March 28, 2023 - Nashville elementary school shooting

There have been at least 130 mass shootings in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, including Monday's deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Gun Violence Archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter. 

Three students and three adults were killed at the Covenant School, police said. The shooter, who was identified as a 28-year-old Nashville resident, was also killed in a shootout with police.

Last year, the US hit 100 mass shootings on March 19, per the GVA. The previous year, 2021, saw a late March date, as well. From 2018 to 2020, the country didn't reach 100 mass shootings until May.

This post has been updated with the latest figures from the Gun Violence Archive.

Regular mass shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon. The US is the only developed country where mass shootings have happened every single year for the past 20 years, according to Jason R. Silva, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University.

To compare across countries, Silva uses a conservative definition of a mass shooting: an event that leaves four or more people dead, excluding the shooter, and that excludes profit-driven criminal activity, familicide and state-sponsored violence. Using this approach, 68 people were killed and 91 injured in eight public shootings in the US over the course of 2019 alone.

A broader definition of mass shootings reveals an even higher figure.

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, which CNN relies on for its reporting of mass shootings, defines a mass shooting as an incident leaving at least four people dead or injured, excluding the shooter, and does not differentiate victims based upon the circumstances in which they were shot.

It counted as many as 417 mass shootings in 2019 and 646 in 2022. There have been at least 130 mass shootings so far in 2023, including the one Monday at a school in Nashville.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to drive demand for more guns, experts say, with gun control activists arguing the time for reform is long overdue.

Researchers from Washington University at St Louis’ Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute presented this argument to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2018, saying that the US government’s “failure” to prevent and reduce gun-related violence through “reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international human rights law,” including the right to life and bodily integrity.

This post has been updated with the latest figures from the Gun Violence Archive.

Read more here about how guns in the US compare to the rest of the world.

Sissy Goff, the director of child and adolescent counseling at Daystar Counseling Ministries, was at the reunification site in Nashville Monday, where she told CNN she faced parents wondering about how to talk to their kids about the deadly shooting at the Covenant School.

Three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed in the Monday rampage.

"First of all, as grownups, we really have to manage our own anxiety, because kids pick up on it," Goff told "CNN This Morning."

It's key that parents let their children lead the conversation, Goff said, allowing them to ask questions and providing age appropriate answers.

"Kids have this amazing innate ability that they ask for the information that they're ready for," Goff said, adding parents could use "really short factual statements."

"Say two to three sentences and let them ask the next question," she said. "And then answer that age appropriately — honestly — and let them ask again."

"Be the source," she added, "where you're the one telling them, not someone else."

Nashville Mayor John Cooper praised police for their response to the shooting Monday at the Covenant School, where a 28-year-old shooter, identified by police as a former student, killed three 9-year-old children and three adults.

"This is our worst day, but it could have been worse without this brave response," Cooper told CNN. "So we're very grateful for that."

Five officers initially responded after police received the first call about the shooting at 10:13 a.m. local time Monday, police spokesperson Don Aaron said previously. They confronted the shooter, and two officers opened fire, killing the shooter at 10:27 a.m.

Cooper expects police to release more information about the shooting Tuesday, he said, including the possible release of officers' body cam footage and details about the shooter's writings recovered by investigators.

"They found a lot of documents. This was clearly planned," the mayor said, adding later those documents indicate "numerous sites were investigated."

"So the effective response by first responders is all the more impressive," he said, though he acknowledged it may "take some time for people to really begin to understand what could be the motives here."

Asked what the public could learn, Cooper said:

No Metro Nashville Police officers or school resource officers were stationed at the school, he said, reiterating the Covenant School is private, and as a result it has its own precautions.

"And it seems to me that they really will probably be congratulated on how good they were," the mayor said.

Monday's shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, unfolded over about 14 minutes, according to police, and spanned two floors of the private Christian elementary school.

Metropolitan Nashville Police released surveillance video showing the moment the shooter — who authorities said had three firearms — arrived at the school, shot through glass doors and climbed through to get inside. The video goes on to show the suspect walking through the hallways, pointing an assault style weapon.

Police got the first call about an active shooter inside Covenant school at 10:13 a.m. local time, police spokesperson Don Aaron said, and rushed to the scene. The first five responding officers heard gunfire coming from the second floor.

They went upstairs and confronted the shooter, who “had been firing through a window at arriving police cars,” police said in a news release. Two officers then opened fire, killing the shooter at 10:27 a.m. local time, Aaron said.

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake commended the five officers for their quick response.

After the shooter was killed, the children were evacuated from the school and taken in buses to be reunited with their families. Video showed the children holding hands and walking in a line out of the school, where community members were embracing.

