March 29 – Fourteen minutes after the call came in for a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, TN, on Monday morning, the shooter was dead on the floor.
With all the speculation and questions coming out of the mass shooting at the Covenant School, one undeniable fact is the professionalism, efficiency and heroism of the Nashville Police Department.
Body camera footage was released from police who responded on the scene and it clearly shows officers taking charge, going in and taking down the suspect.
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Real heroics on the part of those Nashville Police officers. Unlike Uvalde, Texas, where remember the officers are standing and milling around outside. Total opposite in Tennessee Monday. Those officers are saying, let’s go. They’re very quickly and methodically going through that building, looking for this shooter and they immediately shoot and kill her. Apparently there were still kids in the building while she’s walking around with that AR rifle. So those officers did just amazing work and undoubtedly saved more lives with how quickly they responded.”
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM added, “The professionalism, the skill, the fearlessness that they demonstrated and police do not get enough credit for. I’m thinking of a recent article I read in a local Facebook page denigrating police, saying they’re just untrained, uneducated thugs going around looking for certain people to kill. These police demonstrated the complete falseness of that particular article.”
The woman shooter, a 28-year old who identifies as a man, lived with her parents and was under psychiatric care.
Reports have shown her parents felt she shouldn’t have weapons and believed she sold the only one she had.
In fact, she had legally purchased seven weapons from five different gun stores, some of which were assault-style guns.
Barkdoll said, “It is heartbreaking that it just looks like so many things slipped through the cracks here. There was no mechanism to report her mental health treatment to any kind of an InstaCheck system that would have blocked her from buying weapons. Tennessee does not have those kind of laws in place. There’s also no Red Flag laws in Tennessee. Looking at this now from afar, though, I think everyone would agree if she was in mental health treatment and if the doctor comes out and says there were suicidal ideations or discussions about causing harm to others, of course that’s information that ought to be placed in an InstaCheck system that would have blocked her from buying these weapons.”
Other reporting claimed the shooter had intended to carry out mass shootings at a local mall and other schools in Tennessee.
Jansen said, “I’m worried. We’re hearing now even reporters saying there’s no point in releasing that manifesto. Reporters? Really? Reporters are supposed to always want the most, maximum amount of transparency information. Because they’re worried about the LGBTQI community being shown in a bad light. Or we’ll use the excuse that’s going to bring more violence against this community. First of all, I don’t understand, demonstrate to me, show me where all the violence against this community is happen. That’s a very overblown, hyperbolic narrative. Most of the violence in that community is domestic violence between individuals. It’s not people going around looking for people like this to kill because they hate them. Unfortunately what we’re seeing maybe in this woman is her hatred of Christians based on this. We don’t know that for sure. It might have nothing to do with it, but I think we all deserve to know if that’s part of it. Secondly, we have to remember, we can’t keep pretending there’s no mental health issues in this whole discussion of gender dysphoria. In fact, the research shows there’s often other psychological problems that go along with true, authentic gender dysphoria. I’m afraid people are ignoring that or trying to pretend like that doesn’t exist because we want to create this perception of this community that there’s nothing to see here, these are just normal people living their lives and anything you say questioning that is hate. No, it’s concern. We want everyone to actually get the kind of treatment they need and I’m afraid doctors are ignoring some of that and not following all the rules because of this perception.”
“It’s a good point,” Barkdoll said.
Apparently the shooter was texting at least one friend before she went to the Covenant School, outlining what she was about to do. One friend told her dad and the father called the police, but it was a little too late.
Barkdoll said, “Are the doctors maybe afraid to go to the police or maybe they feel that there are legal restrictions? If the reporting that she was expressing these kind of problems in the context of treatment, there needs to be some mechanism for that information to get them on an InstaCheck system. I can already hear the criticism, well doctors will abuse that or this will deter people from going to treatment. That all may be true, but I know in this case if she’s in serious mental health treatment and is expressing all these kind of issues and problems, she’s not someone that should have been allowed to go in five stores and buy these seven assault-style weapons. It really seems like it’s a gap in the system here.”
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden seems intent on pointing to the Republicans and MAGA Americans on all of this.
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM noted, “It was Obama and it’s Joe Biden for eight freaking years. They had a narrative. They had the majority. They could make all sorts of decisions and they couldn’t get it done then. Why are you blaming us or blaming the gun owners, who are responsible in the first place when it comes to this stuff? You had Obama and Biden for a very long time and you couldn’t get it done then with the majority, you stupid idiots.”
Biden has been in public office for about 50 years.
Barkdoll pointed out, “Gallup’s poll yesterday has his approval rating down to 40 percent and you dig down into that, on individual issues, including foreign affairs, the economy, energy, his approval rating is in the low 30s. These are unprecedented lows for an incumbent president.”
Ryan asked, “How does he have the testicular fortitude to stand there and lecture Congress after being in office for so damn long and having all the power that he and Obama had for eight years and you’re blaming us for gun control? You could have done it then. Why didn’t you do it then?”
One issue Biden cites a lot is the assault weapons ban enacted under President Bill Clinton. It reached sunset in 2004 and efforts to renew it didn’t have the votes in Congress to get it going again.
Barkdoll said, “Here we are. It never has been reenacted. He brings this up repeatedly. He brought this up again yesterday that it should have been renewed. The votes certainly aren’t there now to do it. He’s done some what I’ve called nibbling around the edges through these executive orders which I still doubt are legal, including some of those that he rolled out last week. I think it’s likely a court will overturn some of those when it comes to gun. Whether it’s the president or Congress, nothing is going to get done when it comes to gun legislation.”
Jansen said, “I question this doing things by executive order that you know will not pass judicial muster. That is an abdication of the vow you took to uphold the constitution. I’m so sick of it. I’m waiting for anyone to say when someone will be held accountable for doing that. And number two, can we stop with the pejoratives, President Biden? Everybody hated Trump. Supposedly he was denigrated whole groups of people if he happened to mention the ethnicity of a judge he didn’t like or if he mentions China. How about the pejorative of MAGA Republicans? When you know there are groups hooking this to the so-called white Christian nationalists and you know when they say that they are pejoratively trying to link that to things like Nazis because they were the national socialists. We know those words are used to put ideas in people’s minds to hook people to the very worst and ugliest type of human behavior. And yet this president gets away with it. I never see the press calling him out for using terms like that.”
“I hate the rhetoric,” Barkdoll agreed. “He uses that a lot and I do think it really fans the flames. It’s unfortunate that it’s become so commonplace in politics. I think when you hear the president throwing out these kind of terms, it really is divisive and I think it causes damage.”
