State lawmakers occasionally remove their fellow colleagues, but it’s often for cases involving criminal misconduct or major ethical lapses. Last week’s vote in Tennessee was exceedingly rare for its speed and partisanship. Nearly all of the Republican supermajority voted to oust Jones and Pearson, and the effort to remove Johnson fell short by a single vote.
GOP House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who likened their protest to an “insurrection,” led trial-like proceedings last week as Republicans admonished the group and urged them to repent for their outburst.
Despite Republicans’ attempt to keep him away, Jones likely won’t miss a day of work. The Nashville-area Democrat is expected to lead a march to the Capitol immediately following his reinstatement, returning to the statehouse just in time for the first full session since his removal.
Hundreds of supporters gathered in downtown Nashville at a park near the Capitol ahead of the council vote. Under state law, local legislative bodies hold the power to reinstate ousted lawmakers — a process that typically takes several weeks — but Nashville council members voted to expedite it. A special election will be held to permanently fill Jones’ seat, a race that he’s expected to join and will likely take place later this summer.
Pearson, who represents parts of Memphis, is also anticipated to run for reelection. He’s expected to be reinstated by Memphis council members on Wednesday and return to the General Assembly the following day.
[ad_2]
#Nashville #Council #reinstates #exiled #Tennessee #lawmaker
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“We need leaders who have the courage to act at statehouses and Washington, D.C. in the United States Congress,” Harris said, her voice rising above the cheers and applause in Fisk Memorial Chapel. “Have the courage to act, instead of the cowardice to not allow debate and to not allow a discussion on the merits of what is at stake. Courage. You can’t call yourself a leader if you don’t have the courage to know what is right and act on it regardless of the popularity of the moment.”
President Joe Biden spoke to the three lawmakers Friday evening and invited them to the White House, according to officials. And Harris, in her last-minute trip, brought the White House’s push for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks to Nashville.
“Some things are up for partisan debate. Sure, and they will be because that is also a sign of a democracy. But on the issue of smart gun safety laws — background checks — the policy is really pretty straight forward. It’s to say, you might want to know before someone buys a gun whether they have been found by a court to be a danger to themselves or others. You just might want to know,” Harris said.
During the speech, Harris praised the lawmakers for their bravery and leadership amid the tragedy, drawing a throughline from Johnson, Jones and Pearson to civil rights icons like John Lewis and Diane Nash.
Harris looked out to the crowd of students and said it would be the younger generation to lead on this issue.
“We need you all. And your leadership in this movement is going to impact people that you may never meet. People who may never know your name. But because of your leadership, they will forever be benefited,” she said.
“We will not be defeated. We will not be deterred. We will not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves. We will fight. We will lead. We will speak with truth. We will speak about freedom and justice. And we will march on.”
[ad_2]
#Harris #takes #White #House #message #guns #Nashville
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
There’s an irony to this nod to video games, since they have been frequently (and inaccurately) blamed for the rise of violence in general and school shootings in particular. But it’s more than just these video game elements that makes the Wick world so familiar, one where death coats front pages and social media feeds but is quickly swept aside by the next tragedy.
As someone who’s been working as a culture critic since 2009, I’m always wary of talking about fictional violence in terms of real-life violence. It runs the risk of both cheapening real events and giving fiction more power than it actually possesses. Yet the past playbook of blaming acts of violence on violent pop culture seems to have lost its punch in recent years, if only because violent pop culture feels like it’s trying to keep up with reality, rather than the reverse. Certainly, there are no real-world John Wicks, but there’s plenty of violence in the world that many of us turn a blind eye to. When bad things are always happening, horror starts to become just another part of the background of day-to-day life.
It is fascinating to look at ultra-violent yet ultra-popular cultural artifacts like the Wick films and try to suss out what in them speaks to us subconsciously. After all, lots of John Wick imitators have popped up in the wake of the first film’s successful 2014 release, and none of them have come close to approaching Wick’s cultural footprint. So why did these movies take off so boldly and so bloodily?
