March 28, 2023 - Nashville elementary school shooting

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Communities are mourning the victims of a mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. Three children and three adults were killed Monday at the Covenant School — a private Christian elementary school, according to police.

The city of Nashville plans to hold a vigil Wednesday night “to mourn and honor the precious lives lost at The Covenant School,” a flyer for the event shared by Mayor John Cooper said.

Here’s what we know so far:

The victims: The victims of the shooting include Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9; Mike Hill, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; Cynthia Peak, 61; Hallie Scruggs, 9; and William Kinney, 9. Authorities believe the six victims were targeted randomly. President Joe Biden has not yet spoken to any of the families of the victims, but said he is “working on that now.”

What happened: Monday’s shooting unfolded over about 14 minutes, according to police, and spanned two floors of the school. Police first received a 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. Here’s a full timeline of how the shooting went down.

The shooter: Audrey Hale, 28, was under care for an “emotional disorder,” according to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake. He said Tuesday that Hale, who was a former student of the Covenant School, purchased at least seven guns legally and locally. Investigators have yet to determine a motive, but believe the school itself was targeted.

Gun reform: Biden suggested Tuesday that any future action on gun violence will fall to Congress, as he said he has exhausted all executive actions. In wake of the shooting, he reiterated his call for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban Tuesday and said there is a “moral price to pay for inaction.” According to three senior administration officials, White House officials are not currently planning a major new push around gun safety reform.

Grim statistics: Monday’s shooting is the deadliest school shooting since the the attack in Uvalde, Texas last May. There have been at least 130 mass shootings in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, including Monday’s deadly shooting. There have been more shootings at this point in 2023 than in any previous year since at least 2013. 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.

The city of Nashville is planning a vigil on Wednesday night, according to a tweet from Nashville Mayor John Cooper. 

 “Join us for a citywide candle vigil to mourn and honor the precious lives lost at The Covenant School,” a flyer for the event says. 

 It will take place at One Public Square park at 5:30 p.m. local time. 

The city has also set up a fund to help support the survivors of the shooting, the mayor said.

Tennessee first lady Maria Lee was close friends with one of the people killed in the shooting at the Covenant School on Monday, Gov. Bill Lee said.

Gov. Lee, speaking in a video statement Tuesday, talked about the close relationship his wife had with Cynthia Peak.

Peak was supposed to come over to Lee’s home Monday evening to have dinner with the first lady after filling in as a substitute teacher at Covenant, he said. 

“Maria woke up this morning without one of her best friends,” Lee said. “Cindy and Maria and Katherine Koonce were all teachers at the same school and have been family friends for decades,” he added.

Koonce, the head of the school, was also killed in the shooting.

“All of Tennessee was hurt yesterday,” Lee said.

The governor said things need to change and that there is more work to do.

“We can all agree on one thing – that every human life has great value. We will act to prevent this from happening again. There is a clear desire in all of us, whether we agree on the action steps or not, that we must work to find ways to protect against evil,” Lee said.

A majority of both young adults and the American public at large support the idea of stricter gun laws, polling finds.

In a new Harvard Youth Poll released Tuesday and completed before the shooting at a Nashville elementary school Monday, 63% of 18-to-29-year-olds say that gun laws should be stricter, with 22% saying they should be kept as they are and 13% that they should be made less strict.

That’s similar to a 2018 poll by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Harvard Kennedy School taken in the wake of the Parkland shooting when 64% of young Americans thought gun laws should be made more strict. 

Young Americans’ views are generally similar to those of the public as a whole. In a Gallup survey from October 2022, a 57% majority of all Americans said that laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, with 32% saying laws should be kept as they were and 10% that laws should be made less strict. 

Gallup’s polling has consistently found a majority in support of stricter gun laws since 2015. But the 57% who supported stricter gun laws in the latest poll marks a downtick from the 66% who supported stricter gun laws following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas late last May. Support for new gun restrictions often spikes in the immediate wake of high-profile mass shootings, before leveling off later. 

