(tranquil music) - How many people have lost someone in their lives because of gun violence?

- What's different about the United States that causes this to be something we even have to talk about?

- [Ketch] Let's make Nashville the last grave we will dig for a child murdered in their classroom.

(tranquil music) (uplifting music) (audience cheering) (rousing country music) ♪ Heading down south to the land of the pines ♪ ♪ I'm thumbing my way into North Caroline ♪ ♪ Staring up the road, I pray to God I see headlights ♪ ♪ And I made it down the coast in 17 hours ♪ ♪ I'm picking me a bouquet of dogwood flowers ♪ ♪ And I'm a-hoping for Raleigh, I'll see my baby tonight ♪ ♪ So rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel ♪ ♪ Rock me, mama, any way you feel ♪ ♪ Hey, mama, rock me (rousing country music continues) (audience cheering) (cheering continues) (siren wailing) - We are coming on the air with breaking news right now.

At least three children are reported dead after a shooting at Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville.

The age of the victims is still not clear, but according to the school's website, it serves students from pre-K through sixth grade.

(tranquil music) - [Officer] Let's go!

(gunfire banging) - I am sitting here at the pickup line, getting ready to get my kids home on this Monday after school, a day in which people all across our community are crying and feeling terrible pain for the children who have died at Covenant School in Nashville, and I just wanted to share my feeling with you, everybody out there that might be watching, just to know that I'm so sorry that this is how things are.

(sirens wailing) And we are a strong group of people here, and we'll pick up the pieces, like every community that has had to face this grim inevitability, that the schools aren't safe for children, nor are any public spaces safe for anyone.

So I'm sending some prayers out, and God bless us all.

(tranquil music) (students shouting) - [Parent] Thoughts and prayers don't save a single solitary life.

- From my cold, dead hands.

- To protect me, or shoot everybody in the store.

- [Gun Owner] You wanna restrict my right to buy a firearm.

- You want kids to be killed.

- [Parent] It's about our kids, and our kids being safe in school and in public spaces.

(tranquil music) - Let's make Nashville the last grave we will dig for a child murdered in their classroom.

Let's do it.

It's damn time.

I guess I feel like I'm the man for the job, and I don't want this job.

And David calls me and he's like, "What you're doing sounds like a movement."

It's a movement towards looking at your front row like a swath of America, that nobody else has got that demographic study out there, and they make up the mix that might be able to move the needle on gun violence.

- I think we're taking what country music offers, like your concerts, the fact that you can bring together people even though they have different opinions.

So let's do this.

I'm eager to start this conversation.

Wherever you guys are playing on tour, invite people to the table to have the hard talk about guns.

- Yeah, the people that don't wanna talk about it.

And yet we shop at the same Kroger, our kid might go to school together, we might be at the same Old Crow Medicine Show concert together.

(rousing country music) (audience cheering) (audience clapping) ♪ Well, I love my bird like I love my wife ♪ ♪ It's in our blood, this way of life ♪ ♪ And the only fun our youngin's need ♪ ♪ Is a Saturday night in the old Belle Meade ♪ ♪ So take your corner chicken man ♪ ♪ And may the bravest chicken win ♪ ♪ It's blood and beer on Saturday night ♪ ♪ Come Sundays morning, it's chicken pie ♪ (spectators cheering) ♪ So grab Old Red and spur 'em tight ♪ ♪ Bill 'em up boys let the bidding fly ♪ ♪ It's beak to beak and it's eye to eye ♪ ♪ We found love at the Belle Meade cockfight ♪ - Well my name is Ketch Secor.

I'm from Nashville, Tennessee.

I'm the lead singer of the Old Crow Medicine Show.

I'm honored to be here up in Owensboro, KY, a town that I've come to know and love through the years.

Recent events in Nashville have caused me to look differently upon the front row.

I look out at the front row of an Old Crow show and I see folks that think one thing about gun violence and another thing about gun violence.

I see people that vote for one political candidate and then for another.

I see 'em all in the front row enjoying the music.

So I'd like to think that if they can come together at my show, you bet that they can come together for American kids.

- Well, and Ketch, you're the reason that I'm here.

We've friends for a while, but what you're doing right now strikes such a chord with me.

As a journalist, my dream for years has been to find ways to overcome our differences, and just sit around a table and try and take on something hard together.

I just thought, just to get us started, that it's worth honoring the fact that a young girl lost her life here in Owensboro just a few days ago.

Her name was Gaymee Paw, she was 16.

She was in a park, she was shot in the head one time, and another 16-year-old boy is charged with homicide.

I just wonder if anyone has any opinions on whether there might be some solution that could've meant that Gaymee Paw was still alive today.