To me, the answer lies in all of those scenes with innocent bystanders who don’t seem to realize they’re bystanders to begin with. Many action movies exist as a kind of wish-fulfillment for audience members. In some other world, they suggest, you might move as skillfully and as balletically as John Wick and, thus, murder people with tremendous efficiency. But the best action movies usually also add in an audience surrogate or two, a character who exists mostly to reflect the audience’s awe at seeing the action hero do their thing.
The many extras who populate an action movie’s world are audience surrogates too. The people running away from a monster’s foot as it stomps down on city streets, the cars swerving to avoid the big car chase, the people ducking for cover during a gun battle – those are all important characters in their own right. They help the audience think about how woefully unprepared we would be to enter a situation like this.
Yet in the John Wick films, what do these extras do? They just keep dancing. There is a whole world of death, destruction and mayhem erupting around them, and that world supposedly lives right next door to our world of mundane concerns. But not only do the extras not notice that world, we don’t either. There is death happening all over, but it feels like such an abstraction that a man can shoot multiple people right in front of you, and you might not even blink an eye. It will just keep happening, and so long as it doesn’t directly interrupt your fun, you might not even look at it.
It’s an eerie world to imagine living in, and yet every new mass shooting seems to be met with a cascading apathy. Some politicians have even given up the guise of caring enough to come up with faux solutions: “We’re not gonna fix it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said on Tuesday after a school shooting in his home state left three children dead. “Criminals are gonna be criminals.” In a world that is indifferent to death, even the boilerplate pablum of “thoughts and prayers” starts to sound like too much effort. In our apathy, we become incapable or even uninterested in preventing tragedies.
These unaffected extras work as a metaphor for so many ways we’ve become increasingly numb to massive death in the modern world, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the ways in which climate change is already disproportionately affecting people who live in the global South. But in a series that so fetishizes guns and shooting them, to the degree that every film pauses the action for a character to lovingly describe the firearms they will be outfitting Wick with, and in a series produced in the United States, it’s not hard to see gun violence as sitting at the very center of the films’ uncanny valley.
The foremost political worldview of the Wick movies is still “It’s cool when cool things happen.” Yet, their evocation of a world in which death lurks around every corner and we don’t care so long as it’s not happening to us rings eerily true. Is it any wonder each film in the franchise is more popular than the one before it? Even if the world is ending, so many of us would rather keep dancing.
[ad_2]
#John #Wick #Nashville #Shooting #American #Numbness
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: Police said that they have yet to determine a motive in the Nashville, Tennessee, elementary school shooting.
“This school, this church building, was a target of the shooter,” Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters a day after the shooting at the Covenant School that left six people dead, including three young students, Xinhua news agency reported.
“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 stressed.
The shooter, identified as 28-year-old Nashville resident Audrey Hale, purchased at least seven guns legally and locally, according to Nashville police chief John Drake.
Drake said that the shooter planned the shooting and used three of the guns, including two AR-style weapons, in the attack carried out on Monday morning before being killed by responding officers inside the Christian private school.
US President Joe Biden said from an event in Durham, North Carolina, on Tuesday that “as a nation, we owe these families more than our prayers”.
“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,” Biden said.
He also reiterated his call for US lawmakers to pass an assault weapons ban, stating that there was a “moral price to pay for inaction”.
It is unlikely that the divided Congress would approve the legislative proposal as Republicans control the House of Representatives this term and have advocated for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
“I believe in the Second Amendment,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, told reporters on Tuesday. “We shouldn’t penalise law-abiding American citizens.”
There have been 130 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people, including hundreds of children and teens, have lost their lives to gun violence in the past three months, the website’s data showed.
Hale was under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed emotional disorder and was not known to police before the attack, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at the news conference.
If police had been told that Hale was suicidal or homicidal, “then we would have tried to get those weapons,” Drake said. “But as it stands, we had absolutely no idea who this person was or if (Hale) even existed.”