Other polls taken after the Uvalde shooting also found significant support for several new gun regulations.

Here’s what a CBS News poll found last summer:

An August 2022 AP-NORC poll similarly found that 85% favored a federal law requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers, including private sales and gun shows, while 59% favored a nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons.

Mike Hill, 61, who was killed in the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville where he worked, was the father of seven children and had 14 grandkids, his family said in a statement obtained by CNN affiliate WSMV. He loved to cook and spend time with his family, it added. 

His family thanked those who sent their “thoughts and prayers” and asked for ongoing support as they “grieve and try to grasp any sense of understanding of why this happened.”

Nashville parents have set up a GoFundMe for Hill to help his family with funeral expenses. He was known as “Big Mike” to his students, the GoFundMe said.

His daughter, Brittany Hill, said in a Facebook post on Monday that her dad “absolutely loved” his job. 

“I have watched school shootings happen over the years and never thought I would lose a loved one over a person trying to solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution,” she wrote. “I am so sorry for the loss of those children,” she added. 

“Please keep my family in your prayers tonight. Hug your parents and children a little tighter,” she said in the post.

CNN’s Taliah Miller and Jillian Sykes contributed reporting to this post.

The sense of safety inside the Covenant School in Nashville was shattered Monday when a former student burst into the private Christian school wielding an assault-style rifle and killed three 9-year-old children and three adults.

The shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was killed by police. Authorities believe the six victims were targeted randomly.

Here’s a timeline of what happened:

9:57 a.m.

Hale sends an ominous message to childhood friend Averianna Patton on Instagram, Patton told CNN on Tuesday. The direct message from Hale said, “I’m planning to die today” and that Patton would see it on the news.

Disturbed by the message, Patton contacted her father for advice. He suggested she call a suicide prevention line for assistance, which she did. But because Patton was not the person at risk of harming herself, the call recipient advised Patton to contact local law enforcement, she said.

Around 10:13 a.m.

Patton calls the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in Nashville but was on hold for “maybe like 7 minutes,” she said. By then, the deadly rampage at Covenant School had already started.

10:13 a.m.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department receives a call about an active shooter inside the school. Surveillance video shows the shooter entering the school by firing through glass doors and climbing through.

10:18 a.m.

Timestamped surveillance footage from inside the school shows Hale armed with multiple weapons walking down a hallway.

10:24 a.m.

Nashville officers arrive at the school, Police Chief John Drake said. Bodycam footage shows police entering the school amid wailing fire alarms and immediately going to several rooms to look for the shooter.

Officers hear gunfire on the second floor and rush up the stairs as the shots grow louder, the video shows.

10:27 a.m.

Officer Rex Engelbert sees the shooter and fires about four rounds with an assault-style rifle. His bodycam footage shows the attacker collapsing.

Officer Michael Collazo then moved toward the shooter while it appeared a gun was still in the assailant’s hand. Collazo appeared to shoot the attacker on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling “Stop moving!” The officers finally approached the assailant, moved a gun away and then radioed “Suspect down! Suspect down!”

Sports teams are honoring the people killed in a shooting at a Nashville elementary school on Monday.

There will be a moment of silence observed before Tuesday night’s NHL game between the Nashville Predators and the Boston Bruins, the Boston team announced. Players from both teams are also set to wear helmet decals with the Covenant School insignia.

Boston said its foundation will donate $10,000 to Nashville’s foundation “to support their efforts in helping the victims’ families.”

In its own statement, the Predators said the team is moving “forward with heavy hearts in preparation” for Tuesday’s game.

“We will do our best to be mindful and respectful of the more important things in society today, continuing to pray for the shooting victims, their families and the entire Covenant School family, our hearts filled with love and hope for everyone affected,” the team said in a tweet.