- So I think we've all got this idea in this country at this point in time of my rights end where your rights begin.

I'll just put it out there and say, if I thought we could save one child, I would say, ban every gun in the United States, if we could save one kid.

And I'm not suggesting we actually do that, but I'm saying, if that would save these kids, stop this from happening, then by God do it.

- I like what you're saying, I like the passion.

And I don't mean this to sound the way it's gonna sound, but I wish it was that simple.

- Yeah, of course.

- That's why we're here.

A lot of the proposals just won't stop that killing.

I have a 16-year-old son that was in school with both the shooter and victim in that case, and it is a small town.

So even without that connection, everybody in this community is feeling it right now.

But so long as someone wants to pick up a gun in this country and kill somebody, they're probably gonna be able to do it.

- It seems like the conversation always starts with let's take things away, let's restrict it more, because there's evil.

Is more guns the answer?

I mean, it sounds weird, right?

But in some of your most restrictive areas, some of your highest crime rates.

What if everyone carried a gun?

I'm not saying that it should be.

I'm just saying, that's the other side of it.

- Ever since the covenant shooting, I have a panic attack every single morning when I drop my son off at junior high, because I can't stop thinking about those parents who didn't get to pick up those kiddos that day.

I grew up in a household where there are guns.

My dad still has a gun safe there.

I think that you can totally and fully support the Second Amendment, semi-colon, gun reform still has to happen.

- I also agree that there is a right of personal protection.

I have guns in my home.

My father gave me guns, and taught me to shoot when I was about 10 years old.

My wife, her father gave her guns, taught her how to shoot.

That was a family tradition.

But do I see a need for military and paramilitary style weapons in the hands of civilians?

I think that's what the military and law enforcement are for.

- My name is Mike.

I play in the band with Ketch.

I grew up in the South.

I'm a lifelong outdoorsman, avid fisherman and hunter, and a gun owner.

I grew up in a household, when I asked questions about like, why would we not register our guns, my granddad would answer with something like, well, son, they only wanna register your gun so they know where it is when they wanna come get it.

(group laughing) And you know, that was routine.

- I'm Dante, I'm the drummer for Old Crow Medicine Show, a Chicagoan as well, proud Chicagoan.

I think we need to look at the underlying issues that cause people to want to murder or do a crime.

How do we get parents to be better parents, how do we get them to be accountable with their kids, so that we have people that in the future, yeah, you may have a gun, but you won't do something crazy with it.

- I feel like this is where the conversation just stops.

Because it's like you're saying that it's a lot of societal ills.

But after a school shooting like at Covenant, there are a lot of people who don't wanna hear that it's about our society, and families and values.

They wanna hear, it's too many guns in our country.

And it's like, then the conversation stops.

How do we get over it?

- I brought it up at ROMP and the RV park.

And then, people just get really quiet when they talk about death in their community.

And in that silence I read, we are ashamed of living in a world where this is normal.

(tranquil music) We're all aware that there's this terrible school shooting gun violence that seems to have happened a lot in our lifetimes, and yet, it always seems to happen in another town.

So, when it happens in your town, it's different.

And when it happened in my town, it really hurt bad.

I got a third grade kid across town.

There were third grade kids that got killed in their class.

That's unacceptable to me as an American.

I'm not okay with that.

And so, I felt like maybe it would be important to process the hurt of it in a more public way.

- And in confronting the violence in our schools, you actually wrote a song to help us get there.

(tranquil guitar music) ♪ Woke up this morning ♪ It was Groundhog Day ♪ I saw the same black veil on a crying face ♪ ♪ And a flag flying halfway ♪ But this time it was people I know ♪ ♪ Gunned down in a minute or so ♪ ♪ Only God knows when it'll stop ♪ ♪ But these thoughts and prayers ain't enough ♪ - [David] So how you feeling about today?

- Well, I was telling the guys, I'm sort of in that spot where I wouldn't mind if it was just a cloudy, happy world, I could just change the channel on it.

- [David] You have successfully started a conversation, but it's not gonna be an easy one.

- What's up, boy?

Good to see you, man.

How you doing?

Dante.

- Yes, I'm Kristin.

- [Ketch] I'm so glad everybody's here, and y'all are so kind.

- where I grew up on 21st and Keeler, that's where my dad grew up, I kind of wonder, for those of y'all that still live here, how are y'all navigating?

- What we do, we teach about firearms, but we're not teaching it to the criminals.

We're teaching people how to be mindful when they're incorporating a firearm in their lives, because your life can change drastically the moment you insert this firearm into your life and you don't know what you're doing the proper way.

And even if you think you're protecting yourself, you can still become the criminal.

