How readers are reacting to The Covenant School shooting | Letters to the editor
Editor's note: Readers have been writing around the country about The Covenant School shooting on March 27. These are a selection of letters from residents of Middle Tennessee. More letters will be published in the days to come. Send your letters of 250 words or fewer to letters@tennessean.com. Include your full name, town/city and ZIP code.
This is what a 9 year-old is like
I am a teacher and mother of three in Nashville. My youngest daughter is 9, the same age as the young victims of yesterday's shooting. Have you ever met a 9 year-old? Their grown up teeth have finally come in, but their faces are still small and childlike. They are funny and filled with wonder.
On Monday, three 9 year-olds were torn apart by a weapon of war that no civilian should have access to.
Gov. Bill Lee, Rep. Jason Powell and Sen. Jeff Yarbro, as representatives of the people of Tennessee, have the ability to take real measures in the form of common-sense gun legislation. I should not have to feel like a sitting duck at work, waiting for an AR-15 to blow into my classroom full of young children.
I should not have to wonder if tonight is my last night to tuck my children into their beds.
I urge my elected officials to renounce the NRA and do their job -- pass common sense gun laws as quickly as you passed laws regulating drag performances.
Margaret Beagle, Nashville 37211
Time to stop the insanity
According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing again and again and expect different results.
Given that, I would say we're way past the point of insanity when it comes to gun laws or lack thereof.
If putting children in their graves isn't enough to change the laws, then we have been voting the wrong lawmakers into office.
It's up to us as voters to change things because our lawmakers, at least by Einstein's definition, are insane.
Brett Keiper, Mt. Juliet 37122
How to protect children and individual freedom
Thoughts after The Covenant School shooting.
First, I would like to say rest in peace to the victims and to give condolences to their families, friends, and peers.
Second, I would like to thank the Metro Nashville Police Department for a quick and decisive response. Nashville's Guardians, indeed. You are infinitely preferable to whatever the several hundred in Uvalde, Texas, called themselves that day.
Third, I would like to offer some consideration. Although the shooter was neutralized by police about 15 minutes after the shooting began and that loss of life was thankfully low for that amount of time, I feel it is worth pointing out that last summer in Greenwood, Indiana a young man legally carrying a pistol saved countless lives by shooting and killing a gunman 15 seconds after he started shooting in a shopping mall.
He did this despite being outgunned by armament similar to the Uvalde gunman and not having any support, armor, or much formal training. People like this can make a difference. While this is not possible in the exact same way at schools, the idea of authorizing school faculty to carry firearms after training for such an eventuality is worth serious consideration and should not be automatically dismissed as unworthy of discussion.
Fourth, a word of caution. Do not feel compelled to undermine your own constitutional rights just because you think it is dangerous right now. Destroying freedom in the aftermath of tragedy has sadly happened too many times recently and throughout history.
Neil Graham, Nashville 37221
Do more than talk about mental health
Republican politicians, such as U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Columbia, state that the problem with mass shootings is that something should be done regarding mental health. How would that work, Mr. Ogles?
Would anyone who has ever provided counseling or treatment to people with mental health problems submit all of their information to a central data bank?
And then, based on that data, would a list be prepared of all those people who should not be allowed to possess anything more deadly than a butter knife?
Sounds good, but it won't happen. Second Amendment, you know.
Paul Nowak, Franklin 37069
Firearms deaths among children is a growing epidemic
Once again, a mass shooter has entered a school carrying an assault rifle and murdered innocent children and their adult caregivers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), firearm-related injury has now overtaken motor vehicle accidents to become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States.
In 2020, there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths from suicide, homicide, and accidents among children and adolescents, a 29.5% increase from the year prior. This is nothing short of a public health crisis.
An important step in disease prevention and control is bioexclusion, preventing the introduction of disease into a population by controlling its source.
Assault rifles are military weapons specifically designed to kill or maim soldiers on the battlefield by firing high velocity bullets that can literally liquify human tissues. There is no reason for an ordinary citizen to own a weapon of war.
Removing the source of the disease of mass shootings includes a federal ban on the ownership of assault weapons. The goal of biocontainment is to confine the disease-causing agent to limit its spread. This means reasonable limits on gun ownership, such as expanded background checks and red flag laws. We have decreased motor vehicle deaths among children by federal legislation forcing automakers to make cars safer and requiring the use of child safety seats.
When considered through a public health lens, reasonable limits on gun ownership are consistent with our societal goals of protecting the lives and health of our children.
Marta Ann Crispens, M.D., MBA, Nashville 37205
Let’s use God-given common sense
As our legislators are asking us all to pray for those lost in the Nashville shooting. I wonder if that is enough. With each loss of life, we are told to pray.
I believe as many do that God works through people.
First to change attitudes and then to give us the tools to make changes. I believe God has given us the common sense to know that guns kill people.
Why on earth are we continuing to support those who manufacturer and distribute guns, and those who lobby legislators? We know our politicians are doing everything they can to stay in power.
When will a few passionate and courageous legislators step forward and support reasonable gun control legislation. Prayers are not enough. Action is necessary.
Barbara Reynolds, Cookeville 38506
Words won’t save our children
As a mother of two young children in Nashville I stood on my front lawn today with my neighbors, three of us sobbing in broad daylight.