Vanderbilt Baseball announced that ticket proceeds from its game against Lipscomb Tuesday will go toward the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to benefit the Covenant School.

The money will be “supporting those affected by the tragedy that unfolded in the Nashville community on Monday,” the team said on its website.

Editor’s note: This post contains graphic descriptions of violence.

The Metro Nashville Police Department released body-camera footage of at least two police officers who responded to Monday’s shooting at Covenant School.

The footage is from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, who police said fatally shot the attacker on Monday at 10:27 a.m. local time.

At the start of the six-minute video, Engelbert is seen arriving at the school and exiting his vehicle. He grabs a long rifle from the car’s trunk and heads toward one part of the building before heading toward a door. The officer approaches a woman outside the school who says the school is on lockdown but there are two children unaccounted for. 

The woman, a school official, directs Engelbert to go upstairs.

Another school official is seen handing the officer a key to open an exterior door into the building. Engelbert yells to his fellow officers: “Let’s go, I need three!” 

Engelbert enters the school — about one minute after pulling up to the building — with other officers following and immediately getting into a tactical formation. About three minutes into the video, gunshots are heard in the distance and an officer is heard saying “It’s upstairs, sounds like it’s upstairs.”

The officers rush up a stairwell as the gunshots grow louder. 

The flashes from the shooter’s gunfire are seen in Collazo’s bodycam footage, which leads the officers down a hall to the suspect’s position.

The officers approach the sound of gunfire and Engelbert rounds a corner and fires multiple times at a person near a large window, who drops to the ground, the video shows.

Collazo then pushes forward and appears to shoot the person on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling, “Stop moving!” The officers finally approach the person, move a gun away and then radio, “Suspect down! Suspect down!

Along with the Nashville community, people outside of Tennessee are grieving Cynthia Peak, 61, who was killed on Monday during a shooting at The Covenant School.

Peak, whom police believe to have been a substitute teacher at the school, is from Leesville, Louisiana, where childhood friends are remembering her.

Louisiana state Rep. Charles Anthony Owen said he has known Peak his whole life.

“She and my sister were the closest of friends growing up and it seems like Cindy was around for all of my childhood,” he said Tuesday in a Facebook post. “She and Mae Ann had birthdays one day apart and her family lived across the street from us for a period of time. Cindy and Mae were always together.”

Owen said in the Facebook post that when his sister Mae died, Peak was one of the first faces he recalled seeing.

“She was right here to grieve her old friend,” he said. 

“I grieve through tears as I write these words, but I know Cindy is in Heaven with her father, Dr. Bill Broyles, her mother, Nell Broyles, and her oldest sister, Diane. I also can take solace that she and my sister are once again holding hands and smiling,” he added.

President Joe Biden has not spoken to any of the families of the six victims killed during a school shooting in Nashville Monday, but said he is “working on that now.” 

The president told reporters traveling with him in Durham, North Carolina, that he has talked to “everyone but the families,” including the police chief and the two officers who entered the building and confronted the shooter.

Biden also expanded on his conversation with Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, telling reporters, “I expressed my concern and asked him if there was anything I could do to be able to help, and I understand from some folks he’s a fairly reasonable guy.” 

The president said discussions about possible plans to visit Nashville are “underway now,” and his team is trying to figure out “what helps the most.” 

Biden said that calls for Congress to pass legislation curbing gun violence are focused on exposure.

“You know when people say, ‘Why do you keep doing this, it’s not gonna happen?’ Expose those people who refused to do something,” Biden said. “I’m going to keep calling it out, remind people that they’re not acting — they should.” 

He reiterated that there’s “nothing absolute about any amendment,” including the 2nd Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms.

“This is ridiculous, and it’s all about money,” he said. “Big, big, big money.”

In light of calls from lawmakers for the Department of Justice to investigate the deadly school shooting in Nashville as a hate crime, officials say they are focusing on identifying the motive of the Nashville school shooter.