- The people you are training, what is their motivation in this city to want to own firearms?

Why do they wanna have a gun?

- So that's the first question we ask, why are you here?

And they'll be like, "To protect myself, for my family.

"I'm a single mom, I'm this, and I see the crime in Chicago and I don't wanna be next."

So for me, I used to be nonchalant, where nobody would ever do anything to me because I'm a nice person, until something happened to me.

Now I need to protect myself, and protecting myself goes beyond a firearm, it goes beyond how I carry myself, situational awareness.

Am I putting myself in these positions to become a victim?

- [Ketch] What do you tell people who are like, you're training future criminals, who don't get it?

- Yeah.

You have some people like, "What are you doing?

We don't need more guns on the streets," and stuff like that.

I'm like, first of all, I'm not a manufacturer, I don't make guns.

The guns that's already on the street is this lady that have a gun at home but she don't know how to use it, but she never even shot.

So my job was to make sure that I train her to know how to defend herself in her house.

'Cause some people actually lost their life and they had a firearm but they didn't even know how to use it.

Like, oh, this is my first time I'm really grabbing somebody breaking in the house, and they need to know how to protect themself.

- The way the news talk about guns, everything you hear about it is negative.

We talk about 'em being used in the right way, but the media is not putting that story out there.

- No, what you're doing, you have more in common with a lot of people we've spoken to, like in Owensboro, Kentucky, teaching firearms, seeing how it can be part of the family in a positive way, and no one tells that story.

- Yeah.

- Have you seen a large number of people, acquaintances that you know who have died through gun violence in the past couple years?

- Yeah.

- In the last two years, we both probably know about 30 or 40 people who've been lost to gun violence.

- [Ketch] 30 to 40 in the last year?

- Probably the last year and a half.

- Right where you all sitting, two people lost their life up in here, and that was my barber and his client that was sitting in this chair.

- Somebody walked in and shot 'em?

- Yeah.

(tranquil somber music) - So I guess, just maybe a show of hands, how many people have lost someone in their lives because of gun violence?

That's a lot of hands in the air.

Anyone wanna just sort of volunteer to talk about why your hand was up?

- Go first?

- Yeah.

- Well, my first introduction to gun violence was in December, 2005.

My cousin, Benson Novant, he was shot and killed down the street from his home.

And then the following year, gun violence hit even closer to home.

My brother Terrell Bosley, he was a famous gospel bass player, he was shot and killed at church while getting ready for band rehearsal.

And following both their deaths, I got involved in violence prevention works through different organizations I work with.

And yeah, that's how I'm here.

- It's 1992.

My daughter went to the theater, she was 16 years old, with some friends, like teenagers do.

Coming out of the theater, she was hit by a stray bullet and she was killed instantly.

So at that time, I was pregnant with my son, my only son.

And 20 years later, he went to work, came home, got dressed to go to a friend's party, like he do every year.

He never made it out my driveway.

So that's what brought me to the gun violence prevention table, and I've been in it since, advocating for safer gun laws.

- Thank you.

I'm so sorry for what we're hearing, for both of you.

- My name is Danny Jackson, and in 2019, I lost my oldest son to gun violence.

He would've been 31 years old this year actually, on November 26th.

Lively kid, a lot of promise, and his life was taken for nothing.

He was coming out of a sporting goods store, and I don't know why they killed my boy, but they shot him.

I was advocating against gun violence far before for my son was murdered, because I'm just not an advocate of guns, I never liked them.

I may look like I'm a tough gang banging street dude, but I've never touched a gun in my whole entire life.

Don't plan on it.

- I would like to give my condolences to each and every one of you that have lost a loved one here.

I know we can't get them back.

What I don't like is to hear the term that's being utilized as gun violence, because the blame is being placed upon the tool instead of holding the criminals responsible for their actions.

And when that terminology is utilized as much as it is, people don't tend to think about the individual that actually used the tool.

- I've heard you use or describe this weapon of destruction as a tool.

Tools are used to fix things, tools are used to make things work better.

There's nothing about this gun that makes anything better.

(traffic bustling) - [Patron] Hey, what's up?

- [Bill] I'm Bill, nice to meet you, man.

- [Ketch] My name's Ketch.

- Nice to meet you, Ketch, I'm Bill.

- I'm Nadine.

- [Ketch] Hi, Nadine.

- Nice to meet you.

- I'm playing here in town tomorrow.

I'm a musician from Nashville, and this is my friend David.

And I think we're just sort of looking for what makes the Montana perspective on guns unique, and sort of have kinda civil discourse, 'cause I feel like it's hard to come by nowadays.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

The gun culture in Montana, I think, kinda comes from a point of, this place was built on self-sufficiency.

