“Today is the first day that I felt heard.”
That was Covenant School parent Mary Joyce after a bill that would have allowed more people to carry guns on school grounds failed in the House Education Administration Committee on Wednesday. A March shooting at the school claimed the lives of three students and three staff members, leading Gov. Bill Lee to call this week’s special session to consider gun reform — though little has been accomplished on that front thus far.
With a 9-9 tie in committee, the bill failed — though it had passed through the House Civil Justice Committee earlier in the day. Both meetings evoked impassioned responses from spectators, from tears of rage when it advanced to tears of joy when it stalled. Even lawmakers in the education committee argued with one another amid an unsuccessful attempt from Rep. Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) to limit testimony and discussion by requesting to move straight to the vote.
Rep. Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) argues with Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis) in committee
Three different Covenant School mothers shared their stories across the two committee hearings, begging lawmakers not to pass the bill.
Melissa Alexander’s 10-year-old son is a survivor of the Covenant School shooting. She testified in the House Civil Justice Committee Wednesday that his teacher’s hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t lock a classroom door during the incident — the shooter ultimately walked past their unlocked classroom. She said her son could smell the gunpowder.
“One of the kids in the classroom grabbed the Bible, and he started reading scripture because they knew they were next,” said Alexander. “One of the things our teacher had to do was tell them to, ‘Shhh, be quiet, shhh, be quiet,’ because she knew the door wasn't locked.”
Alexander said that if the teacher’s hands were too shaky to lock a door, they wouldn’t have been steady enough to effectively handle a gun. “All that's gonna do is kill that teacher, put that teacher in danger and then put the rest of that classroom in danger,” said Alexander.
Rebecca Hanson, another Covenant mother, also testified. She noted that even though there were armed people inside the school at the time of the shooting, it didn’t deter the shooter. She also shared — for the first time — that her kids were initially taken outside because their teachers thought the alarms indicated a fire drill. When her 5-year-old son’s teacher realized that the alarm was due to an intruder rather than a fire, she got the kids back into the school by starting a race, so as not to scare them.
“There is no way that my sweet teacher could have also held and properly ejected a weapon,” said Hanson.
“This shouldn’t have to be a huge win,” said Covenant mother Sarah Shoop Neumann after the education committee voted down the bill. “What I would like to see going forward is respect. … To have a third-grade mother, whose child was directly shot at, try to be silenced from testifying — the courage that it takes to come here and be in these crowds, be surrounded by state troopers, is so hard to handle.”
Covenant School parent Mary Joyce testifies before a House committee, August 2023
Shoop Neumann was referring to an incident Tuesday, when House committee spectators were asked to leave the room after applauding the failure of a bill they opposed. She was among those forced out, even though she was planning to testify. Shortly before, protesters holding signs were forced out of the committee. The next morning, the ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit on behalf of those who were removed for holding the signs, with a Davidson County judge shortly after temporarily blocking the rule.
Despite the intensity of the discussion surrounding the House bills, most will not proceed further due to lack of Senate support. The Senate has considered a very limited amount of legislation during the session. On Wednesday, the legislature’s upper body engaged in extremely short committee meetings, gaveling in, tabling the bills, and gaveling out — two committees lasted less than a minute.
The Senate passed four bills during a floor session, one of which was an appropriations bill that allocates funding for school safety and mental health supports. One piece of legislation encourages but does not require safe storage measures by providing free gun locks, among other measures to prompt proper firearm storage. Another bill requires a report on human trafficking from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and another mandates that court clerks update the TBI with conviction information within three business days — part of an executive order issued by Gov. Lee in April. Once the Senate session wrapped up, protesters chanted, “You’ve done nothing!” and unfurled a banner that read, “No gun reform no peace.”
It is unclear whether Senate members will consider more legislation. During the Senate’s Wednesday floor session, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) told members to be ready for the possibility of two Senate floor sessions on Thursday, indicating that they may be open to passing more bills — though the body has just one scheduled Thursday.
House members have criticized Senate members for moving so quickly without considering other bills — particularly two high-priority bills from House leaders. One would try juveniles who committed certain crimes as adults, which has been met with widespread opposition, including from lawyers and judges. Another bill would make autopsy reports of juvenile victims of violent crimes unavailable to the public. At a House committee meeting, Covenant mother Mary Joyce read statements from Covenant parents who lost their children in the shooting — the Scruggs family and Erin Kinney.
“If Hallie had only been wounded, then there would be no public access to the medical trauma her body sustained,” read a statement from the Scruggs family, who urged lawmakers not to allow the autopsy reports of their children to be made public. “Why should that be any different when her injuries resulted in death? … To the media, Hallie is information, a data point. To us, she is the dinner table, the soccer fields, the bedroom, the pool, and the first one down the stairs on Christmas morning. She is our joy and our sorrow.”
See video from Wednesday's House Education Administration Committee meeting below.