In response to a question about the instance possibly being a hate crime targeting Christians, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland said investigators are “working full time” on this objective.

The shooting took place at Covenant School, a Christian private school.

“The police chief said at the last at his last press conference that they don’t yet have reached a conclusion with respect to motive,” Garland said. “We are certainly working full-time with them to try and determine what the motive is.”

“Of course, motive is what determines whether it’s a hate crime or not,” he added.

Some background: Earlier Tuesday, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said he believed that the shooting in Nashville should be investigated as a hate crime. 

“We need to find out more about this individual, whether this person should have firearms at all — maybe should not have,” Hawley said. 

Garland was testifying about the DOJ budget request before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

Jim and Monica Lee are remembering their friend and former coworker Katherine Koonce as a wonderful human being who was sassy and full of grace. 

Koonce was one of the six people killed at the Monday shooting in at the Covenant School in Nashville, where she worked, Monday.

Jim Lee, who is an airline pilot, said when he heard about the shooting, he texted Koonce right away, but she never texted back. He started to get worried and tried to get in contact with other people who worked at the school. 

Soon, he got a text saying his friend was shot and later died at the hospital.

The Lees flew to Nashville when they heard about the shooting and the death of their friend because they just wanted to be back in the community. They now live in Atlanta.

Jim Lee described Koonce as being witty and sassy with a “crazy sense of humor.” He said she made people feel like they were the most important person when she talked with them, everyone from her preschool students to board members and presents at the school.

“She had this amazing confidence but she was a person of grace,” he said. “She was an educator, but she also had great pastoral and counseling and nurturing skills or she had those CEO skills that could tell you that you need to kind of get in your place,” he added, with a laugh.

“They just lost hugely at this school,” Monica Lee added. “They’re going to have a hard time filling her shoes.”

Correction: A previous version of this post misspelled Jim Lee’s first name.

Police found writings with school shooter Audrey Hale’s body as well as in Hale’s car, according to Don Aaron, the Metro Nashville Police Department’s public affairs director.

Both documents were different, and detectives from the city’s homicide and intelligence bureaus are reviewing the writings, Aaron told CNN on Tuesday. 

In the writings, Hale mentioned a mall near the site of The Covenant School shooting as another possible target, according to the spokesperson. 

Aaron would not confirm if the location was the Mall at Green Hills, which is up the street from the school. 

Nashville Police Chief John Drake said writings mentioned shootings at “multiple locations,” including at the school. 

Hale killed three children and three adults on Monday before being fatally shot by responding police officers.

Aaron also discussed the seven weapons that police say Hale had owned.

In addition to the three weapons at the scene on Monday, two shotguns were taken from Hale’s home, Aaron said. Police believe one weapon had been sold and the seventh weapon remains unaccounted for.

Aaron said the seven weapons were purchased between October 20, 2020, and June 6, 2022.

President Joe Biden addressed Nashville’s deadly school shooting while speaking at an event in Durham, North Carolina, Tuesday, reiterating his call for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban and saying there was a “moral price to pay for inaction.”

“As a nation we owe these families more than our prayers,” Biden said of the families of the six people who were killed Monday when a 28-year-old former student opened fire at the Covenant School in Nashville. “We owe them action.”

“We have to do more to stop this gun violence from ripping communities apart, ripping apart the soul of this nation, to protect our children, so they learn how to read and write instead of duck and cover in a classroom,” he said.

The president called himself a “Second Amendment guy,” noting he owns shotguns. But he characterized the weapons often used in mass shootings as “weapons of war.”

“Why in God’s name do we allow these weapons of war on our streets?” he asked.

The president pointed to bipartisan gun safety legislation he signed into law last year, after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, saying, “Don’t tell me we can’t do more together.”

“It’s a common sense issue,” Biden said. “We have to act now.”

Firearms were the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in 2021, for the second year in a row, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Firearms first surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in 2020, after a sharp increase in the first year of the pandemic. Deaths from both firearms and motor vehicle crashes increased again in 2021, CDC data shows. 

