Tag: nashville

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

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Nashville
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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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April 6, 2023
Final funeral held for victims of Nashville shooting

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Final funeral held for victims of Nashville shooting – CBS News

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A funeral was held Wednesday for teacher Katherine Koonce, one of six people killed in a massacre at a private school in Nashville last week. It came as students across the nation staged walkouts to demand gun reform. Mark Strassmann reports.

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April 5, 2023
Suicide note and weapons found when police searched the Nashville shooter’s home, warrant shows | CNN

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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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April 4, 2023
Officers who responded to Nashville school shooting speak out

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Officers who responded to Nashville school shooting speak out – CBS News

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Several officers who responded to last week’s shooting at a Nashville school, in which six people were killed, spoke out Tuesday about what they saw and experienced on that day. Janet Shamlian has more.

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April 4, 2023
Funeral held for Mike Hill, custodian killed in Nashville school shooting

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Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian who was among the six people killed in last week’s attack at a Nashville elementary school, was remembered Tuesday for his loving nature, his culinary skills and his faith.

Hundreds of friends and family members turned out for Hill’s funeral at Stephens Valley Church, where pastor Jim Bachmann said the hearts of the congregation were aching for the man they called “Big Mike.”

This photo provided by the family of Michael Hill in March 2023 shows Adriene Joy Hill, left, with Michael Hill.

/ AP

“He was big, and he was strong, and he was tough,” Bachmann said. “But he was also soft and tender.”

“He hugged my kids and he hugged your kids, and he knew them by name,” Bachmann said. “As the first victim — maybe this is a sentimental thought, but it’s a comfort to me to think that Mike was there to welcome the children through the pearly gates.”

Hill was among the three adults and three 9-year-old students who were killed in the March 27 mass shooting at The Covenant School. Police shot and killed the 28-year-old former student who carried out the attack.

Hill was one of the few African American members of Stephens Valley, a mostly white suburban church that he attended because of his friendship with Bachmann. The pastor previously founded Covenant Presbyterian Church, where The Covenant School was located, and the two met and became friends while working there together, Bachmann said.

The white pastor said he and Hill were “about as different as two people could be” but shared a faith in Jesus through which “we will be together in heaven for all eternity.”

The funeral service blended worship traditions, alternating a powerful hymn from a Black gospel choir with meditative instrumental pieces for violin and piano. It concluded with a rendition of “Amazing Grace” played on the bagpipes and drums.

Hill had seven children and 14 grandchildren, and he liked spending time with his family and cooking, according to an obituary.

Bachmann recalled that Hill would often bring him freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. For special occasions, he might bring a pecan or chess pie.

This photo provided by the family of Michael Hill in March 2023 shows, from left, Tawana Smith-Garner, Brittany Hill, Michael Hill, Shakita Dobbins and Ebony Smith.

/ AP

“He led me into temptation. He did not deliver me from it,” Bachmann joked.

Addressing the shooting, Bachmann said tragedies like this evoke many emotions besides grief, including anger and confusion.

“People want change. They want action. They want leadership. They want something decisive to happen so that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” he said. “Of course we all want that.”

A woman prays near the likeness of four of the victims, including 61-year-old custodian Mike Hill, as she visits a memorial at the entrance to The Covenant School on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn.

Wade Payne / AP

Bachmann said he doesn’t have the answers, but he called on those assembled to follow Jesus’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.”

“Love one another and we will have the kind of world we want,” he said. “And we’ll have peace like a river and righteousness like the waves of the sea.”

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April 4, 2023
Nashville school shooter spent months planning attack, police say

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Nashville school shooter spent months planning attack, police say – CBS News

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Police revealed new information about the shooter who killed six at a private school in Nashville. The shooter spent months planning the attack and fired more than 150 rounds, police said.

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April 3, 2023
Nashville school shooter spent months planning deadly attack, police say

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Nashville joins cities famous for gun violence

Nashville becomes latest city to be identified with gun violence

02:35

The assailant in last week’s deadly shooting at a Nashville school planned the attack over “a period of months,” police said Monday. Investigators made that determination after reviewing the shooter’s writings, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement.