Tennessee does not currently have a “red flag” law, which lets police step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill.
Hale legally bought seven firearms from five local gun stores, Drake said. Three of them were used in Monday’s shooting. Police spokesperson Brooke Reese said Hale bought the guns between October 2020 and June 2022.
Hale’s parents believed their child had sold one gun and did not own any others, Drake said, adding that Hale “had been hiding several weapons within the house.”
Hale’s motive is unknown, Drake said. In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Drake said investigators don’t know what drove Hale but believe the shooter had “some resentment for having to go to that school.”
Drake, at Tuesday’s news conference, described “several different writings by Hale” that mention other locations and The Covenant School.
Asked at a Senate hearing whether the Justice Department would open an investigation into whether the shooting was a hate crime targeting Christians, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said federal officials were working with local police to identify a motive.
Police have released videos of the shooting, including edited surveillance footage that shows the shooter’s car driving up to the school, glass doors being shot out and the shooter ducking through one of them.
Additional video, from Officer Rex Engelbert’s bodycam, shows a woman meeting police outside as they arrive and telling them that all the children were locked down, “but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.”
The woman then directs officers to Fellowship Hall and says people inside had just heard gunshots. Three officers, including Engelbert, search rooms one by one, holding rifles and announcing themselves as police.
The video shows officers climbing stairs to the second floor and entering a lobby area, followed by a barrage of gunfire and an officer yelling twice: “Get your hands away from the gun.” Then the shooter is shown motionless on the floor.
Police identified Engelbert, a four-year member of the force, and Michael Collazo, a nine-year member, as the officers who fatally shot Hale. The White House said President Joe Biden spoke separately Tuesday with Drake, Engelbert and Callazo to thank them for their bravery and quick response.
Police response times to school shootings have come under greater scrutiny after the attack in Uvalde, Texas, in which 70 minutes passed before law enforcement stormed the classroom. In Nashville, police have said 14 minutes passed from the initial call to when the suspect was killed, but they have not said how long it took them to arrive.
Surveillance video shows a time stamp of just before 10:11 a.m., when the attacker shot out the doors. Police said they got the call about a shooter at 10:13 a.m. The edited bodycam footage didn’t include time stamps. A police spokesperson didn’t respond to an email Tuesday asking when they arrived.
During the news conference, Drake did not answer a question directly about how many minutes it took police to arrive. At about 10:24 a.m., 11 minutes after the call was received, officers engaged the suspect, he said.
“There were police cars that had been hit by gunfire. As officers were approaching the building, there was gunfire going off,” Drake said.
Police have given unclear information on Hale’s gender. For hours Monday, police identified the shooter as a woman. Later in the day, the police chief said Hale was transgender. After the news conference, Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale identified.
In an email Tuesday, police spokesperson Kris Mumford said Hale “was assigned female at birth. Hale did use male pronouns on a social media profile.” Later Tuesday, at the news conference, Drake referred to Hale with female pronouns.
Authorities identified the dead children as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. The adults were Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the school since July 2016. Peak was a substitute teacher, and Hill was a custodian, according to investigators.
Koonce was remembered as someone who would run toward danger, not away from it.
“I guarantee you if there were kids missing (during the shooting), Katherine was looking for them,” friend Jackie Bailey said. “And that’s probably how she got in the way — just trying to do something for somebody else. She would give up her own life in order to save somebody else’s.”
[ad_2]
#Police #Nashville #shooter #fired #indiscriminately #victims
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s tweet is part of a broader push by Democrats nationwide to pass gun safety legislation. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
California Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Twitter Monday night for voting against gun safety laws and accepting over $1 million in donations from the NRA over her career after the senator tweeted she was “ready to assist” in the wake of the deadly elementary school shooting in Nashville.
Blackburn, a Republican, tweeted on Monday, “Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected.”
