The Nashville School Shooting That Kills a Christian School: Witnesses and Police Search for the Revealing of the Shooter

As a heartbroken Nashville community grapples with the mass shooting that claimed the lives of three 9-year-old children and three adults at a private Christian school, police are uncovering more details about the 28-year-old shooter.

Brink Fidler, a security consultant, told CNN the teachers at The Covenant School were trained to protect their students from the shooter and he did not hit any students inside the classrooms.

Hale had been under care for an emotional disorder and legally bought seven guns in the past three years, but they were kept hidden from Hale’s parents, Drake said. Three of the weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, were used in the attack Monday.

But Hale, who was under care for an emotional disorder, had legally bought seven firearms that were hidden at home, Drake said. Three of those weapons, including an AR-style rifle, were used in the attack Monday.

Police have said the attack was pre-planned, finding that Hale had detailed maps of the school as well as writings related to the shooting and had scouted a second possible attack location in Nashville. Hale’s childhood friend said that the shooter sent her disturbing messages before the attack.

The attack marked the 19th shooting at a school or university so far in 2023 that left at least one person wounded, a CNN count shows. It was also the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a year, since the May attack in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead.

As terrified schoolchildren and teachers were led to safety out of The Covenant School Monday, word spread of those who were lost: three young children, the head of their school, its custodian and a substitute teacher.

“All of Tennessee was hurt yesterday, but some parents woke up without children, children woke up without parents and without teachers, and spouses woke up without their loved ones,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who also lost a close family friend in the shooting.

The shooter sent a disturbing Instagram message to a childhood friend just before 10 a.m. Monday, saying “I’m planning to die today” and that it would be on the news, the friend Averianna Patton told CNN on Tuesday.

The shooter’s childhood basketball teammate, a radio host named Paula, said she was the one who received the message and was unsure why. The Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office was contacted at 10:13 a.m. and said she had called a suicide prevention line.

A man shot and killed in a school building: an active shooter, a friend of the school president, and two of her friends, Katherine Koonce

The president of Nossi College of Art & Design confirmed to CNN that Hale graduated last year. Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper, a LinkedIn profile says.

Police have referred to Hale as a “female shooter,” and at an evening news conference added Hale was transgender. Hale used male pronouns on her social media profile, CNN was told.

Police entered the sound of alarms six minutes later. The body camera footage shows the officers rushing through halls decorated with children’s artwork, checking classrooms in an increasingly desperate search for the shooter. Some doors open to darkened rooms, small desks and chairs empty; others are locked.

After the officer is given a key to open a door into the building, a group of five officers enter the school amid wailing fire alarms and immediately go into several empty classrooms rooms to look for the suspect.

Then, the sound of gunfire rattles the hallway. “I think it’s upstairs, it sounds like it’s upstairs,” an officer says in the video. As police run up the stairwell towards the heavy booms, it grows louder.

The person was hit on the ground four times with a gun and yelled “Stop moving!”. The officers then approach the person, move a gun away and radio “Suspect down! Suspect down!”

Asked about the roughly 11-minute gap between when police received the first call of an active shooter and when officers arrived at the school, the police chief told reporters, “From what I’ve seen, I don’t have a particular problem with it. But we always want to get better. There were a number of things that could have happened if we hadn’t got there in two or three minutes.

In the minutes that followed, three children were killed – Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs – and two more adults – substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Sissy Goff, one of Koonce’s friends, went to the reunification center after the shooting and suspected something was wrong when she didn’t see Koonce there.

“Knowing her, she’s so kind and strong and such a voice of reason and just security for people that she would have been there in front handling everything, so I had a feeling,” Goff said.

Maria woke up today without one of her best friends, Cindy Peak, who had been supposed to come over to dinner with her last night.

“Maria woke up this morning without one of her best friends, Cindy Peak,” the governor said.”Cindy and Maria and Katherine Koonce were all teachers at the same school and have been family friends for decades,” he added.

Some families of the victims have released statements as they mourn their loves ones. Hill was described as a father of seven children and grandfather to 14 who loved to cook and spend time with his family, his family said in a statement obtained by CNN affiliate WSMV.

The city of Nashville is planning a vigil on Wednesday night to mourn those lost in the mass shooting, according to Nashville Mayor John Cooper. There is a park located at One Public Square.

