At least three children and three adults were killed Monday in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. The suspected shooter was also killed in an altercation with law enforcement.
Law enforcement received calls of a shooting at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, at roughly 10:15 a.m., Don Aaron, spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department, said in a press conference. Police witnessed a “female who was firing” and was armed with at least two “assault-type” rifles, Aaron said. Later in the day, John Drake, the chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said the shooter identified as transgender.
The shooting is one of the deadliest in Tennessee history. It is the 128th mass shooting in the United States this year alone, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. The tragedy comes after a spate of high-profile shootings nationwide this past year, from a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois to an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas to a dance hall in Monterey Park, California on the eve of the Lunar New Year.
Lawmakers sent their “thoughts and prayers” with those impacted by the shooting in Nashville. “As a father of three, I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of violence,” Rep. Andy Ogles, the House Republican whose district covers The Covenant School, said in a statement.
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President Joe Biden was briefed on the Nashville shooting on Monday, and First Lady Jill Biden issued a statement: “We just learned about another shooting in Tennessee. A school shooting. And I am truly without words. Our children deserve better. And we stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer.”
“We need to do something,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “Once again, the president calls on Congress to do something before another child is senselessly killed in a preventable act of gun violence. Again, we need to do something.”
Biden signed a piece of narrow, yet significant bipartisan gun control legislation last summer, ending decades of gridlock in Congress on the issue. But efforts by Democrats to go even further, like a ban on assault weapons, have hit a dead end.
This a breaking news story and will be updated.
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