Three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed during the attack at The Covenant School.

Authorities say police shot and killed the assailant, a former student they identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale. The shooter fired 152 rounds during last week’s rampage, police said Monday.

The writings were recovered from the shooter’s vehicle in the school parking lot and their bedroom, police said. The writings are being reviewed by Nashville police and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Investigators still haven’t established a motive for the shooting. What’s been uncovered so far shows that the shooter acted alone, police said. The investigation is ongoing.

Officers took down the assailant within 14 minutes of receiving the report of the school shooting, according to Nashville Mayor John Cooper. “Many lives” were saved by the quick response, he said on “CBS Mornings.”

Two officers fired fewer than 10 rounds at the shooter, police said. Officer Rex Engelbert discharged four rounds from his rifle, and Officer Michael Collazo discharged four rounds from his 9 mm pistol.

Body camera video from the two officers shows them entering the school last Monday and checking classrooms, stairwells and hallways before taking the shooter down in a brief confrontation.

Analisa Novak contributed reporting.

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Alex Sundby is a senior editor for CBSNews.com

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April 3, 2023
NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week following the fatal shooting of six people at a Christian school in Nashville. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Photo of trans woman holding gun misrepresented after Nashville shooting

CLAIM: A transgender woman posted a photo of herself holding a gun and calling for violence against Christians, referencing a “Trans Day of Vengeance.”

THE FACTS: A Twitter account posted a years-old photo of MMA fighter and trans woman Alana McLaughlin holding a gun, but she did not author this post calling for violence. A screenshot of the tweet amassed thousands of shares in the wake of Monday’s mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville after police said the shooter was transgender. The tweet shows McLaughlin with pink hair and a pink shirt, holding an AR-15 style gun and wearing a Glock-19 pistol with an expanded magazine on her waist, with a transgender pride flag in the background. The caption appears to advocate for violence against Christians, including the verbs “kill,” “behead,” “roundhouse,” “slam dunk,” “crucify,” “defecate in” and “launch.” Some social media posts claimed the tweet was proof McLaughlin was organizing or planning to attend an April 1 protest event outside the U.S. Supreme Court called the “ Trans Day of Vengeance.” But McLaughlin, who lives in Oregon, confirmed she didn’t author the post and was not aware of where this event was taking place or planning to attend. There is no evidence the Twitter account that originally posted the violent tweet, which was later suspended from the platform, has any ties to the planned event. The event website on Wednesday featured language clarifying that it was “about unity, not inciting violence.” Noah Buchanan, co-founder of Trans Radical Activist Network, which is organizing the event, also confirmed to the AP in an email that McLaughlin is not affiliated with the protest, and reiterated that it was not intended to be a violent event. The image of McLaughlin used in social media posts dates to 2020, when it was featured in a Huck Magazine profile about her and other LGBTQ people who said they had decided to arm themselves to stay safe amid violence directed toward their community. “It is entirely defensive,” said McLaughlin, who added that she arms herself to protect against “escalating right-wing threats.” McLaughlin said the photo had been misrepresented in other ways in the past, including in posts falsely claiming she was a soldier fighting in Ukraine.

— Associated Press writers Arijeta Lajka and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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Posts falsely identify photos as Nashville school shooter

CLAIM: A photo of a person wearing glasses and a baseball cap in a field shows the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville, Tennessee, school on Monday. Another photo shows “Samantha Hyde,” a “trans woman” identified as the assailant.