In 2021, at least 4,733 children and adolescents ages 1 to 19 died from firearms. That’s a 9% increase from the year before, representing nearly 400 more deaths. About 4,300 children and adolescents died from motor vehicle crashes in 2021.

About a tenth of all firearm-related deaths in the United States were among children and adolescents. 

Additional analysis from the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention shows that firearm injuries, motor vehicle crashes and drug poisonings represent nearly half of all deaths among children and adolescents.

The shooter was under care for an “emotional disorder,” Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Tuesday.

“Law enforcement knew nothing about the treatment” 28-year-old Aubrey Hale was receiving, he added.

Hale’s parents “felt that (Hale) should not own weapons” and were under the impression Hale had sold one weapon and “did not own any more,” Drake said.

“As it turned out, (Hale) had been hiding several weapons within the house,” Drake said.

Investigators have yet to determine a motive in Monday’s shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters in a news conference Tuesday.

Writings from the shooter — who has been identified as a 28-year-old former student of the Covenant School — included a map of the school, Drake said, indicating how the shooter planned to enter the building and carry out the attack. Other places were also mentioned in those writings and are being investigated by the Metro Nashville Police Department and the FBI, per Drake.

At this time, investigators believe the school itself was targeted, police spokesperson Don Aaron said, though authorities have no evidence specific individuals were targeted.

“This school, this church building, was a target of the shooter, but we have no information at present to indicate that the shooter was specifically targeting any one of the six individuals who were murdered,” Aaron said.

The shooter who killed six people at a private school in Nashville purchased at least seven guns legally and locally, according to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake.

Drake said those seven firearms were purchased from five different gun stores in Nashville. Three of the guns were used during the shooting at Covenant School Monday, he said.

Police previously said the shooter was armed with a handgun and two AR-style weapons — one rifle and an AR-style pistol.

Drake said investigators have spoken to the parents of the shooter, Audrey Hale. They believed the shooter did buy at least one weapon, but eventually sold it.

The shooter’s parents also told police Hale had a red bag when Hale was leaving the house ahead of the shooting. They asked Hale what was in the bag, but ultimately dismissed it, thinking Hale didn’t own any weapons, according to Drake.

Police believe the shooter was hiding the guns in the house.

The Metro Nashville Police Department is expected to give an update soon on its investigation into Monday’s deadly shooting at an elementary school.

Earlier Tuesday, police released body-camera footage from two officers who police say fatally shot the attacker.

Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, refused to discuss calls to ban AR-15s after the mass shooting at a Christian school killed six people.

“The tragedy that happened in my state was the result of a depraved person and somebody very, very sick. And the result has been absolutely devastating for the people in my community. Right now with the victims, the family and the people in my community — we are all mourning right now,” Hagerty told CNN.

Asked about banning AR-15-style weapons, he added, “I’m certain politics will wave into everything. But right now I’m not focused on the politics of the situation. I’m focused on the victims.”

Police said the shooter was armed with a handgun and two AR-style weapons — one a rifle and an AR-style pistol.

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley argued that semi-automatic weapons should not be banned because they have other uses. 

“A lot of people use ARs and AKs for sporting purposes,” he said. 

He said the shooting in Nashville should be investigated as a hate crime and that he has called on FBI Director Christopher Wray and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to look into it.

“It appears to be a hate crime and it should be investigated as such, and we need to find out more about this individual, whether this person should have firearms at all — maybe should not have,” Hawley said.

The family of Evelyn Dieckhaus has been left in disbelief after she and two other 9-year-olds were killed in Monday’s mass school shooting in Nashville, according to a statement obtained by CNN affiliate KMOV. Three adults were also killed in the attack at the Covenant School.

“Our hearts are completely broken. We cannot believe this has happened,” the family’s statement says. “Evelyn was a shining light in this world. We appreciate all the love and support but ask for space as we grieve.”

