In Nashville, a mass shooting in a school recalls the scourge of American weapons of war

Mass shootings in the United States are a male monopoly. Uncertainty stirred the American media a lot on Monday, March 27, when defining Audrey Hale. This 28-year-old person, born a woman according to the police, but defining himself by the pronouns he / him on his LinkedIn page, entered the Covenant School, a Presbyterian school located in the south of Nashville on Monday, March 27 in the morning ( Tennessee). Equipped with an assault rifle, an automatic weapon and a handgun, Audrey Hale killed three adults, including the director, and three children aged 9, before the police shot her dead.

A patrol intervened in a very limited time, after having been alerted by the school. The exchanges of gunfire took place on the second floor of this establishment, which accommodates around 200 children, from nursery to CM2. The school children were evacuated by bus and taken to a nearby church, to find their anguished parents there.

According to Nashville Police Chief John Drake, the perpetrator of the shooting, a trained graphic designer, “identified as transgender”. But the vagueness of the authorities on this question of identity, and its possible importance in his criminal motivations, opened the way to speculation and political manipulation, to the detriment of the heart of the problem: his weapons. Audrey Hale left behind a manifesto, written until the last hours before her premeditated operation, and intended to commit far greater carnage. She had a plan of the school, showing the different accesses. Audrey Hale would also have considered another target, but the security on the spot would have led her to give up. Two of his three weapons had been acquired legally, according to the investigators, who did not find any criminal history known to the culprit.

She entered the building by exploding a front door with bullets, then advancing without encountering a security guard, which the school apparently lacked. According to the police, Audrey Hale, who lives in Nashville, was a former student of the Covenant school. She could have fed “a form of resentment” against the school, which she had attended on unknown dates, John Drake said. His car was found nearby. According the organization The Violence Projectwhich compiles data on mass killings committed in recent decades, among the 191 perpetrators studied, only four were women, two of whom had acted with a male partner.

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