First lady Jill Biden on Wednesday attended a candlelight vigil in Nashville honoring the six victims of the shooting at the Covenant School earlier this week, but didn’t speak at the melancholy ceremony.
The vigil featured performances by Grammy-award winning singer and Nashville-resident Sheryl Crow, country artist Margo Price, and Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor, who played alongside
White candles were passed out to the estimated 400 people that gathered in One Public Square Park in downtown Nashville, less than 10 miles from where 28-year-old Audrey Hale gunned down three staff members and three children at the private Christian school on Monday.
“We’ve been not able to stop thinking about the victims,” a 28-year-old woman who attended the vigil with her two friends, but declined to give her name, told The Post.
The woman, who has called Nashville home for the last seven years, said she was not surprised by the nation’s latest mass shooting.
“No, this happens so often,” the woman told The Post.
She had hoped that Biden would use the platform to call for more stringent gun control measures in the wake of the massacre.
“I want them to be stricter, more common sense. We have some of the worst in the country and it’s pitiful,” she said of Tennessee’s gun laws.
But the first lady and her entourage walked off after the musical performances and speeches from dignitaries and Nashville officials, including Mayor John Cooper and Chief of Police John Drake.
“Dr. Biden, thank you for joining us, for dropping everything and coming to Nashville,” Cooper said in his remarks.
“And I want to thank President Biden for lowering our country’s flags to half staff to honor our victims,” he added.
A 22-year-old woman who identified herself Hannah, and who works as a preschool teacher and is a member of Nashville’s LGBTQ community, told The Post that she is worried about the potential for a mass shooting at her school and came out to to show support for the teachers and students at Covenant.
“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Hannah said.
She said that she hopes elected leaders will make changes to Tennessee gun laws after the slayings at the Covenant School.
“They’re awful in general. Less guns. No guns,” Hannah said of she hopes her state’s gun laws change.
The shooter, who was killed police shortly after they arrived on scene, was armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, according to authorities.
Kay, 23, also a member of the LGBT community, expressed concern at the reaction from the fact that the shooter identified as transgender.
“It has nothing to do with it, because it’s irrelevant, but we’re going to be scapegoated now.” Kay said.
President Biden said Tuesday that it’s up to Congress to decide what to do about the nation’s gun laws, arguing that the executive branch has exhausted what it can do.
“I have gone the full extent of my executive authority, to do on my own anything about guns,” Biden said. “The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, a crazy idea. They’re against that.”
