From the Editor: This shouldn’t feel normal
By Eric Snyder – Editor in Chief, Nashville Business Journal
The first thing I did was see how close our daycare is to The Covenant School.
Then I waited for Twitter to tell me how many kids were dead.
Four miles.
Six victims, including three children.
It’s to our national shame that this passes for normal.
The Washington Post’s top story on its website Monday morning was a seven-month investigation into the nation’s most notorious weapon, under the headline, “From outcast to political symbol. How the AR-15 emerged as an icon.” Later that morning, a red breaking news bar was placed above that coverage, announcing our tragedy: “Shooter dead after opening fire at a Nashville grade school and leaving ‘multiple patients,’ police say.”
It’s a series of words that has lost its impact, unless and until it refers to the place you call home.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to leave immediately and go pick up our 4-year-old from daycare, which remained on lockdown all day.
Instead, I stayed at my desk, pretending it was another normal day.
And I guess it was.
How to help: The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee has established the Caring for Covenant fund to manage donations to the school.
Resources: The National Mass Violence Victimization Resource Center has provided a list of resources for the community.
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Photo: 2022 Christmas card of Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles (R), his wife, daughter and two sons. Ogles represents the 5th district of Tennessee that Covenant School is in.
“Merry Christmas! The Ogles Family,” the Facebook post read.
The photograph was removed from social media after the shooting and not in the wake of previous school attacks.
The shooting left six dead, including three 9-year-old children.
When asked whether he now regrets that Christmas card photo, Congressman Ogles said, “Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising my rights to bear arms?”
In response to the shooting, Mr Ogles released a statement saying he and his family are “devastated by the tragedy that took place at The Covenant school” and send their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims’ families.
“As a father of three, I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of violence,” Representative Ogles said.
Tennessee’s government aided and abetted the Covenant school shooting with all their expansions of access to guns of all kinds. The shooter was able to buy all her firearms legally.
There is no mechanism in place to prevent the mentally ill from owning a firearm. HIPAA laws prevent doctors and psychiatrists from reporting anything about their patients.
Our lawmakers have two choices, either 1) admit we have no way to prevent the mentally ill from purchasing firearms and figure out how to notify gun store cashiers that the purchaser is mentally ill, OR 2) start LIMITING the sale of guns, especially assault weapons which are designed specifically for mass murder, so the angry and mentally ill can’t just go out and buy one.
Why is this so hard for Republicans? Do they enjoy seeing us get mass murdered?
Republicans, who dominate the state’s politics, have lost all moral moorings in the urge to win, and to dominate, and to simply be belligerent.
Their perverse, blatantly un-Christian obsession with guns (what a sick, heathen, Satanic abomination: a CHRISTMAS card with children holding guns designed explicitly for killing people), is the clearest indication that they have abandoned faith in God, shifting their allegiance to faith in guns.
They’ve bluntly rejected Jesus’ instruction for humble Christian compassion and to “turn the other cheek,” to instead strut arrogant force and cling to malicious spite. And they’ve repudiated public safety for personal power.
What a cult of evil the GOP has become — and nowhere more evident than Tennessee.
Donald Trump is right: “America is going to Hell.” And the GOP is leading the way, with Tennessee Republicans at the head of the line.