White House Suggests ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ After Mass Shooting at Nashville School

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on March 3, 2023. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The White House responded to the deadly mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school on Monday by saying that House lawmakers need to pass a ban on certain types of semiautomatic weapons.

President Joe Biden “wants Congress to act because enough is enough,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday. “How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban?”

Jean-Pierre added that schools should be “safe spaces for our kids to grow and learn and for our educators to teach,” adding that the president was briefed about the incident. Authorities in Nashville said that a 28-year-old female shooter shot and killed three children and three adults, although more details about the incident are not yet clear.

“The president has been briefed on the situation, and our team is in contact with [Department of Justice] and local officials about what is known so far,” she said. “We want to express the president’s appreciation for the first responders and prayers for all the families affected by this shooting.”

“While we don’t know yet, all the details in this latest tragic shooting, we know that too often our schools and communities are being devastated by gun violence,” Jean-Pierre also told reporters.

Biden will address the mass shooting during an event on Monday afternoon, she added. In the briefing, she also praised Biden’s recent executive orders on gun control as well as a piece of legislation that he signed last year in the wake of another school shooting in Texas.

Jean-Pierre added that the president “taken more action than any president in history on gun safety from nearly two dozen actions, including the executive order he just signed last month ... to the bipartisan Safer Communities Act legislation he signed into law after the tragedies in Uvalde and Buffalo. ”

Specifically, Biden will again call for a ban on “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines,” while eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers, she said.

Authorities in Nashville said that the woman was armed with what they described as “assault-type rifles” and a handgun. They did not provide further details about the weapons or the suspect.

When the Safer Communities Act was being proposed last year, some House Republican lawmakers said that it was an attempt to dissolve Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

“I think America is looking for people who will come out and explain to the people, remind them what the foundation of the Second Amendment is, why it exists, why we’re free substantially because of it,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said last year. “I believe that produces victories in the election far more than chasing the last vote.”

Officers at an active shooter event that took place at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian Church, in Nashville, Tenn., on March 27, 2023. Metro Nashville Police Department via AP

Around the same time, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that shootings and similar events “are a mirror forcing us to ask hard questions, demanding that we see where our culture is failing,” while noting that the rate of gun ownership hasn’t changed dramatically in recent years despite more mass shootings. “We must not react to evil and tragedy by abandoning the Constitution or infringing on the rights of our law-abiding citizens,” he said last year, echoing a common refrain of Republicans and conservatives about gun control.

A poll released last November, meanwhile, found that Americans’ support for more gun control laws has dropped since last summer. That poll, from Gallup, found that 57 percent of Americans believe that laws covering the selling of firearms should be more strict, down from 66 percent who believed so in June 2022.

Shooting Details

The unnamed female shooter died after being shot by police following the violence at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school for about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade. Police said the shooter was a 28-year-old woman from Nashville, after initially saying she appeared to be in her teens.

Authorities were working to identify her and whether she had a connection to the school.

Officers began clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesperson Don Aaron said during a news briefing.

Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. He said there were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.