The Streaking-Front Approach to the Gravitational Collision of a High School Student with a Shooting-Induced Glass Door

The shocking videos, which show officers running down hallways lined with backpacks and children’s jackets to confront the suspect, have horrified a nation that has yet to fully comprehend the details of another mass shooting.

Standing in front of a side entrance to the school, Hale fired off shots that shattered the glass door, surveillance video shows. Hale can be seen ducking through the broken door with three weapons.

Custodian Mike Hill was shot through that door, police said. The 61-year-old man was killed when the school was attacked.

It’s recommended that youspect down. He shouted into his radio. After a labored breathing, he ordered his team to hold the air so they could communicate across the clear airwaves.

There were bouquets, toys, balloons, and a cross at a makeshift memorial outside the school in the aftermath of the shooting.

Evelyn’s family said in a statement that their hearts are broken. “We cannot believe this has happened. Evelyn was a shining light in this world.”

The senior pastor of the Texas congregation said that they loved the family and mourned over their daughter Hallie. “Together, we trust in the power of Christ to draw near and give us the comfort and hope we desperately need.”

The witness said that Koonce spent her final moments trying to protect the children in her care.

“The faculty, staff, and students who worked with her mourn the loss of a dedicated educator, a tenacious leader, and a dear friend,” the statement said.

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said he can’t confirm how Koonce died but said, “I do know she was in the hallway by herself. I think there was a confrontation. You can tell the way she is lying in the hallway.”

The First Prayer Service in a Church: A Graceful, Confident, People of Faith and God Who Gives Life to Us,” says Bethe L. Morrow

She had a lot of confidence, but she was also a person of grace. She had good pastoral and counseling skills, as well as the CEO skills that could tell you that you need to kind of get in her place.

She said she never thought she’d lose a loved one over a person trying to solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution.

I pulled into the parking lot at Christ Presbyterian Church when the sun was still shining. I was late for the start of the prayer service because traffic backed up outside the church and I was just a short distance from where the Covenant school shooting had taken place. Christ Presbyterian is a sister church of Covenant Presbyterian Church, a member of the same evangelical denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, P.C.A. for short.

The church was full. The pews were full. Men, women and children lined the walls. Faces were streaked with tears. As I walked into the room, Nate Morrow, the head of Christ Presbyterian Academy, spoke to the congregation. “Prayer,” he said, “is the first and most powerful thing we can do.”

The 30th anniversary of the shooting at Covenant School in Uvalde, Texas, left 14 minutes of terror to the attackers and their family members

If you’re a parent of a schoolchild in 2023, you’ve perhaps gotten some form of the “lockdown” text. It could come from the school itself, announcing that a dangerous, or at least suspicious, incident is underway at school or nearby. It is more likely to be from your friends. someone will ask, ‘does anyone know anything?’ They’ll have heard about an incident elsewhere in town, and the rumors cascade across social media and group texts.

On Monday, I was finishing recording a podcast when my phone lighted up. The words were “school shooting.” Then, “Covenant School.” I froze. I know about it. Last year I part ways with the P.C.A. churches and moved to a new one with my family. I’ve been to meetings at Covenant Presbyterian. I had a conversation with the pastor. The P.C.A. is a very small world, and I knew that I’d be at most one degree removed from the victims. I was so sad to learn that the pastor’s daughter was one of them.

Also credited with saving lives are the officers who rushed into the school and fatally shot the attacker, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, ending the 14 minutes of terror that unfolded at the school.

“Their ability to execute literally flawlessly under that amount of stress while somebody trying to murder them and their children, that is what made the difference here,” Fidler said.

All of the victims who were struck by gunfire had been in an open area or hallway, said Fidler, who did a walk-through of the school with officials Wednesday.

Some of the victims were stuck in a hallway or an open area and the only way the shooter could get them was by shooting them. Several people were able to leave. The ones that couldn’t do that safely did exactly what they were taught and trained to do.”

Drake told CNN that the officers went in harm’s way to stop this and they could have been talking about more tragedy than they are.

In Uvalde, Texas, the law enforcement response was delayed more than an hour before the suspect was confronted and killed. The attack in Uvalde left 21 people dead.

