(Written before 2023 Tennessee Special Session, but will apply to January 2024 Legislative Session)

               Middle Tennessee drank from a bitter cup in 2023, experiencing what other communities have previously endured with the tragedy of a school shooting.  While we may never know the full story of the shooter’s angst and anger, we know that lives were taken and we know that families continue to mourn.  We mourn with them, and extend our sympathy to their pain.  As a community and state, we collectively look for solutions to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. Some call for gun control as the solution.  Some call for more gun freedoms as the solution.  The spectrum of proposed solutions extends in multiple directions from this overly simplistic dichotomy as everyone wants the same thing, no more school shootings. 

               In response, our governor, Bill Lee, called a Special Session of the legislature to address such an extraordinary situation.  As with the majority of politicians, he and others in his camp believe that government intervention offers the best opportunity for prevention.  No one wants to be accused of doing nothing as the potential for another loss of life could be in the making.  Neither does anyone want to react rashly and somehow lead to either similar or different harms to our children in the school system.  In the midst of these competing priorities and inclinations the state legislators find themselves as we, the people of Tennessee, watch and attempt to avoid further harm from resulting.

               With hopes to come out of this tragedy in a better position to protect lives than when we entered it, I offer the application of principles in guiding you and our legislators towards real solutions.  I am not privy to any special knowledge of the events nor in any position to implement significant changes at schools.  However, I am a citizen of this state who directly or indirectly could be impacted by unwise legislation and who wants my children and your children to grow safely into old age rather than meeting their demise at the hands of an vengeful shooter. 

               Without special insight or knowledge and without influence, I might choose to focus energy elsewhere, but I want each of you to grow in your wisdom so that we as a people can influence those who have the knowledge and/or the power.????  In order to do so, I offer principles from one of our core values and another principle of general wisdom as they can be applied to the question of “what do we do now?”  Those principles are first noted in the core values promoted on this site before suggesting they be applied to the school shooter and its aftermath.  They include 1) Truth Seeking and 2) Considering the ramifications of our response.

               First, in facing the choices of how we or our leaders should respond we must seek truth.  Partial truth risks inadequate or even harmful responses.  We should ask ourselves and others for a full picture of not only what happened that tragic day but also for a full picture of the wider situation of school safety.  Countless questions need answering regarding what led a young woman to plan the murder of those she gunned down.  We don’t have those answers and are thus hindered in our response.  We know a good deal about the actual events themselves from security cameras and can greatly appreciate the rapid response of the police force in limiting further loss of life.  On other hand we don’t know whether others with guns would or would not have bought this tragedy to an end even sooner, but that has been the case with active shooters in other situations.

               With the tragedy in mind, we now hear calls for various responses to the question of school safety.  The various responses from both sides of the political spectrum which get the most attention repeat simplistic responses of either more guns or less guns.  We must again seek the whole truth by methodically evaluating what we do know about the safety of schools.  We must better understand the full problem which encompasses multiple issues like bullying, mental health, school facility locks and alarms, staff training, the juvenile justice system, and more.  The breadth and depth of the issues leading to this shooting seem difficult to exhaustively comprehend but we must do our best before taking a reflexive action.

               We must submit to this first principle of truth seeking or risk a worse response being implemented.

               Second, we must consider all ramifications of the response or responses we choose whether individually or collectively.  Every choice we make first focuses on a primary outcome.  In this case, we all agree that we want children to be safe from armed attackers.  If it were that simple, there would be no debate and no need for this essay.  While the primary outcome may be first in view, rarely do our choices impact solely on the primary outcome without impacting secondary and tertiary outcomes.  This is especially true when legislation is enacted which applies across hundreds of schools across our state and thousands of children in those schools.  While situations do arise which necessitate such broad and sweeping actions, still we must consider those secondary impacts. 

               Some specific questions include the following: 

Will the mental health of children be adversely affected by the presence of guns?

Will more money for counselors and mental health professionals bring more federal control of state schools?

Will the worldviews of mental health professionals conflict with the views of parents?

Will stricter gun laws interfere with constitutional freedoms?

Will limits on freedoms lead to other societal adverse effects down the road?

               I could go on, but the point is made that legislative short-sighted reflexes which echo the reflexive voices of the media arising from the extremes of political opinion may cause us to miss the bigger picture, creating either a larger problem than we began with or new problems which did not exist prior to our response.  We must seek as much truth regarding the problem before proposing a solution.  We must then consider the full ramifications of that solution.  While many like Governor Bill Lee apparently believe that me must act quickly with a Special Session (and many in the legislature seem to agree despite their claims to the contrary), the legislature is moving forward in the dark and our children and our freedoms are at risk when they needlessly stumble. 

               Ask yourself these and other questions.  Ask our legislators to answer these questions.  Demand an answer from yourself and from them.