THE FACTS: Neither of the photos, both of which circulated widely on social media, show the person responsible for the attack at the private Christian school in Nashville on Monday. After the shooting at The Covenant School, police gave unclear information on the shooter’s gender. For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender. In an email Tuesday, police spokesperson Kristin Mumford said Hale “was assigned female at birth” but did use male pronouns on a social media profile. Amid the confusion, social media users shared unrelated photos of other people, falsely claiming they showed the shooter. One photo that circulated widely shows an Instagram user with the handle “Aidencreates,” who crafts and sells miniature buildings online. “Apparently I’m being confused with the Nashville incident that happened today but I have nothing to do with that. I live in Pennsylvania,” the Instagram user clarified in a video that was posted on the platform. The confusion was linked to an online graphic design portfolio credited to Audrey Hale, which featured a link to a similar Instagram handle. Multiple social media posts also featured a manipulated photo of Sam Hyde, a comedian and internet personality whose photo has been featured in numerous memes over the years falsely identifying him as the suspect in mass shootings, including the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida. The posts featured a photo of Hyde that was edited to add long blonde hair and falsely claimed that the Nashville shooter was “Samantha Hyde,” a “trans female.”

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Photo of Oklahoma protester misrepresented as Nashville shooter

CLAIM: A photo of a person holding a sign featuring pink, blue and white guns and the words “trans rights… or else” shows the shooter who killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday.

THE FACTS: The photo does not show the shooter. The person who took this photograph confirmed it was captured in Oklahoma City before news of the Nashville shooting was widespread. The photo circulated widely online after the police chief identified the shooter, Audrey Hale, as transgender. Social media accounts and other sources indicate the shooter identified as a man and may have recently begun using the first name Aiden. “This is the trans shooter, Audrey Hale,” read one tweet shared thousands of times. “The Feds are in the middle of trying to scrub ALL of her social media & pictures from the internet.” The tweet claimed the shooter was a “terrorist” who wanted to kill Christians, “as the sign makes clear.” However, the person holding the sign in the image is not the shooter who opened fire at The Covenant School. The woman who took the photo confirmed to the AP that she captured it about 11 a.m. CDT on Monday at a protest and march in downtown Oklahoma City, hundreds of miles away from Nashville. “It was a protest entitled Bigotry is Bad for Business,” said Chelsea, the photographer, whose last name is being withheld over concerns for her safety. “They protested, they marched. They weren’t violent.” The photographer said she didn’t know the shooting had happened when she tweeted photos from the protest. Social media users then took her photo and misrepresented it as showing the shooter.

— Ali Swenson

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Nashville outlet did not tweet victim’s father calling for ‘end to tolerance’

CLAIM: WSMV-TV Nashville tweeted that the father of a victim of Monday’s Nashville school shooting called for “an end to tolerance” and “the end of the trans evil.”

THE FACTS: A representative with WSMV-TV, an NBC affiliate in Nashville said the tweet was fabricated. In addition, the outlet confirmed they did not report that information. The false tweet spread as friends and family members of the six people who were killed in the shooting shared stories about the victims. Police have identified the shooter, Audrey Hale, as transgender, and the bogus tweet alleges that the victim’s dad called for violence against the transgender community. The tweet in the image shows the name and logo of WSMV-TV’s Twitter account, and reads: “Father of murderer girl, 9, at Covenant school shooting, calls for ‘an end to tolerance’ in family statement to the press, vowing ‘to fight with every fiber of my being for the end of the trans evil. The evil that took my daughter. There must be a solution to this evil in America.’” The image doesn’t show a link to a story. The image circulated widely on Wednesday. However, the tweet shown in the image is not real and no such quote has been publically reported from any victim’s family member in any news outlet. The tweet does not appear on WSMV-TV’s Twitter profile and the outlet stated on its own Twitter account that the image was fake. Amanda Hara, an anchor and director of digital at WSMV-TV, confirmed to the AP in an email that the tweet is fake and didn’t come from the outlet.

— Associated Press writer Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed this report.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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April 3, 2023
After Nashville, Congress confronts limits of new gun law

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Nine months ago, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.

“Lives will be saved,” he said at the White House.

The law has already prevented some potentially dangerous people from owning guns. Yet since that signing last summer, the tally of mass shootings in the United States has only grown. Five dead at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven killed at a dance hall in California. And just this past week, three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

A day after that school shooting, Biden’s tone was markedly less optimistic than it was the signing ceremony.

“What in God’s name are we doing?” he asked in a speech Tuesday, calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons like those that were used to kill at The Covenant School in Nashville. “There’s a moral price to pay for inaction.”

