Families share trauma in gun law push but get mixed results

A woman wearing a "Covenant" shirt is overcome with emotion outside the House chamber in Tennessee.

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI and JONATHAN MATTISE

Associated Press

Sept. 19, 2023 1:40 PM PT

NASHVILLE — For nearly a week, families whose lives were upended by a Nashville elementary school shooting took turns sharing dark details with Tennessee lawmakers.

Their children thought they were going to die. A teacher told students to race one another, knowing they needed to get someplace safe quickly to avoid the spray of bullets. Children died after fire alarm evacuation protocols led one class to collide with the shooter in a hallway.

The parents who testified spilled their own stories but also carried the weight of speaking for the six people — including three children — who were killed March 27 by a shooter inside the Covenant School. They hoped that doing so during a brief special session in August would compel lawmakers to pass meaningful legislation.

“To me, that was the most nerve-racking piece,” said Melissa Alexander, whose child attends Covenant. “Trying to tell someone else’s story in the most perfect way, it’s not easy.”

But inside the Republican-led General Assembly, many lawmakers had already dismissed the gun control change as an option and resisted passing any significant changes this year, punting the issue to the next regular session starting in January.

Parents from the Covenant School comfort each other and hold signs above the Tennessee House floor.

They argued that their constituents are protective of the 2nd Amendment and that taking people’s guns away even temporarily would probably infringe on their rights.

It’s an all-too-common scene across the nation. Throughout the corridors of many state capitols, families are sharing gutting stories
of tragedy caused by mass school shootings, with the hope that revealing their trauma will convince lawmakers to reconsider firearm policies.

States have widely differed for years in their responses to the mass shootings that plague the country. Democratic-led states have largely tightened firearm
restrictions, while Republican-led states have loosened them.

Meanwhile, families have waded into the legislative process, reliving personally painful details before lawmakers — privately, publicly or both — with mixed results.

“Families will do whatever it takes to restore that sense of protection that wasn’t there that day, even if that means having to ... raise their voices and share what they experienced as a family, and what their kids experienced, with people that they know may not even give them the respect of listening,” said Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

The inaction this year in Tennessee was markedly different than how Florida reacted five years ago to a massive school shooting.

Lawmakers in Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a series of gun control laws just three weeks after a gunman, who authorities say was mentally disturbed, killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

The legislation raised the gun-buying age to 21, imposed a three-day waiting period for purchases and let police seek court orders to seize guns from individuals considered a danger to themselves or others — a stronger “red flag” law than a Tennessee proposal that couldn’t even get a hearing.

The changes came after Parkland families gave impassioned pleas for school-safety measures.

“I’ve never been an outspoken person. I never wanted to be in this situation. But I’m pleading with you to put your differences aside,“ said Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son, Alex, was killed in the Parkland shooting, during an emotional 2018 committee hearing. “It’s time to learn to compromise and help make our schools safe again. ... I’m willing to compromise. Are you?”

Instead, the outcome in Tennessee bore more resemblance to the response from Texas lawmakers after 19 children and two teachers were killed inthe Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde last year.

In April, Kimberly Mata-Rubio waited for more than 12 hours at the Texas Capitol to testify that lawmakers should raise the purchase age for semiautomatic rifles like the one an 18-year-old gunman used to kill her daughter Lexi. The hearing adjourned after 3 a.m. without a vote.

“Did you look at images of children running for their lives, and think, ‘What if we had enacted stricter gun laws?’ ” Mata-Rubio asked a Texas House committee, wiping away tears.

Parents offered similar pleas in Tennessee last month during a brief special legislative session called by GOP Gov. Bill Lee. But resistant Republican lawmakers largely dismissed his push for legislation to keep guns away from people who are judged to pose a threat to themselves or others.

Rather than opening a debate about the state’s lax firearm regulations, the session was overshadowed by debates over new rules temporarily limiting public access around the Capitol and banning people from holding signs at hearings.

Republican legislative leaders argued that their constituents didn’t want changes to Tennessee’s gun laws. For years, the state’s elections have increasingly favored conservatives, so the vast majority of legislative districts are usually decided during GOP primary elections, often rendering general elections a foregone conclusion.

“There’s a huge amount of our caucus — their people who sent them asked us not to do anything,” said state House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison.

One lawmaker booted everyone in the audience — grieving parents and all — from a hearing because some in the crowd had held signs or clapped.

“I don’t think people understand what it means to be up here,” Covenant School parent Sarah Shoop Neumann told reporters through tears. “It’s raw.”

During one committee hearing, parents closely connected to the Covenant shooting audibly gasped, and some fled the room in tears, when Republican state Rep. Chris Todd suggested that the shooter “probably would have driven over those kids” if he hadn’t had a gun.

Dismissing the premise that fewer firearms might have prevented the tragedy, Todd was proposing more firearms — in a wide expansion of who could bring guns into schools.

His comments came after a parent of two Covenant students, Becky Hansen, sobbed while telling lawmakers for the first time publicly that her son’s teacher had convinced students it was a race so they would move quickly and without panic from outside the school to a safe place.

Abby McLean, a mother of three Covenant students, described how her daughter’s third-grade classroom was fired at through the door window. She held up her phone, showing a photo of her children, as she addressed lawmakers.

“How can we look them in the eye and say, ‘Our solution is going to be by bringing more guns, that you are afraid of, into the building’?” McLean asked.

Republicans in the Tennessee House sought to pass a wide range of bills, while the state Senate pursued only a few — but neither chamber was open to gun restrictions. Four bills with minimal changes ultimately passed.

For many parents, the outcome signaled that they would likely retell and relive these dark moments for many more months, as they pledged to seek change next legislative session and in the 2024 statehouse elections.

“I really think the stories we shared are going to live on,” Alexander said. “I think they’re going to play an important role in changing our country and making a difference. That’s why we shared them.”

Families upended by school shootings share trauma in push for gun law changes but get mixed results

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