I have never felt so powerless, doubting that any protest, donation or prayer would make any difference. The 89th school shooting of this year had made its way into our special Nashville community.
The thing about moms is that we feel our children’s pain amplified. Their sadness and confusion become our own. We put on a brave face to tell them about unspeakable tragedy, watching silent tears roll down their tiny cheeks and even the littlest ones know we’re hurting.
We grapple with our inability to protect them from monsters who would harm the most innocent among us. Nothing we can say will protect them from the sad reality that every day as we make them breakfast, brush their little teeth and hug them before we send them off to school, there is a small chance that they won’t come home to us.
It’s enough already. We cannot let this moment pass. We cannot become desensitized to this senseless violence or scroll past it as another headline in our noisy social media feeds. Politicians will send thoughts and prayers and bat this issue around to justify one policy or another. From a mom’s perspective, it’s all talk and no action. Words are no longer enough.
Nashville must be different. Our community is stronger than this. We must come together and take collective action as parents and neighbors to end this devastating era of gun violence and create a safer future for our little ones.
Johanna Roberts, Nashville 37209
Stop selling military gear to civilians
Six people plus the shooter died March 27 in Nashville. I don't think it was preventable with our current gun laws in place.
If there had been an armed guard at the school, he almost undoubtedly would not have been as well armed as the shooter who had two assault rifles and a semiautomatic pistol. Along Tennessee roads there are large billboards for gun dealers featuring large pictures of assault rifles which are readily available to the public.I used to go to gun shows at the Fairgrounds back in the 1970s with dealers offering historic guns from wheellocks to flintlocks to percussion pistols and single action Colts along with a few fine old guitars which appealed to me.
Today local gun shows are almost exclusively devoted to selling paramilitary weapons designed to kill people with deadly efficiency. There will always be some people who are a danger to society, but we don't have to continue to arm them with military gear.
The right to own a gun does not have to include weapons designed for mass killing rather than hunting, target practice, or self-defense.
George Gruhn, Nashville 37204
Serve the public, not the NRA
To Governor Lee, Senators Blackburn and Hagerty:
Your thoughts and prayers are a cop-out. Why don’t you consider gun control? That’s the real problem. Assault weapons should not be sold to the general public. I guess you won’t consider sensible gun control since you are probably getting money from the NRA.
Seems to me, you consider money more important than human life.
If our senators are so concerned, heartbroken and devastated, why don’t they do something about it?
Knox McCharen, Nashville 37217
We put rights above lives in America
There was another school shooting, in Nashville, on Monday. This should not surprise us.
Plato (428/427-348/347 B.C.E.) wrote, democracy “is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”
As we seek a solution to school shootings in this country, let us consider some things.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution says nothing of the types of arms. It does seem to state that to keep and bear arms a person must be a member of a well-regulated Militia. The purpose of which is to keep the State free. The Second Amendment was ratified in December 1791, 231 years ago. For the first 217 years of the Second Amendment, it was not interpreted as it has been in the last 15.
According to the National Institutes of Health the brain is not fully developed until a person is in their mid-to-late 20s, with the prefrontal cortex one of the last parts to mature. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions. Knowing this, it would not seem responsible to allow an 18-year-old to purchase/carry handguns.
The United States is a country founded in rebellion and war. We romanticize outlaws from the “Wild West” like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and John Wesley Hardin. Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and Al Capone are immortalized in movies and copied in Blockbusters like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Guns and violence have been a part of our culture, often in ways most don’t think of, since the founding of this country, so school/mass shootings should not surprise us.
Samuel Spahr, Gallatin 37066
Who do members of Congress serve?
While our legislators wade up the steps on Tennessee’s and Washington’s Capitol Hill through the blood of our children and the innocent victims of gun violence just what can we expect to be finally be done about stopping the killings in our schools?
Well, since the GOP is in control and they answer to the NRA, we can expect nothing to happen, repeat, nothing will happen. The GOP proves to us all the time that the living have no value.
If you’re a fetus you have it made at least until you’re born then like the rest of us you’re on your on at least until you can carry a gun.
Maybe the whole GOP should get their family Christmas photos made this year holding assault rifles and show us who they really support: the NRA. We can bet that while our brilliant GOP legislators are dodging the gun question, they’ll be busy inciting harm on the gay community, immigrants, having fun burning books and covering nude statues and paintings.
These things they all fear – truth, history, science – all the things they forgot about. To fix this state’s and country’s do-nothing elected representatives, we start with term limits and eliminate lobbyists.
Legislators all work for the people not lobbyists; not the party but the people and we will be stuck until we have some relief from the career representatives who work for who knows who.
While we wait we’ll continue to weep over the blood of children.
Steve Martin, Hendersonville 37075
Challenge leaders to find solutions
I am angry, frustrated and sad that now Nashville has been added to the list of schools where children and caring adults have died by the hand of someone with a military-style weapon.
I can't imagine the pain those closely affected must feel. If the majority of Americans want better gun-control laws as we are told (and I hope that includes Tennesseans), why are our elected officials not doing something to end the senseless murder?
Perhaps Tennessee could do something positive in leading the way for our country. I would like The Tennessean and the local news investigative reporters to challenge our Tennessee elected leadership to a conversation about this failure to protect our citizens.
We must find the courage and know-how to change this.
Beverly Mintmire, Nashville 37215
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Covenant School shooting: Middle Tennessee residents share their views