Biden and others had hailed last year’s bipartisan gun bill — approved in the weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas — as a new way forward.

Several months in, the law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.

But the persistence of mass shootings in the United States highlights the limits of congressional action. Because the law was a political compromise, it did not address many Democratic priorities for gun control, including universal background checks or the ban on “assault weapons” for which Biden repeatedly has called.

Now, in the wake of the Nashville shooting, Congress appears to have returned to a familiar impasse. One of the top Republican negotiators on the gun law, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, has said new compromise is unlikely. In the House, the new GOP majority favors fewer restrictions on guns, not more.

Asked Thursday about a way ahead, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said legislation alone cannot solve the gun violence problem. He said Americans need to think deeply about mental illness and other factors that drive people to act.

In contrast, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Congress should “act with the fierce urgency of now.”

“Our classrooms have become killing fields,” he said. “Is that acceptable in America?”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the lead negotiator on the 2022 bill, says he thinks it represented a paradigm shift in how Congress considers gun legislation. But, he said, “I don’t think that will happen all at once.”

“This is sickening, but the opportunities for legislative change normally come after really terrible mass shootings,” said Murphy, who has been the lead Senate advocate for gun control since the 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. “I hate that, I wish that wasn’t how it works.”

Tensions were running high on both sides of the Capitol this past week.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., stood outside the House chamber and yelled that Republicans are “cowards” for not doing more on gun control, eventually arguing with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who advocated for allowing teachers to carry guns.

“More guns lead to more deaths!” Bowman screamed at Massie. “Children are dying!”

In the Senate, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas tried on Thursday to force a vote on legislation that would boost police presence at schools. He all but blamed Democrats, who had blocked the same legislation last year, for the Nashville shooting and called the 2022 law “meaningless.” Murphy angrily objected to Cruz’s bill, arguing that Cruz wasn’t serious about compromise and that his move was a stunt for the cameras.

Despite the frustrations, lawmakers who negotiated the compromise last year say they see slivers of hope.

Murphy said the implementation of the new law, and some of its early successes, will ultimately persuade Republicans to get on board with more legislation.

“What happened last year was seismic for Republicans,” Murphy said.

In terms of the bill’s success, “People don’t get excited about the mass shootings that didn’t happen,” Murphy said, and that can be a challenge as they talk about it and contemplate what more could be done. But the dynamics can change quickly, he said.

While Republicans in the past might have tried to shy away from gun measures even if they supported them, Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., have been promoting the new law and have discussed it frequently. Late last year, they joined Murphy, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and FBI Director Christopher Wray on a visit to an FBI facility in West Virginia for a briefing on how the background checks were working.

“I am proud to see this commonsense legislation already making a difference,” Tillis said in a statement afterward.

According to recent data obtained by The Associated Press, those who were flagged in the stepped-up background checks and prevented from buying a gun included an 18-year-old in Nebraska who had made terroristic threats and was prone to violent outbursts, a 20-year-old drug dealer in Arizona and an 18-year-old in Arizona who had been previously charged with unlawful possession of weapons and was found carrying fentanyl. All were attempting to purchase long guns.

Tillis said he is aware of a separate case in his home state where a person under 21 who had been charged with assault and battery and assaulting a police officer was flagged and prevented from buying a gun.

“It’s just one of those bills that’s going to age well,” Tillis said, noting that the number of denials of gun sales is a very small fraction of total sales.

Cornyn said that so far, the bill “seems to be working.” But he said he doesn’t expect Congress to go any further any time soon. He said would strongly oppose an “assault weapons” ban, as Biden is proposing.

When Biden and other lawmakers talk about “assault weapons,” they are using an inexact term to describe a group of high-powered guns or semi-automatic long rifles, such as an an AR-15, that can fire 30 rounds fast without reloading.

Most Republicans are steadfastly opposed to such a ban, arguing that it would be too complicated, especially as sales and varieties of the firearms have proliferated. There are many more types of these high-powered guns today than in 1994, when the ban was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Law- abiding citizens own those guns, Cornyn said, and “no law-abiding citizen is a threat to public safety.”

