It’s Been Six Weeks, and We Are Fighting Here in Nashville

NYT OPINION: It’s Been Six Weeks, and We Are Fighting Here in Nashville
By Margaret Renkl
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 8, 2023 at 03:00AM

After the Covenant school shooting, our governor may finally listen to the majority of people calling for action on gun violence.

NASHVILLE — If you drive through the neighborhoods on my side of town, you’ll see red bows decorating mailboxes and schools and churches and storefronts. Mailbox after mailbox, bow after bow. Even the local liquor store is decorated with a red bow. To visitors, I’m sure it’s a matter for curiosity: Christmas decorations during the green month of May? It begins to make sense when you notice that many of the bows include a few black ribbons, too. Sometimes there are also signs that say, “I Stand With Covenant” or “Covenant Strong.” Some of the signs include the names of the children and staff members who were killed in the shooting at the nearby Covenant School on March 27. The bows refer to Covenant’s school colors. It has been six weeks since that terrible day, and in that time, dozens of shootings have happened in every sort of place where unsuspecting people go to conduct their daily lives. At the bank. At the park. At the doctor’s office. At home. At the houses where friends live. And, on Saturday, at a shopping mall outside Dallas, where a shooter took the lives of at least eight people before a police officer killed him. In the way of all tragedies that touch nearby but do not touch us personally, life has carried on mostly as usual here in Nashville. New yard signs have sprouted beside the old yard signs now, new bows alongside the old bows. “Congratulations, Class of 2023!” the new signs say. These are the homes where children managed to survive childhood in the gun-soaked state of Tennessee.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/opinion/tennessee-gov-lee-gun-reform.html