One city councilperson praised the school for making sure students and staff were trained for an active shooter scenario:

“This school prepared for this with active shooter training for a reason," Nashville Metropolitan Councilman Russ Pulley told CNN Monday. "We don’t like to think that this is ever going to happen to us. But experience has taught us that we need to be prepared because in this day and time it is the reality of where we are."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Congress to take legislative action in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville that left three children and three adults dead.

"Our message here is very, very clear: Enough is enough. We need to see action in Congress," she told CNN's Kaitlin Collins.

Jean-Pierre criticized the House Judiciary Committee for postponing a scheduled markup of a gun rights resolution after the shooting. The joint resolution, which was announced to be marked up today, would nullify a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule that created certain criteria for firearms with attached stabilizing braces.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan told CNN on Monday that “Democrats were going to make it all about politics instead about the constitutional issue that it is" when asked why it was canceled. 

Jean-Pierre said that "we have to make sure there are common-sense gun safety laws. We have to make sure that we ban assault weapons."

CNN's Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona contributed reporting to this post.

In messages shared with CNN affiliate WTVF, a former middle school basketball teammate of Audrey Hale provides chilling new details regarding an exchange she had on social media with the shooter prior to yesterday's school shooting in Nashville. 

Averianna Patton said she saw a message on her phone that Hale had sent to her on Instagram Monday morning that stated Hale was planning to die by suicide and that she would see it on the news. A screenshot of a message published by WTVF appeared to show that the message was sent at 9:57 a.m. local time.

"One day this will make more sense," Hale wrote. "I've left behind more than enough evidence behind. But something bad is about to happen," the message stated. 

"I tried to comfort and encourage her and subsequently reached out to the Suicide Prevention Help Line after being instructed to by my father at 10:08 a.m.," Patton said. 

Patton told WTVF that she she called the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff's Office at 10:13 a.m. to make them aware of the situation and was instructed to call Nashville's non-emergency number. 

In a Tuesday morning interview on CNN, Patton said she's "still trying to process it all."

She said she "just couldn't believe it" when she found out Hale was the shooter.

Asked by CNN's Don Lemon why Hale messaged her specifically, Patton said she works in radio and is known in Nashville, but she's "asking God the same question."

"I just want to see if it's something that we can do as a community, as a city, to avoid this," she said.

Some background on timing: Don Aaron, spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department, said during a news conference that the first calls of an active shooting came in at around 10:15 a.m. local time.

When officers arrived, they went through the first level of the building, he said. They then heard gunshots coming from the second level of the building, according to Aaron. He said that's where police confronted and killed the shooter at 10:27 a.m. local time.

Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas released a statement Monday confirming that their former pastor, Chad Scruggs, lost his daughter Hallie in Monday’s shooting at the Covenant School.

CNN had reported that Hallie Scruggs was among the three 9-year-old students shot and killed in the shooting.

Here is the church's statement:

Police in Nashville are still digging into the background and motivations of a former student who entered a Christian elementary school armed with AR-style weapons and detailed maps and opened fire, killing three children and three adults.

If you are just reading in, here's the latest on the shooting and investigation:

The shooter: The person was identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale. Hale was shot and killed by police during the Monday attack, and left behind “drawn out” maps of the Covenant School detailing “how this was all going to take place,” Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. As police work to piece together what led up to the violence, officials said they had determined where the shooter lived in the Nashville area and have interviewed Hale’s father. 

Hale, who attended the Christian school years ago, left writings that pertain to the shooting and had scouted a second possible attack location in Nashville, “but because of a threat assessment by the suspect – there’s too much security – they decided not to,” police chief said.The writings revealed that the attack at Covenant School “was calculated and planned,” Metro Nashville said.

So far, little is known about the shooter. Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN, and a LinkedIn profile says Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper.

Police have referred to Hale as the “female shooter” and at an evening press conference added that Hale was transgender. When asked for clarification, a spokesperson told CNN Hale used “male pronouns” on a social media profile.

The weapons: The shooter was “someone that had multiple rounds of ammunition, prepared for confrontation with law enforcement, prepared to do more harm than was actually done,” the police chief said in a news conference.

Three weapons – an AR-style rifle, an AR-style pistol and a handgun – were found and police believe Hale obtained at least two of the weapons legally, Drake said. A search warrant executed at Hale’s home also resulted in the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence, according to police.

The victims: All three students shot and killed were 9 years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Three adults killed in the shooting were identified as 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 60-year-old Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old Mike Hill, police said. Two Covenant School employees are among the victims of Monday’s mass shooting, according to the school.

What is expected to happen today: Investigators were expected to spend Tuesday processing the scene and gathering more details about what happened during the roughly 14 minutes of terror at the elementary school.

Mass shootings in America: The attack marked the 19th shooting at a school or university so far in 2023 in which at least one person was wounded, according to a CNN tally. With six victims, the shooting at Covenant is the deadliest school shooting since the attack in Uvalde, Texas, last May left 21 people dead.

Read more about the shooting here.