Tennessee Governor May Be Lighting Fire With Covenant Shootings Special Session

by Roger L. Simon

The negative consequences of the Covenant School shootings in Nashville, Tennessee, in March never seem to end and now seem poised to get worse.

Despite considerable opposition—much of which comes from his own conservative base—Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is moving ahead with his plan to hold a special session of his state’s General Assembly on Aug. 21, even issuing a proclamation as if it were an event of great historical significance.

What Lee is intending to proffer, in response to the slayings of six innocents, are slightly watered-down versions of red flag and gun control laws.

Neither of these has ever worked, and that same Assembly is almost certain not to enact them, so we could call this, in essence, “virtue signaling for beginners.”

At the same time, information about the actual killings has been heavily restricted. Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was recently in Nashville calling, to no avail, for transparency and the release of the killer’s “manifesto.”

Even more significantly, a testosterone test was never administered—or was hidden from the public—to the 27-year-old shooter who was transitioning from female to male. The degree to which a body with all-female chromosomes can tolerate high levels of the male hormone would likely tell us more about these rage killings than anything else and would be the most important fact of all, assuming you didn’t want more such deaths.

Lee is going further, however, and putting his own capital city at risk by literally inviting protestors of all sorts from across the country to descend on Nashville to demonstrate.

They are being urged to do so by a pair of ambitious, young left-wing assemblymen who have already disrupted the legislative body in an unprecedented manner.

It’s easy to envision the busloads now, the demonstrators waving their signs and pushing the benighted police to violence, maybe starting a few fires à la Antifa and Black Lives Matter, torching a building or even breaking into the Assembly chamber to make the evening news from Maine to California.

And for what?

Nothing good for Nashville, the state of Tennessee, or the United States.

The governor, and all state and city officials, have much better things to do—taking on problems they really should be addressing.

I was reminded of that when driving around Nashville earlier this week late at night with Aaron Spradlin and his crew of former Special Forces men and women.

We were in the dark side of Nashville—places I had never been—making a video on human trafficking for Epoch TV/NTD that will appear shortly.

Spradlin and his well-trained friends seek to rescue girls and boys caught up in this horrific web, taking risks with their own lives and safety. It’s kind of a real-life “Sound of Freedom,” although it moves at a slower pace than a fiction film.

I moved to Nashville—then known as the “It City” five years ago to escape the extraordinary decline of a Los Angeles caught between a homeless epidemic, escalating crime, and mindless “woke” politics, only to find Nashville beginning a decline of its own, although as-yet nowhere near L.A.’s.

Will it get there? The city is currently in the midst of a mayoral election that began with well over a dozen liberal/progressive candidates against a sprinkling of conservatives. (Nashville is a blue city in a red state. This is typical of the South.)

It’s now down to a runoff between the most popular progressive and conservative, with the progressive heavily favored to win.

I appeared with him on a local radio show and was stunned to the degree that he was blasé about the crime problem. It almost seemed he was running for mayor of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, our governor, a Republican, despite his good intentions, is inviting more.

First published in Epoch Times.