“The witness said Katherine Koonce was on a Zoom call, heard the shots and abruptly ended the Zoom call and left the office. The councilman said the assumption is that she headed towards the shooter. He didn’t identify the witness.

A Nashville Police and FBI Investigation of the Charged Shooter’s Gun in a Nashville Public Schools Building on Monday, Oct. 30

“It’s such a tragedy and felt so deeply by everyone here,” Nashville resident Eliza Hughes said. “Nashville is a close tight-knit community. We definitely feel the pain. It’s an awful situation.”

The FBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and police have been combing through the maps and writings Hale left, including looking at a notebook, Drake said.

Authorities have called the attack “calculated,” with Drake saying Wednesday that the maps “did have a display of entry into the school, a route that would be taken for whatever was going to be carried out.”

The shooter is also believed to have had weapons training and had arrived at the school heavily armed and prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement, police have said.

Tennessee does not have a “red flag” law that would allow a judge to temporarily seize guns from someone who is considered a threat to themselves or others.

We responded immediately to the scene after we got the call. Drake said that officers pulled up, were taking gunfire, pulled the gun out, and went inside.

The police chief spoke to the community saying that a school shooting like the one that took place at The Covenant School on Monday is a moment that officers hope won’t happen.

“Violence has visited our city and brought heartache and pain. In the midst of sadness we are still looking for a way to be better, said Tennessee Representative Reverend Harold M Love, Jr.

What we’ve been doing to help mitigate the gun violence in children’s school: What it’s like to do, what we’re doing to teach kids about active shooters, how to teach them how to run, hide,

One of the interesting things about what we’ll call this pivot in law enforcement, right in the government that we’re pinpointing to the Obama administration is now becomes a whole world of people who are thinking about how to deal with active shooters and also how to deal with mass shootings in schools. So there are people such as yourself, law enforcement, but there’s also people who have to come up with these trainings, so to speak, their mental health professionals, there are parents thinking about this, and in recent years we’re seeing commercial interest. Right? Like people coming up with. Safe, ballistic enforced windows.

That’s Katherine Schweit, we have a single guest today. Because the fact that schools now do active shooter drills with this message is, as she says, her fault. It’s not totally. But at this point, it’s now conventional wisdom from law enforcement, including at the FBI, where she helped create their active shooter program.

There are many prevention capabilities here. If you understand what you’re looking for, you have to know what you’re looking for. A person who is on a path to violence. That’s exactly what we call it, they’re on this pathway to violence. Everyone in the industry understands that there are planned events, and an individual’s move on the pathway will cause violence, so they begin to plan and prepare. There are visual things done for planning and preparation. They leak their intent to do it to other people. In the FBI research of active shooters, most of them leak to their peers.

What looks like a average white board can be turned into an additional space within the classroom that can protect students and teachers and an active shooter situation.

Security businesses stepping in to offer what they call solutions to schools, which, by the way, they are doing, because many lawmakers at this point have decided that they will not. This is Tim Burchett. He’s a Republican congressman. He was speaking to a reporter in the aftermath of six deaths at a Nashville school.

Thanks to the reporter that asked that question So in the meantime, for us and for our kids, it’s run, hide, fight. Today we’re going to discuss what it is like to build a program that will help mitigate disaster. How to explain what we’re doing to kids and what it’s like to do that in the midst of political paralysis. I am named Audie Cornish. This is what the assignment is.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

Active Shooter: Katherine, the Connecticut State Police, the Department of Education, and the Sandy Hook Massacre — an Expert on the State of Shock

When you’re in a state of shock, contact the person called by you, whom you affectionately refer to as Katherine. She was on TV explaining the FBI’s active shooter program. But I wanted to know more about her. How did she become an expert on this topic?

The massacre at Sandy Hook happened. We rarely call these shootings massacres, but Sandy Hook is often referred to as a massacre because there were, as everybody always says, those babies. There’s these tiny little kids. And I think the shock of that shooting our personnel, we’re on the ground working. There is a room at Sandy Hook that our team was helping clear. It was a big hit to the country. And what we saw at Sandy Hook was even though the Connecticut State police were in charge, even though Newtown police were there, it was a small community that was so devastated, they were so overwhelmed. The FBI director, Mr. Biden’s office, and Mr. Obama’s office all tried to get us to come up with a single voice in the federal system. We’re going to do it, we just don’t know how.