Here’s what we know so far about the six victims.

President Joe Biden suggested Tuesday in the aftermath of another mass school shooting that any future action on gun violence will fall to Congress, as he said he has exhausted all executive actions.

“I can’t do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably,” the president told CNN’s MJ Lee as he departed the White House for an unrelated trip to North Carolina. His administration has reined in so-called ghost guns, promoted safe storage of firearms, bolstered police forces and expanded community violence intervention programs.

“I have done the full extent of my executive authority — to do on my own, anything about guns … The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so I think the Congress could be passing an assault weapon ban,” Biden said. 

Biden will travel to Nashville, he told Lee. “Yes, I’ve spoken with everyone down there, from the mayor to the senators, all the players, I spoke with the chief of police today,” he said. “I’ve spoken to all of them.”

CNN spoke with Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, one day after a school shooting in Nashville left three children and three adults dead.

Top House and Senate Republicans rejected calls for additional action on guns, arguing there’s no appetite for tougher restrictions.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, whose committee has jurisdiction over gun policy, said he doesn’t think Congress should limit assault weapons.

“The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” he said. “I believe in the Second Amendment, and we shouldn’t penalize law-abiding American citizens.” 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a participant in prior negotiations on gun legislation, said, “I don’t know if there’s much space to do more, but I’ll certainly look and see.”

Graham said he is opposed to a ban on AR-15s, noting he owns one himself, and he argued it would “be hard to implement a national red flag law.” 

After the shooting in his district yesterday, Republican Rep. Andy Ogles shut down questions about banning AR-15 rifles. 

Ogles, who represents Nashville, said, “Why not talk about the real issue facing the country? And that’s mental health.” 

Remember, Ogles posted a photo on Facebook in Christmas 2022 when he was mayor of Maury County that showed him and his family standing in front of a Christmas tree holding weapons, with the caption: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters that he is “not very hopeful” that the Senate can pass gun legislation this Congress, adding, “yet we have to try.” 

“This is uniquely American and the people of this country have to ask themselves a basic question: Had enough? Had enough of sending your children and grandchildren to school and wondering if they’re going to be victims of assault rifles?” he said.

He also went after Republican arguments that semiautomatic weapons are constitutionally protected. 

“I mean, this is madness. To think that some people rationalize this as part of the Second Amendment is beyond me,” he said. 

Despite Republican opposition, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal insisted he is not giving up. 

“We’ve heard before that gun violence prevention is impossible, and yet we’ve made progress as we come together. I’m not taking no for an answer,” he said. “I’m going to continue seeking to enlist my Republican colleagues because they know the outrage, the grief.”

Republican Rep. Byron Donalds pushed back on calls for further gun legislation and a ban on AR-15s.

“If you’re going to talk about the AR-15, we’re talking politics now,” he said. “Let’s not get into politics. Let’s not get into emotion, because emotion feels good, but emotion doesn’t solve problems.”

Republican Sen. Todd Young, when asked if he’d support a hearing specifically on assault weapons, said he’d back a hearing to understand what happened during the Nashville shooting.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise demurred when asked if the shooting would move Congress to address any sort of reforms.

“The first thing in any kind of tragedy I do is I pray. I pray for the victims, pray to their families. I really get angry when I see people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts or facts coming out,” he said. 

“Let’s get the facts. And let’s work to see if there’s something that we can do to help secure schools,” he said. “We’ve talked about things that we can do and it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens.”

Scalise was wounded in 2017 when a gunman opened fired while Republican members of Congress were practicing for an annual charity baseball game.

Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar said “shame on Speaker (Kevin) McCarthy” for not wanting to bring up gun legislation.

Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Rep. Ted Lieu criticized Republicans for delaying a Judiciary Committee hearing on guns today.