When people came here, they did what they had to do to live, and a gun was a big part of that.

But now I think, over the years, it's kinda morphed to the point where when I carry a gun, and I carry a gun everywhere, I carry it because for me, I'm taking responsibility and accountability for my safety, the safety of my community, and the safety of my family.

And if you start to look at it from that perspective, not that it's a tool that's used to enact violence, but it's a tool that has a purpose, it's meant to defend you.

- I live way out in the woods, and there's grizzlies, there's black bears up there, and I have an SKS on my shelf just in case if anyone, if any bear or something tries to get into my house, I'll know that I'm safe, my boyfriend's safe, and my family's safe.

And if I can't have that and I have to go up against a bear with bear hands, that's terrifying.

I wanna feel safe in my home.

- By and large, I have known far more responsible gun owners in my life than people who were irresponsible, and I've known a lot of gun owners.

I've lived all over this country, from California, to Alabama, to Montana.

And everywhere I've gone, the experience with firearms is generally positive.

But the people, I think there are a lot of broken, forgotten people out there, and they feel they have nowhere to go, no one to speak to, and they become desperate, and desperate people do awful things, awful things.

(tranquil somber music) - Before Twitter took 'em down, I saw images and video of the shooting down in Texas, a kid with her brains blown out, and it made me believe now that we are indeed the most violent place on earth.

- It started as the most violent country.

Yes, the different bands and tribes battled, but that was for food, that was for their hunting, that was to protect their people.

This country was started in killing our ancestors and taking what they wanted.

That hasn't changed.

- A lot of the places around here have very reactionary social politics.

And I'm a gay man.

I fell in love, I have a partner who I care a lot about.

And when I go down to the Bitterroot to climb mountains, or I'm going up to Flathead to just enjoy the world with my partner, I'm not gonna not hold his hand, and I need options if somebody decides to make that violent.

My safety has to be in my hands.

And so, I got involved with teaching firearms.

We teach firearm safety.

We also teach trauma medicine, because we believe that if you are going to be a responsible gun owner, you need to also know how to help people who have been hurt.

I do just wanna point out, I think we are trying to legislate away symptoms and not treat the disease.

Because we can talk about all of these things that we can hand down from legislative authority, but the people who are making the rules about firearms don't understand firearms, and it hurts us all the time.

- My high school's nickname, Sentinel, was Suicide High.

It was something that happened every year, and it was something that I knew was gonna be a part of my life before I got into high school and after I got to high school.

Being a military member, suicide is very high in the state of Montana.

We have a very high capita of veterans that live here, and that is the number one way that they choose to leave this world, is suicide.

I have had friends and family both commit suicide via guns.

I am a suicide survivor myself, not guns.

And I think it's important to think about the mental health aspect of it.

And I'm hoping those veterans will be able to have the ability to have someone intervene.

- If every single suicide victim every day was on the news, we would do something.

And so, that's where the conversation needs to steer.

It's not having an AR-15.

That doesn't matter.

It's, we've got really sad people that are hurting.

It's not mental illness.

If we reconciled all mental illness, it would only impact 4% of firearm involved shootings.

If you wanna end violence, you end poverty, you increase childcare and economic opportunities, and food resources.

That's what you do.

Who cares about guns?

I don't care.

(tranquil music) - When I was 18, I learned that my granddad had taken his own life with one of his many guns.

He did so lying down beside his mother's grave, and this was, I think, around New Year's Eve of 1999.

And I was with my band mate Critter at the time.

And his dad woke me up in the middle of the night and he said, "Ketch, something terrible has happened."

And you know, if my grandfather just died, it would've been one thing.

But picturing him with the gun in his mouth, and the laying down in a graveyard, and he left a note, he left the car running.

And he was 70 years old.

I mean, my dad's older than 70 right now.

He had a lot of life left.

It seems like every couple of days or weeks or something, there's a reason to turn on the news to learn about a high speed chase with somebody who has just committed this heinous act and three people are dead, and then you wonder what the body count will be, and now it's five, and two of them were children.

And I mean, these are the headlines of these years.

And yet, what isn't the headline of these years are, father takes his own life, children grieve, child takes his or her own life, family broken, 'cause it's a solo act.

And so, I think a lot about the fact that our statistic that is such a powerful one, the number one killer of kids, bullets, and it's because they did it themselves, overwhelmingly.

People are really hurting, and they're hurting and there is a gun within arms length, and that combination is the very reason why Covenant or my grandfather and his death, why those things have happened.

(tranquil somber music) (tranquil uplifting music) David, if you hadn't called me then, then I would've run out of rope months ago.