It’s not unusual for a politician to say we’re going to do something, but then somewhere someone has to do it. That was you. So what was that conversation like?

He directed the vice president to the vice president, put together a team of executives from the agencies and I was the FBI’s agency executive. It may seem like just another meeting; but we met every single day, starting with the discussions about what we’re going to do to stop this from happening again. And we were literally arguing in the first days about what really needed to be done and what the problems were. With no idea whether it involved better police response or harder targets or getting rid of guns, we all got together in a Department of Education room and talked about ways to solve the problem.

You know, it’s interesting. There are so many places where mass shooting events have taken place. But you’re saying these meetings happened at the Department of Education?

I am aware. Sandy Hook was a school, that’s why. Correct. And the Department of Education. I mean, of all the places, I think in retrospect, I so agree with you, because when we started and I said we were arguing the Department of Education people when I brought run, hide, fight to them, which is something I’d love to tell you how that happened. They said, yeah, we don’t we don’t use words like that in schools. Fight can’t be used by us. And they wanted the conversation to end at that moment.

Right? It’s a violent thing David, I’m with the FBI. You know, that’s what I said to the executive who was who was my counterpart.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

The Teen Shooting At The High School: Chris Murphy and the Investigation into the School Incident – An Example of the Parent-At-The-Factor Industry

Chris Murphy began advocating for things after writing a book. And if you think back, right, Gabby Giffords, it’s not like this was the first time anything happened. But this school incident created this cottage industry of we’re going to find a better way to crack the nut in terms of keeping kids safe in school. And at the time, we didn’t really know. The Department of Education had a beef with me because they couldn’t tell me if the number of shootings were increasing.

No, not really. I mean, we hadn’t really even at the FBI, we hadn’t focused on this as a separate area. Now, there’s a whole, you know, component at the FBI that does this. Of course, we had behavioral specialists who who look at shooters and why they shoot. But, you know, when when everybody wants to buttonhole a potential shooter and say, I just need to see the profile, I just need to see the profile. The problem is there isn’t a profile here.

Right. When you watch TV, it’s like if the FBI profilers come in and say that it’s an X, you have to look out for that person. That hasn’t happen when it’s come to active shooters. It’s not really what schools.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

What kind of drills do you run to keep your school safe? A question about a frightening thing that people say about fires and tornadoes

Emotionally, they’re brittle. Some people will pour open a glass of wine and commiserate with their friends about the state of the economy if they are let go on a Friday.

So on your website, you have like a little quiz, like, which one of these things are you doing to keep your school safe? They were talking and one asked if you had any kind of threat assessment. Right. Do you have a threat assessment team? Another one is, do you have a way for your students or anyone to basically report signs of someone who’s like under emotional distress, etc.? It was mm hmm. You also have a question, which is do you run drills and trainings several times a year to give faculty and staff confidence to respond immediately during an emergency? Let’s talk about this several times a year.

Mm hmm. Every school runs fire drills twice a year. We haven’t lost a child to a fire since the 1950s in the United States. But we run a couple of fire drills every year, usually when the weather’s nice.

You also say you give them suggestions and you say, well, maybe a school resource officer can oversee running non-scary but informative drills three times a year for students and staff. Now I’ve done a one of these in a workplace. It was frightening.

So I think that I liken this, right, to what I was just saying about a fire. You know what a fire is going to do. You know how devastating it can be. When you get on the plane somebody tells you in a big metal tube, okay, if the oxygen disappears, this is going to drop down and you need to know how to put this mask over your face and put yours over before you help your child. And by the way, reach under your seat and grab your cushion, because when we go into the water, those are all really scary things. We normalized those because they are a matter of routine. Now we listen to them. A lot of people sit on the plane and don’t listen to any of it, but they’ve integrated into their brain. And that’s what we need to do, is to take this just like tornado drills and fire drills. This type of drills is part of the school safety training. It doesn’t have to be frightening. Safety training has to be what it is.

