the hallways of The Covenant School, making a distinct noise teachers there would not soon forget.

    That was more than 14 months ago – before three children and three adults were gunned down on Monday in the stately stone school connected to Covenant Presbyterian Church, atop a tree-shrouded hill just south of downtown Nashville.

    The active shooter training session ended with live gunfire intended to familiarize school staff with real gunshots if they ever heard them.

    “Blanks don’t sound the same. They just don’t,” said security consultant Brink Fidler, whose firm conducted the exercise.

    A bullet trap the trainers wheeled around captured the rounds of a semiautomatic pistol and an AR-15-style rifle loaded with real ammunition.

    When a handful of teachers heard the very first shot of Monday’s rampage they initially mistook it for the din of ongoing construction at the building.

    “But then they said, ‘When we heard a few more after that we all knew because we had heard it before,” said Fidler, a former police officer who did a walk-through of the elementary school with Nashville officials on Wednesday – two days after another massacre in America renewed questions about what schools are doing to protect children and staff against mass murder.

    As investigators work to determine the motive for the carnage, students, parents and school leaders across the country are again asking what more can be done to secure schools in the era of active shooter drills, lockdowns and widespread anxiety amid recurring mass shootings.

    Fortified school buildings and entrance doors, glass panes coated in bullet-resistant laminate, locked classrooms and heavy surveillance have became a part of life in places where children are supposed to feel inspired to learn.

    A funeral service for Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, the first victim to be laid to rest, was held Friday, which would have been the final school day before Easter break for the 200 or so private school students.

    The shooter was a former Covenant School student, who also killed William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, both 9; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; Cynthia Peak, a 61-year-old substitute teacher; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian.

    Police fatally shot the 28-year-old attacker – who was armed with an AR-15 military-style rifle, a 9 mm Kel-Tec SUB2000 pistol caliber carbine, and a 9 mm Smith and Wesson M&P Shield EZ 2.0 handgun – inside the school about 14 minutes after the shooter fired through locked glass doors to enter the building.

    The AR-15 and 9 mm pistol caliber carbine appeared to have 30-round magazines, according to experts who reviewed photos and video released by police.

    Officers were on scene at 10:24 a.m. and fatally shot the attacker three minutes later, police said.

    “The shooter, confronted in the second floor lobby, didn’t even have a chance to get to the classrooms,” said CNN analyst Jennifer Mascia, a writer and founding staffer of The Trace, a non-profit focused on gun violence. “That is something that is very reassuring to parents across the country. However, as we see, even a robust police response is not enough.”

    The attack was the 19th shooting at an American school or university in 2023 in which at least one person was wounded, according to a CNN count. It was the deadliest since the May attack in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead. There have been 42 K-12 school shootings since Uvalde, where the gunman fired 100 or so rounds before police breached a classroom more than an hour later and killed the attacker to end the siege.

    Once again, children, their parents and school leaders are left struggling with how to stop and handle mass shootings even though such incidents are rare and schools are still quite safe.

    “What a lot of school leaders have learned is don’t react quickly. You’ve got a lot of pressure to do something right away but it’s really better to be thoughtful,” said Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a nonprofit school safety firm that has evaluated security at thousands of schools.

    “You should assume that you don’t have a good picture of what really happened and what didn’t. Be very skeptical about claims that this saves lives or people died because of that. In Tennessee no one will have a really accurate picture of what happened there for months.”

    Coping with the nightmare scenario of a school shooting is now part of the mission to educate and counsel children.

    It’s been 24 years since the Columbine High School mass shooting left 13 people dead in 1999. And more than a decade since a gunman shot his way through glass at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed six adults and 20 children.

    “We keep repeating the same mistakes because people don’t know what the same mistakes are,” Fidler said. “School resource officers are a great part of the solution. Security laminate – great part of the solution. Cameras – great part of the solution. But if the people in the building don’t know what to do, none of that other stuff means anything.”

    Audrey Hale shot throught the doors at The Covenant School to gain entry.

    Mass shootings have helped fuel a multibillion dollar school security industry in recent years – ranging from high-tech surveillance systems to weapon scanners and hand-held emergency panic devices to immediately alert law enforcement and lock down schools.