“Now why would they do that, if they honestly believe as they say that arming more Americans with more guns, more AR-15s, more pistol braces would make us safer? They would have held a hearing and had that as a solution, but they didn’t do that. They ran away. They ran away, and they’re hiding,” Lieu said, closing with “coward.”

Separately, Senate Chaplain Barry Black, whose role is traditionally nonpolitical, called for lawmakers to take action on gun violence “beyond thoughts and prayers” after the shooting.

“Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers,” he said Tuesday morning on the Senate floor.

CNN’s Nicky Robertson contributed reporting to this post.

CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow commended officers for their response to Monday’s shooting at a Nashville school, as seen in footage released Tuesday from two of the officers’ body cameras.

“What the viewers are seeing is law enforcement at its finest,” said Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent.

The videos from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo — who Nashville police said fatally shot the attacker — show officers go into The Covenant School and immediately enter several rooms to look for the suspect as siren wail.

“Not knowing what the circumstances really were upon arrival, officers remain calm and collected, not raising anxiety but making the entry as necessary to go search for the suspect,” he said, adding officers relied on their training to move toward the sound of gunfire and confront the shooter.

The speed with which officers respond to a shooter is “essential for the preservation of life,” Wackrow said. “And these officers did a remarkable job.”

White House officials are not currently planning a major new push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said.

But President Joe Biden and White House officials will continue to make one thing clear: It’s up to Congress to act.

“It’s really on Congress at this point,” one senior administration official said. “The president has taken every executive action he can.”

The White House says Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of “ghost guns” and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. The list also includes funding measures meant to prevent gun violence.

He also signed a bipartisan measure in 2022 expanding background checks and providing federal funding for so-called “red flag laws,” though it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for, and polls show most Americans want to see.

White House officials are clear-eyed about the political realities in Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden’s term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage. 

As of now, White House officials are still mulling whether Biden will once again address the Nashville shooting at the top of his remarks this afternoon in Durham, North Carolina.

Metro Nashville Police Department released body-camera footage Tuesday from the two officers who shot the Covenant School shooter.

CNN is reviewing the footage and will update with more information.

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:

“I think the public is going to go back to questioning why we have so few restrictions on guns, particularly assault-level type guns,” he said, adding the deaths of children due to guns can’t be tolerated. “Nashville joins now a long list of where there are school shootings, where our kids are targeted. And you’ve got to be careful about the mental health and access to guns issue in America.”

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.

“I was hoping this day would never ever come here in the city. But we will never wait to make entry and to go in and to stop a threat especially when it deals with our children,” Drake said in a news conference Monday.

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.

“When you hear elected officials say it’s another talking point, when the president is saying that we need to do more, that’s actually devastating to hear as well, because that’s what you’re also saying to those families who lost loved ones, to those parents who lost three 9-year-olds. They lost their kids yesterday, and that’s what we’re saying?” Jean-Pierre said. “We should not be saying there’s nothing else to do. We should be trying to figure out what else there can be to do.”

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. 

“I called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14 a.m. and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home. An officer did not come to my home until 3:29 p.m.,” Patton said.

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.”

“Keep praying for us … I just want a solution, a better way, some better protocol to, you know, to avoid this in the future,” Patton said.

“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:

“The Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) family is incredibly saddened by the unimaginable tragedy today at Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville, TN. Covenant Presbyterian Church is a sister church of PCPC; many of our members have deep friendships and family connections there.
Chad Scruggs, current Lead Pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, served for several years as Associate Pastor at PCPC. PCPC Senior Pastor, Mark Davis shared, “We love the Scruggs family and mourn with them over their precious daughter Hallie. Together, we trust in the power of Christ to draw near and give us the comfort and hope we desperately need.”

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.

Police will continue processing the scene on Tuesday and work to gather more details about what happened during a shooting at a Nashville elementary school, the Metro Nashville Police Department said.

This work has been going on since Monday evening into Tuesday, said the department’s spokesperson, Don Aaron.