All I can really expect to do is to make community where I go, and I'm doing it tonight.

I mean, we got 2,400 people, and we're gonna sing and shout and dance, and that's the opposite of mass shootings.

- How's your night?

(rafters drowned out by background noise) You gonna listen to the show?

- [Rafter] We'll check out the show.

- [Rafter] We're waiting for our friends.

- [Rafter] Should we stop and check out the show?

- Check out the show.

- [Rafter] All right.

Actually, you need to get to that show.

- [Ketch] Yep.

(rousing country music) (spectators cheering) It's a long way back to Nashville, boys.

We're gonna have to dance the whole way home.

(rousing country music continues) ♪ Good Tennessee bye ♪ Good Tennessee bye (spectators cheering) (traffic bustling) Would you be comfortable sharing what you went through that day at Covenant?

- Yeah.

So that was the worst day.

And we were driving down the road like crazy people, and they had blocked off all the roads around our school, and we just pulled in the middle of the road.

I just remember running up that hill, and it's like you're running in a dream or underwater and you can't get there fast enough.

Are they alive, where are they, what's going on?

And it was just chaos in that place.

They started calling people's names.

And I remember the cries.

It was almost like a primal cry when you know that they had just told the family of a victim, and you don't even have to know what they said and you knew what they said.

And then they started calling names of moms in Monroe's class, and I thought, oh my god, it's not just our city, it's not just our school, it's her class.

And then we picked her up, and her eyes were huge, and I couldn't even tell her that her friends were killed, because at that point we knew that her friends didn't make it, that her friends were murdered, and that that scary monster that came into her school that she saw, that she heard screaming at them and shooting into their classroom, that she took the lives of these people and her friends since kindergarten.

I mean, they were babies.

And why is that normal, why are we having this conversation, that this is okay?

And the terrible thing is, we're not the first parents to have this conversation.

- It's almost like we're begging people, listen, listen to us, listen to our stories.

When you look at the database of mass shootings, what you're not seeing accounted for is all the people who survived and who experienced basically a war zone in their school.

All of that lives within them now.

And so, I had a nine-year-old that turned 19 that day.

Everybody was affected.

And so, I just don't want that for any other community.

We heard about the same thing in Lewiston recently, and just could feel exactly what their pain felt like, and we still continue to hold the pain of all of these mass shooting survivors.

- What kinds of things do you tell your son today, this this many months on, when you say it's still, he became 19 and not nine?

I mean, are there ways to try and bring him back to being a 9-year-old?

- My child was 10 at the time.

You raise your children by relating your experiences.

I went through high school, I went through dating, I went to college, this is what you're gonna feel.

How do you tell your child that has experienced a mass shooting what to expect, what to feel, and how to get through it when you've never done that?

And that's a hard thing to wrap my head around.

'Cause I wanna say, daddy understands this.

I don't understand it.

How do I comfort her with my knowledge of being a human being about something that no one should ever experience but she has?

(bell ringing) (children laughing) (tranquil country music) ♪ And sing louder than guns ♪ More powerful than bullets flying ♪ ♪ Is the voice rising up ♪ Saying it's about time we put the last nail in the coffin ♪ ♪ We put the last body in the ground ♪ ♪ I'm calling on town ♪ Shout louder than guns - The first ever school shooting, I forgot what it was called.

- You mean the Columbine shooting?

- The Columbine shooting, yes.

Everybody said that the people who did that were inspired, the crazy people were inspired of what they did, and so, it kept going like a disease, it kept spreading around, and then the crazy people decided they wanted to keep doing that.

- On the first day of school this year, I was like, if someone comes in here to shoot us, where am I gonna hide, or what am I gonna do?

So I was like, maybe in the corner of this classroom, or I'll climb out the window here, and that was just really creepy that I was thinking about that.

- I was absolutely terrified.

I couldn't sleep.

When I went to school two days later, I still felt... I'm just not good at comforting myself.

- It's kind of difficult for most people sitting in this circle, 'cause it's not like we can really easily fend for ourselves.

This is adults' problem.

(tranquil music) (tranquil music continues) - How many of us at the table own a firearm?

It's a mix.

Anybody wanna volunteer to kinda just say why or why not?

- I don't own a gun.

I had never been around them.

I didn't know anybody that had them.

I didn't know people had them, I was not raised with that.

I feel that freedom is the ability to be without a gun.

- As a good, respectful gun owner, you all would be safe in here because we would put you all behind us to make sure you didn't get hurt.

We think of everybody besides ourselves.

- But do you feel like the average person under high stress would be able to navigate a situation's real fast moving?

- None of us are experts, but the last thing I want to do is to shoot somebody.