Despite the current standstill, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, says last year’s bill was proof that they can break gridlock.

“It was never the finish line,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

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April 2, 2023
Funeral held for girl killed in Nashville school massacre

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Funeral held for girl killed in Nashville school massacre – CBS News

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A funeral was held Friday for a 9-year-old girl, one of six people killed in a shooting earlier this week at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. Evelyn Dieckhaus was described as a “shining beacon of joy.” Mark Strassman has more.

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March 31, 2023
Protesters demand gun reform after Nashville school shooting

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Protesters demand gun reform after Nashville school shooting – CBS News

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Thousands of people held a protest outside the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday, demanding more restrictive gun measures in the wake of a shooting at a private school in Nashville earlier this week in which six people were killed, including three children.

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March 30, 2023
Hundreds protest at Tennessee Capitol for tighter gun controls after Nashville shooting

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Hundreds of school children, teens and parents gathered at the Tennessee Capitol on Thursday to protest for tighter gun controls laws three days after a shooter opened fire at The Covenant School, killing three children and three adults.

Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children and teens in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries, according to an analysis by KFF, a not-for-profit providing health policy analysis and journalism.

Since the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999, 175 people have died in 15 mass shootings events connected to U.S. schools and colleges, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University,

Thursday’s rally was led by Metro Nashville Public Schools Parents, reported CBS affiliate WTVF, and those attending were asked to wear orange.

Protesters gather inside the Tennessee State Capitol to call for an end to gun violence and support stronger gun laws in Nashville, Tennessee.

Seth Herald via Getty Images

At the Capitol, protestors lined the hallways and chanted at the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature as they filed in to begin taking up bills for the first time since the shooting.

Chants of “Save our children!” echoed noisily in the hallways between the state Senate and House chambers, with protesters setting up shop inside and outside the Capitol. Some silently filled the Senate chamber’s gallery, including children who held signs reading “I’m nine” — a reference to the age of the three kids who died in Monday’s attack. Most protesters were removed from the gallery after some began yelling down at the lawmakers, “Children are dead!”

Meanwhile, in the House, two Democratic lawmakers caused a temporary shutdown when they began yelling, “Power to the people” through a megaphone.

In Washington D.C., Republicans showed little appetite to pass more gun restrictions. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who represents the Knoxville area, said Congress isn’t going to fix the problems that led to Monday’s shooting.

The protests followed a Wednesday night candlelight vigil in Nashville where Republican lawmakers stood alongside first lady Jill Biden, Democratic lawmakers and musicians including Sheryl Crow, who has called for stricter gun controls since the attack.

The vigil was somber and at times tearful, as speaker after speaker read the victims’ names and offered condolences to their loved ones but refrained from any statement that could be seen as political. The family of Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian who was among those killed, was in attendance, including his seven children.

“Just two days ago was our city’s worst day,” Mayor John Cooper said. “I so wish we weren’t here, but we need to be here.”

In attendance was Shaundelle Brooks, whose 23-year-old son, Akilah Dasilva, was among the four people killed in a 2018 shooting at a Nashville Waffle House. Brooks said she went to the vigil to support the families of those killed at the school.

“I know what it’s like to be a parent – what it feels like, like you’re drowning and can’t move, and that weakness and that hole that comes in your stomach,” she said.

Police have said a 28-year-old former student, whom they identified as Audrey Hale, drove up to the school on Monday morning, shot out the glass doors, entered and began firing indiscriminately. Police later fatally shot Hale.

In addition to Hill, the victims were identified as three 9-year-old students, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney; Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school; and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61.

Cara Tabachnick and Kathryn Watson contributed reporting

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March 30, 2023
Twitter removes tweets about

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Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a “trans day of vengeance” protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok,” Twitter’s trust and safety head, Ella Irwin, wrote in a tweet.

In removing the tweets, Twitter said it used automated processes to do it quickly at a large scale, without considering what context the tweets were shared in. Because of this, both tweets that were critical of and those that supported the protests were removed.

This appeared to anger many conservative Twitter users who said the rules were unfairly applied to them because they were posting the image of the protest flyer to speak out against it.

