The United States has just experienced a new massacre. On Monday, March 27, 2023, three children and three adults were killed in a private Catholic facility in Nashville, in the south of the country, according to hospital sources cited by American media. Nashville police say they shot and killed the shooter, who entered the facility with “at least two assault rifles and a pistol.” All three students were shot. They were pronounced dead “upon arrival at the hospital,” Vanderbilt University Medical Center officials were quoted as saying by local news channel NewsChannel 5.
The young woman entered through a secondary door and fired numerous shots as she progressed through the establishment, “The Covenant School” which has approximately 200 students and about 40 employees. Officers were quickly dispatched to the scene. After hearing gunfire upstairs, they “immediately” went there and “killed” the assailant, who was pronounced dead at 10:27 a.m. (3:27 p.m. GMT), he said. for follow-up. His services then clarified on Twitter that the assailant had been identified and that it was a 28-year-old resident of Nashville.
“Based on our preliminary investigation, at some point she was a student at this school, but we are not sure of the year,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake told US television. Importantly, the killer had a detailed plan of the scene and left a manifesto. Indeed, John Drake revealed that law enforcement had searched his home and discovered a map showing “the entrances” to the school and “a manifesto with some writing”.
The drama reignited calls from the White House to ban assault rifles, as a proposed law to that effect is blocked by opposition lawmakers. “How many more children will have to be killed before Republicans in Congress…pass an assault rifle ban?” “Reacted the spokesperson for the presidency, Karine Jean-Pierre. “Enough is enough,” she said again.
For his part, Joe Biden called the killing perpetrated “disgusting”. “It’s just disgusting,” the US president said from the White House. It “rips at the very soul of our nation,” he said, praising police responsiveness and again calling on Congress to ban assault rifles.
The elected officials of the State of Tennessee also expressed their emotion on social networks. “I am devastated and heartbroken at the tragic news from the Covenant School,” tweeted Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, without addressing the sensitive topic of gun control.
The United States, where approximately 400 million firearms are in circulation, is frequently bereaved by deadly shootings, including in schools. The most significant tragedy was committed in 2012 at an elementary school in Connecticut, during which 20 children aged 6 and 7 were killed. Such a traumatic event was repeated in May 2022 when an 18-year-old man shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Between these two tragedies, a massacre committed in a high school in Florida, on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, triggered a vast national movement, spearheaded by young people, to demand stricter supervision of individual weapons in the United States.
Despite the mobilization of more than a million demonstrators, the United States Congress has not adopted ambitious legislation, many elected officials being under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the first American lobby weapons.
In a country where carrying a gun is considered by millions of Americans to be a constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as the generalization of criminal and psychiatric background checks before any gun purchase.