I don't want that on my conscience.

- That's what people get in their mind, I think, that have never been around guns, is that people with guns just wanna shoot back.

That is absolutely the last thing most of us wanna do.

We wanna avoid it at all cost.

But if it were to come down to it, you would be safer.

- But it appears to me that we wanna solve the problem with everybody arming themselves.

We are trying to protect gun rights rather than human rights, and that to me is where we're making a huge mistake.

- It's the number one killer of kids in this state and in this country.

There are so many instances where kids are playing, there's one bullet in there, and they accidentally take a life.

There are many instances of that.

- A friend of mine's brother, even though they had grew up around them, decided it'd be a good idea to use them and play cowboys and Indians.

And sure enough, there was a loaded bullet, and my buddy's older brother killed his younger brother, that was only five years old, accidentally.

They weren't locked.

Mine are locked.

- And it's two things to be taught that this is lethal.

It's another thing to be taught the torture of that life you've taken.

That older brother... - [Man] For the rest of his life.

- This is where I think that gun owners have a lot of credibility, frankly.

Gun owners who talk about training and responsible gun ownership are best positioned, in my opinion, to say, hey, what are some reasonable training methods, whatever?

- I'm okay with certain common sense gun law.

We already have some.

And I think times that we've had shootings, there were warning signs that a parent, or a brother, or a cousin should have seen.

And red flag laws are okay.

The only scary thing about it is who's deciding that.

- It's money, gun sales.

- There you go.

- It goes all the way up to the top.

And as long as the wealthiest people in the United States have their hands in the gun sales, it will always be more guns, more guns, more guns.

- I was arguing with these guys at the special session at our state capitol and they had brought their ARs, and they were dressed in their fatigues, and they were bringing their paraphernalia that was used at the covenant shooting.

And I said, man, I just wanna tell you, I mean, I just feel so threatened by you.

All you did was show up.

I showed up too, but I didn't carry some physical representation of everything I believe in.

If I did, I I would have a peace sign as big and as violent looking as your weapon there, and I can't carry that big a peace sign up in here.

- I don't wanna diminish somebody carrying open carry.

That's their right, and I don't wanna go down that path.

I choose not to.

It's just not something I care anybody to know, it's not something I'm trying to brag about or anything like that.

But in Walmart one day, I leaned over, my shirt tail came up and exposed my firearm, and I heard a little kid, "Mama, that daddy's got a gun," and it horrified me, that I don't want to impose any kind of fear on that child, and I just set my stuff down and just let the store.

- Shondel, you're wearing a button with one of your sons who was killed in that horrific mass shooting at a Waffle House right here in Nashville.

How do you feel about this conversation?

- It's a hard conversation to have, because in the beginning, when everything happened, I was being attacked.

And I mean, this is something was so new to me, and people would come up to me and say, you wanna take my guns.

I'm like, what are you talking about?

I don't wanna take your guns.

I wanna be safe.

I don't wanna have to experience this again.

I don't want another mom to have to experience this.

It is the worst feeling ever, it's a nightmare.

And five years later, today I am sitting there and we had the Covenant shooting, and my son was right down the street.

His school is right down the street, and I get a call saying there's a shooter, and here I am all over again.

I took off to my son's school to make sure that he was safe.

Thank god it wasn't him, but then here we are.

It never stops.

(tranquil somber music) - And I think it's important to note that the guy that did the Waffle House shooting had an issue and was not supposed to have access to a gun.

And so, I think as we're talking about moving forward, the conversation isn't about taking away Second Amendment, the conversation is not about taking away guns.

The conversation is, how do we prevent people that should not have access to a gun to not have access to a gun?

- When you said that people said that you were trying to take their guns away, that reaction, that's a poison in our country, in our politics.

But I think it speaks to one of the problems that everyone looks for any reason to say like, oh, you're trying to take my guns away, and that happens a lot.

♪ That a man should have his own army ♪ ♪ More than an American child to live in sweet harmony ♪ ♪ Sing louder than guns ♪ More powerful than bullets flying ♪ ♪ It's the voice rising up ♪ Saying it's about time - I remember, one of the first times we played it live was in West Virginia, and our feeling going into it was like, oh, this is gonna... - I wanted to cut it.

As it got closer and closer on the set list, I'm like, we're cutting it, we're not gonna do it.

- Why?

Tell me about that.

- You're looking out at the crowd and there's... They paid $37 to come out, and a beer costs 14 bucks in this joint.

You wanna make the customer feel loved on, it's a tent revival.

But when you go up there and stand up in front of people and you say, hey, I know we're all here drinking $14 beers and revelry, celebration, and I just asked you to dance.

