Her son survived an attack that killed three schoolmates. Now she’s a gun-safety activist, pleading with a Tennessee legislature that’s stacked against her.
in May found strong bipartisan majorities of Tennesseans supporting stricter gun laws. Those included strengthening background checks and passing red-flag laws to prevent gun-related violence .
Alexander understands the political obstacles and the difficulty of changing minds. But she still senses that the state is at a tipping point on guns.March 27. Monday morning at Alexander’s house: Up, dress, eat, out the door. She ran toward the station at the foot of the hill. She saw teachers. The lunch lady. Pastors from her church. Their faces said it all: Something terrible had happened.
More than four hours later, at Woodmont Baptist Church, where the Covenant survivors had been brought by bus, the family reunited. Her husband, John, had finally been able to make it through all the police blockades. He was waiting by his truck when his wife and son emerged.From across the street, news photographers captured the moment.
It all felt so far from Tennessee, so disconnected from her comfortable life with a big job, a great husband and two happy kids, living in a city that has always felt to her like the safest place in the world. She believes strongly in the Second Amendment. When their son was born in 2013, they took advantage of a state program that allows parents to pay about $300 for a “Lifetime Sportsman License” for their child that exempts him from further Tennessee hunting or fishing license fees for life.
“Please pray for our Nashville community and for those waking up with empty arms today. Let this be the last time. Demand change.”Three weeks after the shooting, Alexander and her husband stood near the state capitol steps, part of a three-mile chain of thousands of people linked arm in arm to protest gun violence. The event was sponsored by Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a large, bipartisan group formed in response to the Covenant shooting.
Opponents of red-flag laws say they wouldn’t have prevented the Covenant deaths. Alexander said she believes those laws and better background checks may not stop all mass shootings, but they could stop some, which makes them worth doing. They visited the primary House hearing room. Several of them sat in the legislators’ big leather chairs. It helped to make the place seem less mystifying, less intimidating.
One 24-year-old state senator reversed his position at the last minute and voted to ratify — citing a letter from his mother urging him to “be a good boy” and vote yes.Said Alexander: “I feel like this is one of those moments.” By late June, Alexander, Neumann and other Covenant mothers had met with more than 20 legislators, including powerful ones such as Sen. Jack Johnson, the Senate’s Republican leader, who represents the district where Alexander lives.
“Fascinating,” Neumann posted in response to the Senate leader. “Not at all the experience that Covenant parent constituents have had.” One weekday in late July, Alexander was stuck in rush hour traffic. She hadn’t been able to sleep at all the night before thinking about the news conference where she would have to speak. She called Darius Wallace, her longtime speech coach, from the car.He reminded her: Practice your lines. Draw out your words, especially the vowels. Enunciate. Underline the key points. And most importantly: Look up.
On the steps, Alexander struggled with her emotions as the names of the six Covenant dead were read out loud.new nonprofit Gardenhire said passing legislation based on emotion was unwise, and he questioned the constitutionality of any of the proposed laws. “What’s all very fascinating is the level of activism that you’ve gotten into, even though you’re going through all this pain still,” Bulso said. “We’ve been working on some very specific things, some small things.”
He explained that constituents come to him all the time asking for red flag laws and other “big things.” He said those “blatantly violate the Constitution, so I could never support those things. But other things that we’ve talked about that would be very effective, we can and should do.
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