We Are Not Safe

January 22, 2025. “Hey peepaw did you see the news on what happened at antioch high school.”

The text to me was from our firstborn granddaughter, Chelsea. She had just returned from an aborted lunchtime at her Glencliff High School. She was in line to get her food when students were ushered back to their classrooms, where they heard about the shooting at Antioch High, only a few miles away. Glencliff administrators called a lockdown as a precaution.

I first wrote about Chelsea and school shootings when she was in kindergarten. It was the time of the Sandy Hook murders, when students barely older than her were gunned down at their elementary school. We debated about whether to discuss the massacre with our 5-year-old. Since the incident was so far away, would it breed unnecessary fear, doing more harm than good? My written message then was simply that school should be a place where children feel safe. When they leave for school in the morning, they should expect to return home alive.

When I picked up high school Chelsea on the day of the local incident, I asked her about new information she had learned from the teen social media pipeline. She didn’t know that one of the wounded students had since died. I learned that from some conventional news outlet. She told me about a possible online manifesto that the shooter had posted. My news outlets confirmed that information later in the evening.

Chelsea opted not to go to school the day after the shooting. She was getting ready when she read online that the Antioch shooter might have been collaborating with other assailants who were targeting four other public high schools in Nashville’s southern sector. Glencliff was one of the schools mentioned. Our confident, courageous, conscientious 17-year-old didn’t want to take the chance. Her sister Zoey attends Wright Middle School just 2 blocks from Glencliff. She decided that was too close to the threats for comfort, so she also stayed home.

We know Antioch High School. We watched Chelsea and Zoey’s brother Damon play basketball against Antioch for four years. Chelsea’s good friend (who also calls me Peepaw) transferred there last year. We know students, teachers, coaches, and administrators there. The students in our immediate neighborhood are zoned for that school.

Across Nashville we are all feeling the closeness of these shootings. We remember the shooting at The Covenant School in 2023. Antioch High is a culturally, racially, economically, and religiously diverse public high school in southeast Nashville. Covenant is a predominantly white conservative Christian private school in a wealthy corner of town. But it is Nashville, and we all felt the vulnerability then. It seems that the shootings are getting closer to us. Unfortunately, that feeling is not based on factual evidence. Before the Covenant incident, the Antioch neighborhood had experienced two other nationally publicized mass shootings: at a Church of Christ in 2017 and a Waffle House in 2018. Both sites are within a mile of Antioch High School.

12 years have passed since Sandy Hook. Many of us back then said, “This is the one that will make a difference. These kids are so young.” Some said, “These kids come from the ‘right’ families in the ‘right’ neighborhoods’ and attend the ‘right’ school.” The Covenant incident followed the same rhetoric. But we know now that those convictions and demographics do not keep anyone safe. We are not safe. Our children are not safe.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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