(C) Tennessee Lookout
This story was originally published by Tennessee Lookout and is unaltered.
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Processing a tragedy and looking for solutions in the middle – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'April', 'Gabe Hart']
Date: 2023-04-24
One month ago, the shooting at the Covenant School took six innocent lives —three children and three adults. It feels like it’s been a year.
Normally, after an event of this magnitude takes place, I’m ready to come out fighting – attacking the keyboard with ferocity – about what should or shouldn’t be done; about how our legislators failed us and our children. I’d have my usual punching bags — Andy Ogles, Chris Todd, and any other far right Tennessee lawmaker who seems more concerned about personal freedom than living people.
This time was different, though. This time, I was directly connected to a tragic event and found myself not knowing what to say, what to write, or even what to think. It was personal; it was real. I know the parents; I knew the child.
I won’t reveal the names of those who forever had their lives altered by this senseless and preventable tragedy. They are too important to me to use them in a story. I do, however, want to unpack how different it feels to experience something so devastating that it wakes you up in the night; something that hovers at the recesses of conscious thought waiting to shatter that veil at any moment.
On March 27, I started getting texts about the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. I texted my friend who I knew had a child at the school. My friend didn’t respond. I went about my day, teaching my English students about “Fahrenheit 451.” As the day drew to a close, I received a phone call from a friend telling me that our friend’s child was in the hospital. A few hours later, our fears were confirmed.
I sat on my front porch with my girlfriend, and we cried for a few minutes, sitting silently afterwards. I thought about my friends and the child they lost that morning. I remembered things I had forgotten. I searched pictures of us together on social media and cried some more. I thought about my teenage daughter who was napping inside the house as is her custom after school in the afternoons. I wanted to hug her, but didn’t want to wake her up. I also had another thought — one that paralyzed me and has until now: mere hours after the event everyone already had their own narrative about this shooting.
On March 27, I began getting texts about a shooting at The Covenant School, which a friend’s child attended. Hours later, I heard that child was in the hospital and a short time later, our fears were confirmed: the child had died as a result of the shooting.
Sure enough, minutes after I had received the news, my social media timelines were on fire with unsolicited thoughts from the left, the right, the middle, the holy, and the secular. Everyone had a take on what happened that morning, why it happened, and what should be done moving forward. Normally, I would have, too. But, that afternoon, I just sat there on my porch.
I saw the predictable tweets from GOP lawmakers and they filled me with such rage that I wanted to howl. I saw Facebook memes about Cain and Abel and a rock and the stupidity and lack of thought to share something so callus and vapid angered me even more. But then, I started seeing social media posts from my liberal friends, and I had a surprising reaction.
Although I logically agreed with most of the things they were posting, I felt disgusted towards them, too. They didn’t know my friend; they didn’t know my friends’ child. They weren’t connected. It felt like the narratives of each side became more important than the actual event itself.
Several days later, House Democratic Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson peacefully protested on the House floor and were subsequently expelled, setting off another narrative that continuously snowballed as it spun through the news cycle at warp speed. It felt like the victims and the families kept getting left further and further behind.
As this current legislative session wobbled to a close, Gov. Bill Lee called on lawmakers to work on legislation that would keep firearms out of the hands of people who battle various forms of mental illness. He also signed an executive order strengthening background checks and placing tighter restrictions on who can and cannot possess a firearm.
It’s important to acknowledge the loosening of gun laws over the last several years by the Tennessee GOP very likely correlates to Tennessee finding itself in the top 10 states for gun deaths, I want to commend Lee for doing something. However, this is just the beginning of what needs to be radical, common sense change.
believe, at the deepest part of my core, that we have a gun problem in America and in Tennessee. I also believe we have a mental health problem. Both of those truths can coexist together.
As I have struggled over the last several weeks to separate my personal feelings for my friends and their family from my need to speak up on ideological issues, one bill being discussed caught my attention — not as a citizen but as an educator.
Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, sponsored a bill that would “authorize(s) a faculty or staff member of a school to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds subject to certain conditions, including obtaining an enhanced handgun carry permit and completing annual training.”
I truly believe there is common sense legislation on which both sides can find common ground. This common ground, however, can only be a starting point. Legislation that arms teachers and puts even more guns in the hands of civilians and places those weapons in an environment that is unpredictable and filled with children is absolutely not the answer. Fortunately, the bill didn’t pass.
As someone with progressive sensibilities, I believe, at the deepest part of my core, that we have a gun problem in America and in Tennessee. I also believe we have a mental health problem. Both of those truths can coexist together. The availability of high powered weapons of murder to anyone who wants to own one is a tragic embarrassment. It is imperative to limit who can own a firearm and how powerful that firearm can be. In most states, that would be common sense. In Tennessee, it would be considered extreme progress.
Since the day of the shooting, I’ve thought a lot about narratives — the ones we see burst into flame on social media and lead to other fires that are just as quickly spread or extinguished — and how all of those narratives have real life implications for people made of flesh and blood. People who can be pierced or killed or injured; people who can lose their children. Narratives are ghosts without substance, scattered by political winds and manipulative emotions. Laws made or amended from those narratives, however, are what matters.
The adults and children showing up to the capitol in protests matter. We the people matter. And we should demand safety for ourselves and our children. Safety that doesn’t involve more weapons being pushed into civilian hands. Our lawmakers represent us, not their own extreme points of view.
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[1] Url:
https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/04/24/after-a-tragedy-looking-for-solutions-in-the-middle/
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