    “The message is really simple and it has been since before Nashville,” said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, who was scheduled to speak about school security this weekend at the annual conference of the National School Boards Association in Orlando, Florida. “One of the worst times to make knee jerk policy and administrative actions is after a high profile incident like this when you’re in a highly emotional state.”

    Experts said school officials should not give in to political pressures to take steps that are likely to be ineffective and wasteful of limited resources.

    “We’ve been in schools where, on the positive side, almost every staff member has a two-way walkie talkie, which is good,” Trump said. “And we’ve been in other schools, sometimes in the same district, where they’re sitting in a charger and the principal says, ‘Well, we have them but I prefer to not use them.’ “

    He added, “When security works, it works because of people. When it fails, it fails because of people.”

    Dorn said he has been inundated with emails since Monday from companies “I’ve never heard of,” with offers of technology they claim will heighten security in schools.

    “The three things that every school leader better pay a lot of attention to is, we have limited time, energy and budget for safety,” Dorn said. “So we can’t afford to waste any of that. We can’t spend our budget or training time on something that we don’t have pretty good evidence actually bears fruit. With the caution that nothing’s going to be 100 percent. This idea that we’re gonna stop all school shootings; there’s just, no country has been able to do that.”

    Dorn and others pointed to a 2016 school safety technology report from Johns Hopkins University that found there was insufficient evidence to show devices such as weapons detectors and high-tech alarms and sensors helped curb mass shootings.

    “There is no universal school safety solution – no one technology will solve all school safety and security issues,” the researchers wrote. “The sheer number of schools and school districts across the country – with different geography, funding, building construction and layout, demographics, and priorities – make each one different.”

    Pictures of the victims killed in the mass shooting at The Covenant School are fixed to a memorial by Noah Reich from the non-profit Classroom of Compassion near the school on Wednesday.

    Fidler and others said more resources should be devoted to educating and training students and school staff on recognizing and responding to threats.

    “I can’t tell you how many of our school clients still have classroom doors that are not lockable from inside the classroom,” he said.

    Referring to training and preparation for catastrophic school events like a mass shooting, Fidler said: “As a society we suck at this – which is terrible, but we do.”

    On Wednesday, two days after the massacre, Fidler did a walk-through of the blood-stained school corridors with investigators. “It was hard, man. I’m struggling,” the law enforcement veteran of nearly 20 years said Saturday. “Some of that blood belonged to people I know.”

    Fidler found that upon recognizing they were under attack teachers and staff relied on their training.

    The shooter fired multiple rounds into several classroom doors but didn’t hit any students inside “because the teachers knew exactly what to do, how to fortify their doors and where to place their children in those rooms,” Fidler said.

    “Their ability to execute, literally flawlessly, under that amount of stress while somebody is trying to murder them and their children, that is what made the difference here,” he said.

    “These teachers are the reason those kids went home to their families.”

    Koonce, the head of the school, had been adamant about training school staff on how to respond during an active shooter situation, Fidler said.

    “She understood the severity of the topic and the severity of the teachers needing to have the knowledge of what to do in that situation,” he said.

    “Katherine went to find out what was happening” when she was shot, Fidler said. “You know, Katherine Koonce, I could have had a lasso around her waist and she would drag me down the hall. She was going to go find out what’s going on and try and figure out what’s best for her students… She went right to it.”

    Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake could not confirm how Koonce died but said, “I do know she was in the hallway by herself. There was a confrontation, I’m sure. You can tell the way she is lying in the hallway.”

    Fidler said teachers covered windows. They shut off lights. Unused medical kits sat on desks.

    “Countless teachers had their bleeding control kits out, staged and ready to treat people in their classroom,” he recalled.

    “The fact that they had the wherewithal to do that. ‘Ok, I’ve got my kids secure. I’ve got the door locked and barricaded.’ And now, as a teacher, to have the wherewithal to remember the last piece, the medical, because we can potentially save a lot of people. They crushed it. They were able to perform under that amount of stress… They were able to recall all this information and put it into practice.”

    The six shooting victims were trapped in hallways and killed, Fidler said.

    “How many teachers in America could walk into their classroom right now and throw a tourniquet on the table and put that on? How many of them could do it?”

    His message for anxious parents: “Ask questions. Find out what your kids’ school is doing or not doing. And don’t stop asking until something’s done.”

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