It was scary to stand up and say to our audience, okay, it's time for a gun reform 101 song.

But after we played it, I realized that the pain is universal, universally shared.

(tranquil country music) I'm disappointed in Nashville and it's lack of a response, the singers of this thing we call country music, which has always championed the people, to champion the people who are dying of gun violence, and I wish they would, 'cause I think that they, that the country singers, the ones with the big hats, and the big crowds, and the 15 buses, and the 15 jumbotrons, and airplanes, that those are the guys who can make that incremental shift.

- I think that people are afraid that the second that they say something, that they won't have the 15 bus tour anymore.

- And how awful is that?

You can't even talk about kids dying and you're afraid that you're gonna get canceled.

- But I think that's the thing, is that we are not saying we're coming for your guns.

- That's what I mean.

- The conversation, we're not shaping it.

It's the voices of fear, still, that are saying, they're coming for you.

I think that Ketch is exactly right.

It's like, if you can get the people who have the voice to say, they're not coming for you, then you can start making the shift.

♪ Louder than guns ♪ Louder than guns (traffic bustling) - I think there are a lot of people who literally blame you when they see a school shooting.

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

- It's that extreme.

- I'm the bad guy, yeah.

- So when we hear about some of the guns that people get riled up about, like AR-15s, have you used those for hunting?

- An AR 15 is a good hunting rifle, it really is, yeah.

It's just a semi-automatic rifle.

It's not any different than something that doesn't look like an AR-15.

I mean, it's not... Like this is a semi-automatic rifle right here, okay?

That is the same thing functionally as this gun, which is an AR-15.

They work exactly the same way.

The AR-15 was made in 1954, was the first AR-15.

In the however many years, you didn't have all these shootings.

I mean, you might've had an occasional one, but it was rare.

So what's changed?

- I've heard a couple people say that there should be some sort of further restrictions on some firearms, like AR-15s.

Do we all agree with that?

- Can people explain what it is?

Do people know what AR means?

Does anyone know?

- ArmaLite.

- ArmaLite.

- ArmaLite, right?

Most people are like, well, it's a military gun.

- A lot of people think it means assault rifle.

- It's not.

It's been politicized that AR-15s are military weapons.

And so, part of the coming together and meeting halfway is education on the other side, on both sides.

- But I would argue that that person that makes that awful decision, there's a reason that they're not going to the gun store and asking for the Remington model 700 bolt action.

There's a reason that they're not asking for the Mossberg 500.

- And I wanted to say that, as that as somebody, I love guns, and the AR-15 is, if you wanna get down to it, sure, it'll do the same thing that any other gun will do.

However, you can be a novice, level zero, open that window, and wreak havoc on Owensboro as a person who doesn't know anything about marksmanship, guns, or anything, and a person who has never killed people before could be very effective at killing people with that gun.

- It feels like this is a both/and situation.

I would love to see us address the root causes of gun violence.

And I'm from Island Park, which, on July 4th, 2022 had a mass shooting.

One of my neighbors used a weapon of war to murder seven people and injure 48 others.

And in less than a minute, he shot off almost 90 rounds.

And it feels like we need to address those root causes to make sure that people like that shooter have a chance to get support and resources before they're on a path to violence, and why was that man allowed to have such a destructive weapon?

- In Kentucky, and in a lot of states, private gun sales, there's no background checks that are required.

I mean, in Kentucky, there is no minimum age.

You can go and you can sell a four-year-old an AR-15 and that's not against the law.

- I sold a gun the other day to a friend of mine, just personal sale, here you go.

We didn't do any paperwork.

Maybe we should've had to go to a gun store and pay a transfer fee, and let people know we did that.

But then you do have politicians on the national level saying, I am gonna come take your guns, and that scares the crap out of people that are pro-Second Amendment.

They're like, well, I don't like that law anymore.

- Guns aren't going anywhere in this country.

If we don't start holding these people responsible for their actions, none of this is gonna end.

- Can I ask you a question?

I totally disagree with this.

Guns are going somewhere.

My dad was murdered in 1999.

I would never sit down with anybody like this back in 1999.

It's no longer a third rail issue where people are talking about guns.

We talk about it daily.

People are fed up, and they're sick of it.

And I think here, together, you can blame parenting, you can say this, you can say that.

The common denominator in all of this is this tool, this weapon that is used to kill people.

His brother would still be here, his cousin would still be here, his son, her kids, my dad.

They would still be here if this tool was not.

- [Woman] 400 million firearms in America.

- And that feels like where the real conversation is here.

Are we accepting the guns are here and you believe that if they're there, you wanna train people to use them safely, or is there a way to get them... - Why do we wanna believe that they can't go anywhere?