Anger from trans activists

Trans-rights activists were quick to point out that “trans day of vengeance” is a meme that has been around in the trans community for years and is not a call to violence, saying that Twitter is misguided in its reasoning for removing the tweets in support of the protest.

Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit liberal advocacy group Fight for the Future, said Twitter’s actions are “the latest example of Big Tech companies employing double standards in content moderation.”

“They are slow to moderate content targeting trans people, but quick to silence us when we speak out or push back. ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ is not a specific day or a call for violence. It’s a meme that’s been around for years, a way of expressing anger and frustration about oppression and violence the trans community faces daily,” Greer said. “Context is everything in content moderation, which is why content policies should be based in human rights and applied evenly, not changed rapidly based on public pressure or news cycles.”

The poster in question is a largely text-based digital flyer. It reads “we want more than visibility” on top, followed by “trans day of vengeance” and “stop trans genocide” as well as the date and time of the planned protest.

Many of the tweets Twitter removed were from conservative users sharing an image of the flyer in an attempt to connect the planned protests with the recent school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. In the aftermath of the shooting, some right-wing activists and commentators have seized on the gender identity of the shooter to denounce transgender people and advocates, as well as insinuate they are planning to engage in violence.

Taylor Greene’s account suspended

Twitter this week temporarily restricted the congressional account of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after the Georgia Republican tweeted a graphic that referred to the “Trans Day of Vengeance” following the shooting. Greene posted a screenshot on her personal account on Tuesday of the notice that said some of her account’s features were being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s rules.

“My Congressional account was suspended for 7 days for exposing Antifa, who are organizing a call for violence called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.’ The day after the mass murder of children by a trans shooter,” she tweeted.

Twitter’s trust and safety head, Ella Irwin, said it had to “sweep” the platform to remove more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of the graphic.

LGBTQ+ veterans still fighting for honorable discharges

05:09

The shooting is still under investigation. As of Wednesday, police have shared no evidence that the shooter’s gender or gender identity played a role in the shooting.

“Fighting against false narratives”

On its website, the group organizing Saturday’s protest said it does not condone violence. In a statement posted on the site, the Trans Radical Activist Network and other organizers also strongly rejected any connection between the school shooting in Nashville and Saturday’s protest, which organizers said was planned before the shooting took place.

“Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence,” the protest’s organizers wrote on their website. “We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”

Twitter, both currently under Elon Musk and before the billionaire bought the company, has long prohibited the incitement of violence in tweets. In early March, Twitter announced what it called a new policy prohibiting “violent speech” on its platform, though the new rules appear similar to guidelines against violent threats that the company had on its books before Musk took over.

Among the updates, Twitter had expanded its policy to include a ban on “coded language,” which is often referred to as “dog whistles,” used to indirectly incite violence. It also added a rule that prohibits “threatening to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.”

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March 30, 2023
As more details emerge about how the Nashville school shooting unfolded, expert says the quick thinking of teachers saved lives | CNN

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CNN
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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.

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.

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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March 29, 2023
First lady Jill Biden to visit Nashville for candlelight vigil honoring school shooting victims

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New details emerge in Nashville shooting

Details emerge about efforts to warn police moments before Nashville school shooting

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Washington — First lady Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Nashville to participate in a candlelight vigil on Wednesday evening honoring the six victims of the shooting at the Covenant School earlier this week.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Biden’s visit during the White House press briefing. She will travel to Nashville after a trip to Greene County, Ohio, where the first lady is meeting with military families as part of her Joining Forces initiative.

“As you heard the president say throughout this week, we continue to call on Congress to act to pass an assault weapons ban, and take additional actions to make our kids and communities safer,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.

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March 29, 2023
Melissa Joan Hart says she helped children

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Pastor remembers friend killed in shooting

Pastor remembers friend killed in Nashville shooting at elementary school

04:43

Actor Melissa Joan Hart says she helped children flee moments after the deadly Nashville school shooting on Monday.

The “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” star shared an emotional video on Instagram on Tuesday that she filmed the day of the shooting at The Covenant School. She said the rampage unfolded “right next to” the school that her kids attend.