Later that night, Newsom responded with, “You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you’re so ‘ready to assist’ — start by doing your job and passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today.”
[ad_2]
#Newsom #slams #Blackburn #voting #gun #control #bill #wake #Nashville #shooting
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream,” Biden said. His speech quickly shifted to calling on Congress to ban assault weapons in the wake of the shooting.
Three adults and three children were confirmed dead following a mass shooting Monday morning at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville.
The 28-year-old female suspect, who has not been identified, was killed in an altercation with police. The woman had at least two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, police said.
Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking” and a “family’s worst nightmare.”
“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”
Biden has focused on reinstating the assault weapons ban that he helped pass in 1994 as senator, but which lapsed in 2004. The president doesn’t appear to have the votes for an assault weapons ban in Congress.
“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.
At an event in Washington on Monday, first lady Jill Biden also spoke about the shooting.
“I am truly without words. Our children deserve better. We stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer,” Jill Biden said.
[ad_2]
#Biden #renews #push #ban #assault #weapons #wake #Nashville #shooting
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 8 or 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.
The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the school since July 2016.
Police gave unclear information on the gender of the shooter. For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually identified the person as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender. After the news conference, police spokesperson Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale currently identified.
The attack at The Covenant School — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.
“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at an afternoon news conference.
Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s prior planning for the targeted attack.
“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he said. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
The Covenant School was founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church. The affluent Green Hills neighborhood just south of downtown Nashville, where the Covenant School is located, is home to the famed Bluebird Café – a beloved spot for musicians and song writers.
President Joe Biden, speaking at an unrelated event at the White House on Monday, called the shooting a “family’s worst nightmare” and implored Congress again to pass a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons.
“It’s ripping at the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of this nation,” Biden said.
There have been seven mass killings at K-12 schools since 2006 in which four or more people were killed within a 24-hour period, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. In all of them, the shooters were males.
The database does not include school shootings in which fewer than four people were killed, which have become far more common in recent years. Just last week alone, for example, school shootings happened in Denver and the Dallas-area within two days of each other.
Monday’s tragedy unfolded over roughly 14 minutes. Police received the initial call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m.
Officers began clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesperson Don Aaron said during a news briefing.
Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. One officer had a hand wound from cut glass.
Aaron said there were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.
Other students walked to safety Monday, holding hands as they left their school surrounded by police cars, to a nearby church to be reunited with their parents.
Rachel Dibble, who was at the church as families found their children, described the scene as everyone being in “complete shock.”
“People were involuntarily trembling,” said Dibble, whose children attend a different private school in Nashville. “The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.”
Dr. Shamendar Talwar, a social psychologist from the United Kingdom who is working on an unrelated mental health project in Nashville, raced to the church as soon as he heard news of the shooting to offer help. He said he was one of several chaplains, psychologists, life coaches and clergy inside supporting the families.
“All you can show is that the human spirit that basically that we are all here together … and hold their hand more than anything else,” he said.
Jozen Reodica heard the police sirens and fire trucks blaring from outside her office building nearby. As her building was placed under lockdown, she took out her phone and recorded the chaos.
“I thought I would just see this on TV,” she said. “And right now, it’s real.”
From her office nearby, Kelly Stooksberry could see parents rushing to park their cars on the side of the road before sprinting to locate their children. She saw one woman fall to her knees and grab her chest.
“It was gut-wrenching,” she said.
Top legislative leaders announced Monday that the GOP-dominant Statehouse would meet briefly later in the evening and delay taking up any legislation.
“In a tragic morning, Nashville joined the dreaded, long list of communities to experience a school shooting,” Mayor John Cooper wrote on Twitter.
Nashville has seen its share of mass violence in recent years, including a Christmas Day 2020 attack where a recreational vehicle was intentionally detonated in the heart of Music City’s historic downtown, killing the bomber, injuring three others and forcing more than 60 businesses to close.
[ad_2]
#Nashville #school #shooter #drawn #maps #surveillance
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
