A 28-year-old woman opened fire at a private Christian grade school in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, killing three children and three adults before she was killed by police, officials say.
Here’s everything we know.
How it unfolded
The shooting at the Covenant School began shortly after 10 a.m., when police responded to a call for an “active shooter” at the school for preschool through 6th grade students.
The female shooter, armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun, entered the school through a side entrance and “traversed her way from the first floor to the second floor firing multiple shots,” Nashville Police Spokesman Don Aaron told reporters.
Five responding officers arrived on the scene within 14 minutes of the first 911 call, Aaron said. Two of the officers entered the building, followed the sounds of gunfire and engaged the suspect on the second floor in a lobby area. They fatally shot her.
Three children and three adults were killed in the shooting. The victims were not immediately identified.
A police officer suffered minor injuries from broken glass. No one else was injured. The rest of the approximately 200 students and 50 staff members were evacuated. And students were taken to a nearby baptist church for family reunification.
Aaron initially said that it appeared the shooter was in her teens, and that police were working to identify her.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake later identified the suspect as a 28-year-old woman from the Nashville area who was once a student at the school. Police did not release her name.
Female mass shooters are extremely rare
While mass shootings have become an increasingly common occurrence in the United States, the perpetrators of such attacks are rarely female.
According to the The Violence Project, a nonpartisan group that studies U.S. mass shooting data, 98% of mass shootings in the U.S. since 1966 have been committed by men. There are a variety of theories on why women make up such a small subset of mass shooters in the U.S.
“Men just are generally more violent,” Jillian Peterson, a forensic psychologist and president of The Violence Project, told NPR in 2021. Peterson noted that mass shooters are also disproportionately white, and they often “study the perpetrators that came before them.”
Other research suggests that women aren’t necessarily nonviolent, but they are much less likely than men to engage in gun violence targeting strangers in a public setting. Studies have found that female violence is typically more individualized and private, it often involves relationship disputes and takes place in the perpetrator’s own home.
America’s latest mass shooting
According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot excluding the shooter, there have been 129 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, up from about 100 at this point last year.
Three have occurred at schools, including the deadly mass shooting at Michigan State University on Feb. 13.
At a previously scheduled event in Washington, D.C., on Monday afternoon, President Biden bemoaned the country’s latest mass shooting.
“It’s sick,” Biden said at a women’s business summit at the White House. “It’s heartbreaking — a family’s worst nightmare.”
Biden reiterated his call to Congress for an assault weapons ban.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence,” the president said. “It’s ripping our communities apart, ripping at the very soul of our nation. And we have to do more to protect our schools.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also addressed the tragedy at her daily press briefing.
“So we’re seeing the heartbreaking news of another shooting of innocent schoolchildren, this time in Nashville,” Jean-Pierre said. “While we don’t know yet all the details in this latest tragic shooting, we know that too often our schools and our communities are being devastated by gun violence.”
“Schools should be safe spaces for our kids to grow and learn and for our educators to teach,” Jean-Pierre said.
At an event earlier in the day, first lady Jill Biden, who is an educator herself, informed attendees about the shooting.
“I am truly without words,” Jill Biden said. “And our children deserve better.”
‘Aren’t you guys tired of this?’
Following a news conference with police in Nashville, a woman and gun control activist who said she survived the shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., last year gave an impassioned plea to reporters.
“Aren’t you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings?” Ashbey Beasley said, according to USA Today. “I’m from Highland Park, Ill. My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation, with my son, visiting my sister-in-law.”
Beasley said she has been lobbying lawmakers in Washington, D.C., since the Highland Park massacre.
“How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?” Beasley added. “Aren’t you guys tired of this? You’re not sick of it? We have to do something.”
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