“We moved here from Connecticut, where we were in a school a little ways down from Sandy Hook,” she said, referring to the 2012 mass shooting that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Connecticut. “So this is our second experience with a school shooting with our kids being in close proximity.”

The actor said her family is ok and her children weren’t at the school on Monday. Hart then recalled how she and her husband, musician Mark Wilkerson, were on their way to school for conferences when they came across students who were apparently running away from their school.

“We helped a class of kindergartners across a busy highway that were climbing out of the woods, that were trying to escape the shooter situation at their school,” Hart said. “So we helped all these tiny little kids cross the road and get their teachers over there. We helped a mom reunite with her children.”

“I just don’t know what to say anymore,” Hart said. “It is just, enough is enough. Just pray. Pray for the families.”

A shooter opened fire at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in the city’s affluent Green Hills neighborhood, killing three children and three adults. Police have identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old from Nashville Officials said the shooter was armed with at least two assault-style weapons and a handgun.

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March 29, 2023
Katie Hobbs’ Press Aide Slammed For Trans-Rights Gun Meme Hours After Shooting

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The press secretary for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona shared a meme suggesting that guns be drawn against transphobes ― hours after a shooter identified by police as transgender killed six people at a school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Josselyn Berry faced heavy backlash from Republicans after posting a GIF of actor Gena Rowlands in the movie “Gloria” brandishing two guns. “Us when we see transphobes,” the caption read.

Josselyn Berry’s tweet drew heavy criticism from the Arizona GOP.

The right-wing Arizona Freedom Caucus of state legislators demanded that Berry be fired. “Calling for violence like this is un-American & never acceptable,” the organization tweeted. In calling for Berry’s resignation, state Sen. Anthony Kern (R), who deems himself “Trump-endorsed,” said the entry was “massively disturbing.”

“I don’t think anyone, no matter your political leanings, would look at that tweet — any sane, professional person would look at that tweet and say, ‘This is how I want one of the top advisers to the governor of my state to conduct themselves,’” Daniel Scarpinato, a former chief of staff for ex-GOP Gov. Doug Ducey, told The Arizona Republic.

Republican Kari Lake, who lost the 2022 gubernatorial election to Hobbs and denied the results, wrote on Twitter: “If a conservative made light of a mass shooting & called for more violence, they’d be personally & professionally destroyed.”

The newspaper noted that Berry, whose Twitter account is currently private, wrote earlier Monday about trans rights. If “you work in the progressive community and are transphobic, you’re not progressive,” she wrote. The context behind that tweet was unclear, the Republic noted.

A respondent wrote “not sure these transphobic-from-the-left posers know who they’re messing with,” prompting Berry’s controversial gun tweet, according to the Republic.

Prominent conservatives have been using the shooting to spout anti-trans rhetoric. Hobbs has been seeking to expand protections for LGBTQ people against stiff opposition.

HuffPost was unable to immediately reach Hobbs or Berry.

Gov. Katie Hobbs and press secretary Josselyn Berry.

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March 29, 2023
Republicans in Congress show little willingness to pass more gun restrictions after Nashville shooting

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The passage of additional gun restrictions on Capitol Hill appears to be unlikely, after a 28-year-old shooter killed three 9-year-olds and three adults at a private Christian grade school in Nashville.

The suspected shooter had no criminal background and was able to legally purchase seven guns from five local gun stores, according to Nashville Police Chief John Drake. The shooter was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun, authorities said.

Congress was able to enact a law last year that enhanced background checks for gun buyers under 21 and added funding for mental health services and school security, but Democrats say that wasn’t enough. President Joe Biden on Monday and Tuesday urged Congress to pass legislation banning assault-style weapons — which Congress couldn’t do even when Democrats controlled both chambers in 2021 and 2022.

Senate Chaplain Barry Black, in his opening prayer Tuesday called on senators to do more than offer their sympathies: “When babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers,” and he warned, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Throughout the day Tuesday, GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ignored questions from reporters about the Nashville shooting or the possibility of more gun legislation, and by Tuesday afternoon had issued no statement about the mass shooting or the people killed.

