Nashville is mourning today after a mass shooting attack took place Monday at the Covenant School. Six people were killed by Audrey Hale, who attended Covenant School as a child and seems to have chosen the location purposefully but not the victims.
The victims of the attack include three nine-year-old students and three faculty members from the school. The suspect was shot by police during the course of the attack and died on the scene within the Covenant School. This marks the nineteenth school shooting in three months and the 130th mass shooting in the US in 2023. At the time of the shooting, there were only 86 days in 2023, meaning there’s been an average of over one mass shooting per day this year.
The Attack
Law enforcement officers in Nashville say that Hale had a detailed plan for attacking the Covenant School. They currently don’t believe that Hale chose targets purposefully but instead that they might have been firing randomly upon entering the school. Hale had legally purchased firearms from 2020 to 2022 but was undergoing treatment for a “personality disorder,” according to a press release.
Police in Nashville responded to the attack in a matter of minutes, offering a stark contrast to the long delay in Uvalde last year. The Uvalde shooting, which left 21 people dead, remains one of the deadliest US school shootings.
Strange Messages
Hale sent a friend strange messages on social media shortly before initiating the attack. According to a friend who spoke to reporters, Hale messaged saying they were “planning to die today,” and that the events would “be on the news.” The friend was disturbed by these messages but didn’t know how to respond.
There has been some confusion in the media and online regarding Hale’s gender. Police initially referred to them as a “female shooter” before noting that Hale identified as transgender. Hale used he/him pronouns on social media.
Ongoing Gun Control Conversation
The number of shooting attacks in the United States has hit absurdly high levels, and lawmakers still haven’t moved with any urgency to address the situation. Instead, some pundits on social media blamed Hale’s attack on their supposed transgender identity, glossing over the hundreds of other cisgender shooters responsible for attacks this year alone.
When questioned about the rise in shootings, US President Joe Biden deflected and said, “I can’t do anything except plead with […] Congress to act reasonably.”
