School shootings seem to always be met by silence. During lockdowns or active shooter situations, children muffle their voices, sit still and play dead. And afterward, we are told to send our thoughts and prayers, an essentially private, soundless act even when they’re plastered across social media.
But the Covenant School shooting in Nashville on March 27 revealed something important about breaking the silence and making noise.
First of all, having “no words” is a common response to shootings, despite the Nashville shooting being the 13th of 2023 and the 51st since 2022. We’ve had plenty of time to develop a vocabulary surrounding these events. Tragedy doesn’t have to mean speechlessness. We have words and can make more.
Dr. Britney Grayson, a pediatric surgeon, who visited and departed the Covenant School in Nashville minutes before the fatal shooting said, “There are no words for this feeling.” In an interview, Nashville Predators hockey player Ryan McDonagh said, “there really are no words that you can say …” Country-music stars LeAnn Rimes and Priscilla Block chimed in with a similar “no words” response.
First Lady Jill Biden tweeted, “Another school shooting. I am truly without words — our children deserve better.”
But despite these figures’ lack of words, how can we even try to prevent more school shootings from happening without explicitly taking a stand and being clear on what exactly the problem is?
Fortunately, young people in Tennessee didn’t mince words when, in the wake of the shooting, they demanded that the state legislature enact strict gun safety laws by directly confronting legislators at the state Capitol.
In response, Republican legislators in the state House of Representatives — in which they command a supermajority — voted to silence the voices of two Black representatives, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, for allegedly violating so-called rules of “decorum.”
Republicans, meanwhile, immediately built up a wall of silence in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting. As Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett admitted bluntly, “We're not gonna fix it.” Rep. Jones, in contrast, put his words into action. When they cut his microphone during the protests, Jones responded on the floor of the chamber with a bullhorn.
In this spirit, we must develop vigorous and representative language. Our words must be consistent with the oratorical passion of these legislators to express the serious tragedy of gun violence in schools.
Suzanne Berne writes in her famous essay “Ground Zero” that people gathering around the World Trade Center after it collapsed described the scene as “unbelievable.” “And then they would turn to each other, dissatisfied,” she wrote. “They wanted to say something more expressive, more meaningful.”
As an English educator and creative writing professor, this wouldn’t cut it for me — I always advise against evading or deflecting calls for language in even the most tragic events.
“Alice in Wonderland” is a useful lens. For one, the titular character’s name is in the name of ALICE training (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate), an active shooter response program, which started in the wake of Columbine. More specifically, Lewis Carroll himself invented words as needed. He invented words to suit his bizarre and senselessly violent world. Take the “boojum” or the Jabberwocky or “vorpal,” which means sharp and deadly. As Shakespeare said, “Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak.”
There are plenty of words. So let us never again say there aren’t any. Instead, we must say, “There are no more excuses. There are no prayers strong enough. There is no time left to delay.”
There are also, by the way, plenty of megaphones for dismantling the false decorum of the day.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Laura Jean Baker is the author of The Motherhood Affidavits as well as essays in Washington Post, Salon, Shondaland, and Hobart. She is in the process of completing her newest full-length project on violence in schools called Off With Their Heads: A Schoolhouse Memoir. This column was produced for the Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