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who represents the Knoxville area, said Congress isn’t going to fix the problems that led to Monday’s shooting.

“We can pass all the laws we want,” Burchett told CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns on CBS News’ “Red and Blue” Tuesday. “It was already in a gun-free zone. We do that all the time up here — we pass laws, and then they really have no effect. You’ve got to deal with what’s at the heart of this. It’s evil, some even would say demon possession, even, but go further, we’ve got a mental health crisis in this country.”

Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, the junior senator from Tennessee, said he’s focused on the families of the victims, not the “politics” of the matter.

Asked Tuesday about an assault weapons ban, Hagerty replied, “I’m certain that politics will waive into everything, but right now I’m not focused on the politics of the situation. I’m focused on the families and the victims.”

Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said it’s too soon for any movement on gun legislation, such as universal background checks.

“It’s premature,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “There’s an ongoing investigation, and I think we need to let the facts come out.”

Still, not all Republicans are resistant to the possibility of more gun control laws.

“I don’t know if there’s much space to do more, but I’ll certainly look and see,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina.

Graham said he wouldn’t vote for an assault weapons ban, adding that if Democrats think that’s the solution, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should to bring it to the floor.

“If you had an assault weapons ban, I wouldn’t vote for it, but bring it up, if you think that’s the fix,” he said. “You know, Senator Schumer’s in charge. Do you think that fixes the problem? Bring it up. Let’s vote. I’m not afraid to vote.”

Caitlin Huey-Burns, Rebecca Kaplan, Alan He and Jack Turman contributed to this report.

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March 28, 2023
Nashville school shooter bought 7 firearms legally from 5 stores, police chief says

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The assailant in the Nashville school shooting legally bought seven firearms from five stores before Monday’s deadly attack, the city’s police chief said Tuesday afternoon. The shooter used three of those weapons in the rampage, killing six people.

The three children killed in the attack were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9. The three adults killed in the attack — Mike Hill, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Cynthia Peak, 61 — all worked at The Covenant School, police said.

During Tuesday’s brief press conference, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hill, who worked as a custodian, was shot by the assailant through a glass door that the shooter used to enter the school.

Police spokesman Don Aaron said investigators hadn’t found evidence that the shooter specifically targeted any of the victims. “This school, this church building was a target of the shooter,” Aaron said.

On “CBS Mornings” Tuesday, Drake said the shooter, a former student of the school, had planned the attack down to what the shooter would wear and had maps of the school.

People gather at an entry to Covenant School, which has become a memorial for shooting victims, March 28, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn.

AP Photo/John Amis

The parents of the shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, were unaware the shooter had access to so many guns, Drake told reporters Tuesday. The parents thought that the shooter previously had one weapon and sold it, he said.

The purchases were made “over the past couple of years,” Aaron said. According to Drake, the weapons were hidden from the shooter’s parents — whom the shooter lived with, Aaron told reporters.

The assailant had also been receiving treatment for an “emotional disorder,” the police chief said. The treatment hadn’t been reported to authorities, Drake said.

The parents felt that the shooter shouldn’t own weapons, he said. They were under the impression that, after the shooter sold the one weapon, the shooter didn’t own any more guns.

Tennessee doesn’t have a “red flag” law that could give police the authority to remove weapons from a person, Drake said. If it had been reported that the shooter was suicidal or intended to hurt another person, then authorities would have tried to take the weapons away, the chief said.

“As it stands, we had absolutely no idea, actually, who this person was,” Drake said.

The new developments were announced after authorities released police body camera video of officers responding to the shooting and charging into the school, with one shouting, “Let’s go!” The bodycam video showed officers checking classrooms for the shooter in small groups and eventually confronting and fatally shooting the attacker inside the building.

Drake said on “CBS Mornings” that the shooter may have also had other targets in mind, including a mall and possibly some family members.

Sarah Lynch Baldwin contributed reporting.

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March 28, 2023
Covenant School shooter was under care for emotional disorder and hid guns at home, police say | CNN

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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March 28, 2023