It does feel different and scary, that’s why I’m saying that. So, for instance, with this, the thing I hear most commonly now is run, hide, fight.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

Run, Hide, Fight. What do you think? Getting your kids to shoot you, and what you’re going to do

All the concept of just talking about shootings in schools at all. Oh, and we don’t think this is a good thing. They said that we should do a training film. I don’t know what it means. And I said, Well, okay, the FBI has a television studio. A training film can be done by us. I know how long it takes and how much it costs. I went home and did my best internet search, like everyone else. The film was just released by the city of Houston.

And then fight again. Which is like, grab something, right? Is it Ambush? You have to engage somebody who has spent a lot of time thinking about how they’re going to attack you. And you’ve spent very little time thinking about how you’re going to fight back. So I’m trying to picture teaching this to my five year old.

Okay. Okay, let’s back up as well because I think, you know, that’s great. But now we’re talking about a five year old. Let’s discuss the adults in the room first. Right. Because the adults have to understand it first and the concept behind Run, Hide, Fight. This is what people do in front of a camera. This isn’t a suggested idea of what might happen. These are the actions that happen. You know, run if you can, hide if you must, and fight if if your life depends on it. And so the training that goes along with it explains the nuances of that. And there have been other organizations that have private companies. Right. Who’ve developed training that similar all the training focuses on these three actions.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

Why did we come to the Civil War before we went into the woods? That’s what we’re all about now, right?

But there is a concern people have, let’s say, about mental health, right? I mean, when I kind of went down the rabbit hole on this, there, there were some researchers who put out something, and I think I saw it on Nature.com I will give you a proper citation in a minute. But basically they said they studied people’s social media posts kind of before and after.

No, but the teacher is correct. Here’s the difference. Look at the data. In general, that study and others were done to inform us of how to do a better job in training. I think there was there absolutely was initial training that was people running through hallways with long guns in their arms and yelling at students and fake blood everywhere and no-notice drills and those are still going on.

Right. The early training that was done with the community was not the same as the training that law enforcement got in the woods. The early training that was done by private companies was and some law enforcement was really based on this idea of we’re going to let everybody know how scary it is. And that was never, ever the training that was developed by the FBI. And that’s one of the reasons why we had to create… We worked with FEMA to create civilian training that was not at all anything like that.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

What I’ve Learned from Living in a Lossy World: What I Can Learn from Its History and How I’m Going Through It

The school is a safe space for lack of a better term. We can pretend that school is the same as home. If you believe home is safe, school is also safe. We’re not an option for you because it feels like generationally. This generation is not an option. It’s not safe.

What is it like for me to live this way? I would like to leave the bus. I can’t find a way to do it. I mean, I retired from the FBI five years ago and the shootings continue to increase.

I am going to say something that I don’t want you to think I’m putting on you. I just thought, no, another way to ask it. Do you have moments where you’re like, did I fail?

Oh, yeah, sure I do. I couldn’t get enough, I did as much as they did. I am bailing water out of this ship as quickly as I can so that it doesn’t sink. Sharing what I’ve learned has a sense of responsibility for me. I mean, that’s why I wrote the book, thinking, well, that’s great. I can leave. That didn’t work.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

What do you do when you hear something? What are you saying to your children when you’re listening to something? And what do you tell your kids about something?

And so as part of the prevention conversation with young people, what do you do when you hear that? Because I know when I was in middle school, we heard kids say all kinds of things. Right. You don’t necessarily think you’re going to go and tell someone they might be, they might become. What is prevention for teens or young kids? Like, is that part of it?

You can train young people about it because the prevention aspect is looking for behaviors of concern. So when it comes to a 17 year old, we want the leakage. Kids are posting information online or texting to someone. We want we want somebody immediately to report that to somebody else and report that to the police and to the principal and to the parents and the trusted adult, to the anonymous tip line. But when a child is seven or eight, what are what do we want to teach them? The same kinds of things that we talk about with regard to body autonomy, stranger danger. Our children are taught very carefully to prevent someone from abducting them on the street. Just the idea that you don’t have to go past there are people who do bad things.

It might be another student, but with kids, that is one of the realities. It’s not always another student, but one day it might be another student. There are all kinds of things that kids say. I think about the plot of Heathers when I think about blowing up the school. Like we’re asking young people to look at each other and say, Oh, but you’re going to go a little farther than everyone else. I need to say something. We don’t have enough advance notice to prevent things because we know about the leak.