That's the problem.

Because there have been different points in time in history, whether it's civil rights, whether it's slave, where the problem seems so immense that it feels like it's not gonna go anywhere, but why do we wanna believe that?

We are fighting for these different things, but don't think that, oh, this is too immense for us to do something about.

- I'm a gun owner.

We have 10 guns.

I don't own an assault style rifle, but I'm still a gun owner and a Republican, and I want change, and I felt like defining that would speak their language.

But most of them, we come to learn pretty quickly, that they are making decisions based off of reelection, and they think their base is not going to like them voting on safer gun laws.

- I think that should be an easy conversation.

You look at everything we require regulation of in this world, it doesn't mean that it's not gonna exist.

The DMV isn't threatening to take your car.

Regulation just makes sense.

There's many products we cannot lay hands on or own for common sense reasons.

Why is this any different?

I do not know.

- I know that change doesn't happen overnight.

But the more conversations we have, the more we normalize this discussion, the more we engage people and encourage them not to be afraid to speak out on guns, the more people will start talking about them.

- And I'm glad that there's some young folks out there, 'cause we wanna do one for the kids now.

(spectators cheering) It's kind of a sad song, but we're gonna play it anyway, 'cause we all gotta join together.

Here, I scribbled on the back, I carved on the back of my violin here, the names of six folks who, among 'em some third graders, who died in Nashville, Tennessee a few months ago in a school shooting that happened.

We just felt that we need to be singing about it, expressing some unity with the people that you love.

So we'd like to play a song for you now that we've been singing all across the country as we ask folks to meet in the middle and do the right thing for our kids and keep 'em safe from gun violence.

(spectators cheering) (rousing country music) ♪ I woke up this morning ♪ It was Groundhog Day ♪ I saw the same black veil on a crying face ♪ ♪ And a flag hanging halfway ♪ But this time it was people I know ♪ ♪ Gunned down in a minute or so ♪ ♪ Only God knows when it'll stop ♪ ♪ But thoughts and prayers ain't enough ♪ ♪ Louder than guns ♪ More powerful than bullets flying ♪ - I have enjoyed sitting across the table from you.

I've enjoyed the dialogue.

I have learned a lot tonight that will help me help in my community.

- Glad to be here, and I appreciate everybody's opinion.

I've never been opposed to doing things that make sense.

And I think a lot of gun owners are the same way, they just feel attacked, and both sides feel attacked.

Everyone feels attacked.

Why do we have to be like that?

Can we not just be adults and have a conversation?

- I want to see what incremental thing can we do, and if that decreases things by 7%, okay, cool, that's 7% better than it was.

That's what we think of when we do life expectancy stuff and healthcare outcomes, right?

We don't say, hey, nobody's gonna have diabetes tomorrow.

No, that's not what we do.

We start treating things, and we try to incrementally get better as a community.

- The incremental shift is what I agree, Shaka, is the way to address this.

The best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago, and the next best time is right now.

The best time to have figured out how to remedy the situation was probably a long time ago.

We didn't do that, but let's just start right now.

- I'm so appreciative to everybody who joined in the circle tonight.

It gives me hope to know that across the table, though I might disagree with somebody, I share a common feeling of wanting to get over the impasse, and you guys are helping me do it and I'll help you do it, and we'll help others do it, and together, let's get up and over, 'cause these days have gotta get behind us.

It's time for our kids to feel safe at the roller rink, at the shopping mall, at the movie theater, at school, and for their kids and every kid after that to feel safe in America again.

That's what we're gonna do.

Thanks, everyone.

(tranquil music) - [Reporter] Wednesday officially marks a year since the deadly Covenant School shooting, and those calling for tougher gun laws in Tennessee plan to make their voices heard.

Now Wednesday night, thousands of demonstrators with voices for a safer Tennessee.

♪ I was standing by my window ♪ On one cold and cloudy day ♪ When I saw that hearse come rolling ♪ ♪ For to carry my mother away ♪ Will the circle be unbroken ♪ By and by, Lord, by and by - I don't know where any of this is going, to be honest.

But I don't know, I feel like this is what's possible.

Could this be possible in more and more communities?

(children laughing) I just hope people keep talking.

(tranquil music) ♪ There's a law on a dusty scroll from a feather pen ♪ ♪ It says, every man's right to defend ♪ ♪ Shall not be infringed ♪ Well, this time I don't agree ♪ ♪ That a man should have his own army ♪ ♪ More than an American child should live in sweet harmony ♪ ♪ Louder than guns ♪ Lord, could you hear the people crying ♪ ♪ Louder than guns ♪ Louder than guns ♪ Louder than guns