Nashville parents protesting to end mass shootings during D.C. march

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Nashville parents are set to march in Washington D.C. to protest mass shootings following the deadly Covenant School shooting.

Over 500 parents throughout the country will be joining Nashville parents in D.C. to demand a federal assault weapons ban which was in place from 1994 to 2004 before it expired.

The nonprofit, March Fourth, organized the march which is set to take place Monday, April 17, three weeks after the Covenant School shooting that left three students and three adults dead.

These are the Nashville parents involved in the protest:

• Nashville resident Clare Reiners: Franklin-based mom of three and former Metro Nashville Public Schools teacher
• Nashville resident Megan Timmons: Green Hills-based stay-at-home mom of three and alumna of Michigan State University, which recently experienced a mass shooting on campus.

The organization, created by Chicago-area moms after the Highland Park, Illinois, Fourth of July parade shooting, says there have been over 100 school shooting incidents and nearly 150 mass shootings so far in 2023.

WSMV4 reached out to the Tennessee Firearms Association for comment and they said:

“Gun control advocates repeatedly call for bans on categories of firearms which they claim are responsible for “gun violence”. Their efforts to ban civilian ownership of firearms, incrementally if necessary, have persisted for decades and have been implemented in some localities, such as Chicago, Illinois. Those efforts also result in a ten year ban of certain semi-automatic weapons by the federal government from 1994-2004 which is commonly referred to, although inaccurately, as the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

The 1994 ban has been studied extensively with many such studies concluding it had no or insignificant effect on violence. For example, studies conducted by the National Institute of Justice, the National Research Council, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all concluded that the 10 year federal ban had no meaningful impact on violence or mass shootings. Studies such as these are one of the reasons that the 1994 Ban expired in 2004 and was not renewed.

Since then, the United States Supreme Court has decided the case of New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. The holding in that case makes clear that any future bans on civilian ownership of firearms or specific firearms categories are likely unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment. Further, if such restrictions are enacted by a state or local government they are also likely to be violations of the Fourteenth Amendment and likely to constitute federal civil rights violations.

Rather than attempting to hide a gun control agenda behind tragedies such as occurred at Covenant school in Nashville, perhaps a better focus for those truly concerned about stopping or reducing mass violence is to focus the inquiry on what is causing the predisposition to the violence rather than seeking to disarm the public and deny them the exercise of those rights which are constitutional protected from infringement.”

Copyright 2023 WSMV. All rights reserved.