(The Center Square) – A report showing there have been 49 school shootings in Tennessee and 12 fatalities from those shootings over the past 25 years was released recently and acquired by Tennessee Conservative News heading into a scheduled special session on public safety in the Tennessee Legislature.
The report showed 75% of the shootings happened at high schools and 67% occurred in urban or town schools over that span, the report showed. Of the 12 fatalities, six of the non-shooter fatalities came earlier this year at Nashville’s Covenant School.
The report was requested by Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, and shared by Ragan with both Senate and House members across the state heading into the planned Aug. 21 special session. Tennessee Conservative News then posted the report along with Ragan’s letter.
Ragan pointed out that while there are 10,000 homicides committed annually with guns in the United States but also 106,000 drug overdose deaths and more than 11,000 deaths from drivers operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
“Interestingly, no one seems to be crying out to ban hypodermic needles because of overdose deaths,” Ragan wrote. “Likewise, nobody is demanding a ban on Corvettes and Mustangs because of drunk-driver-caused fatalities. Guns, like hypodermic needles and automobiles, have legitimate uses other than causing criminally-inflicted deaths. Consequently, logic seems to require a focus on something other than the inanimate object involved in a criminally-inflicted death.”
The report came from the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability with data from the K-12 school shooting database.
The database defines a school shooting as “when a gun is fired or brandished on school property, or when a bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, time, day, or reason.” It does not include shootings at events off of a school’s campus.
The OREA identified 63 Tennessee incidents in the database but Ragan contested that only 49 of those incidents should be included, which the OREA agreed with.
“A total of 79 school shooting incidents occurred in Tennessee in the 53 years documented by the full database, from September 1970 through May 15, 2023,” the report noted.
The most recent Tennessee incident was a shooter at Margolin Hebrew Academy in East Memphis, where a shooter reportedly tried and failed to get into the school before walking around the building and firing four shots before leaving.
Melissa Alexander, a Covenant School parent and founding member of the advocacy group Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows said that incident hit home after living in Memphis for 15 years.
“We and others know too well the pain of a school shooting, especially targeting a specific religious community, and we are grateful that there were no injuries at the school,” Alexander said. “Yet, this was too close—we need to keep guns away from people who are a threat to themselves or others.
“This incident underscores the need for action during the coming special legislative session to prevent an active shooting, and we urge the legislature and Governor Lee to find common ground to keep this from happening in our state.”