I think that, you know… we’re asking… If you put on a child, on somebody who’s younger, even on an adult, you know, I can’t put into your brain what I can do from an analysis standpoint on thinking if somebody is a threat. I’ve been working in the FBI for 20 years, determining if something is a threat or dangerous. I can’t do that when you’re an adult. We certainly can’t ask a child to do that. We are not asking you to do anything other than tell somebody what you hear or see. It seems like you should be getting your senses up. The hair is on the back of your neck. Somebody says something, too, and it seems off. If you were to have children visit your house, you would want them to do the same thing that they are being asked to do. You want them to know that it’s okay to say something. And I get it in a five year old, we’re probably not going to get a lot of five year olds. I live in Virginia, and the 6 year old shot the teacher and the student who did the shooting showed the other 6 year old. The gun on the playground told them not to tell anyone. And the kid I think the kid went crying to somebody and did tell somebody but was afraid, you know.

The gap you’re talking about, right. The gap between I see something and I say something, and then what does someone even do with that information? We’ve got to build an infrastructure to make sure something wouldn’t be a long term problem.

Yeah, I think that’s it. And, you know, when you ask me, you know, how do I feel about working on this? I feel like I am trying to push people to build up that infrastructure. Because their chains, I don’t want to drag anymore, but geez, nobody else, you know, I feel like sometimes if I don’t drag my part of it, you know, nobody else will be there. It’s like a big tug of war game because there’s people on the other side of tug of war saying, We don’t want to talk about this. We don’t want to be accused of it. We want to pretend it’s never going to happen. We want to live in the fifties. We want to go back and live in the sixties when this didn’t happen and when we didn’t have to worry about our kids walking to school every day. And we don’t live in that world anymore. So it would be better if we came up with a system where we live today and try to protect our kids.

But at the same time, you’re hearing more and more young people because of social media, they speak out. Right? And they’re expressing a kind of frustration, helplessness, some of them encountering more than one mass shooting incident in their personal history. If that’s correct, it is rare, but not rare. I mean.

My undergraduate is in Michigan State University, 45,000 students. They had eight students shot a few weeks ago, three of them killed. So now 45,000 students at Michigan State University are going to be able to say they had a shooting on our campus. There’s a false narrative to say we can make a world where people don’t interact with it.

But what do you say to kids then? right? If they’re feeling like they’re not getting things done and they’re not being given up on, it might be just living with it. They don’t they don’t have another option. All this other stuff was mitigated by it.

You know, I you know, what I hear in your voice, Audie, is is the a helplessness and a frustration and a futility. That’s what I hear. You cannot be an FBI agent and also be a prosecutor. You have to feel like everything you do makes things better because if you weren’t there, it’d be worse. I don’t think it is a great situation. This is the situation we’re in. I didn’t create this situation. Right? I can make it better. My niece Megan talks to her kids and is empowering them. My daughter, who’s a middle school teacher who empowers herself and her kids and the teachers around her to know that they’re not going to let violence take over their world. Violence is here, so it’s good. You know, you had 45,000 people a year die by firearms violence, less than one half of 1% if even that are from this kind of shooting. Let’s talk about it and let’s stop being so afraid of it. That’s how we stop the killing.

You said that I hear helplessness in my voice. Absolutely. As a journalist, each and every time I report on one of these things, which technically I’ve been doing since high school, since I was in high school in the late nineties, and the conversation falls in the same beats, in the same ruts, in the same order. And you do often feel helpless. Because, as you said, with Sandy Hook, and that was the turning point for me as well. If a room full of children doesn’t make anyone think anything should be done, what could I say? I’m going to cop to that 100%.

I mean no, not really. But that’s when you’re like, maybe I should get out of the business. But you know what I’m saying? I think, because you detected something that is real, which is the fatigue that I feel and then I think to some degree, possibly citizens feel.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-assignment/episodes/28effc17-55be-4d9b-a697-afd401677026

Stop the Killing Podcast, a podcast about guns, gun violence and the state of the art in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what do we have to do about it?

We do our podcasts out of the same reason. Who does a podcast called Stop the Killing, right? How depressing is that? It’s very empowering. Our listeners are like, it’s very empowering. All we can do is empower people and make sure that we get control of the situation when it comes to gun violence. And I’m really dedicated to that mission. I feel like we have to do that.