Sadly, this week’s news was dominated by yet another mass school shooting. Three nine-year-old students and three staff members at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, were killed Monday morning by a lone shooter, who entered the school armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun. Police shot and killed the suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a former student at the school.
The Associated Press reports that before Monday, there had been seven mass killings at K-12 schools since 2006. In each of those, the shooter was male. Hale, who was assigned female gender at birth, reportedly used he/him pronouns on social media.
Police say that Hale planned the massacre, drawing out a detailed map and surveilling the building. Hale, who was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, bought seven firearms from five local gun stores between October 2020 and June 2022. Hale used three of them in Monday’s shooting.