Tim Burchett, a U.S. representative for the 2nd congressional district of Tennessee, might not have been an easily-recognizable name if you weren’t a resident of Tennessee or a neighboring state, but a comment he made during an interview after the 129th mass shooting of the year has certainly put him on the public radar.
The Covenant School in Nashville saw an armed person enter the facility with force on Monday morning, killing six — three children and three adults; Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney, Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, and Mike Hill. Their lives were needlessly cut short in one of the 376 school shootings since Columbine in 1999. When you look at the numbers, it’s alarming — when you think of the staff and children lost in these shootings and look at the impact each life had on those around them, the dreams that were stolen from them, and the loved ones who must now face each day without them — it’s overwhelming.
So when Burchett was asked about the Covenant School shooting, his response was severely lacking. We hear what he’s saying; laws aren’t going to stop criminals every single time — most everyone can agree that if someone truly wants to break the law, they’re going to find a way to do it. No one is negating that point of view, but it’s the lack of compassion, the absence of a fire lit within him to get to the root of this problem, and how he just seemed to brush it off with the words, “we’re not going to fix it,” that rubbed people wrong.
Especially when the conviction in his voice is so apparent when discussing drag shows, as a Twitter account replied to an earlier Tweet by Stephen King, shared with all of us. In just seven seconds, a light went out in all of us as we heard a politician speak about something like gun reform to protect children with the same zest he’d use in conversation about a nuisance like a bad hair day or downpour in the middle of a summer afternoon.
If the nonchalant tone there didn’t strike you, it might when you hear the response to a question that was asked to Burchett to seemingly make him realize that more passion is needed on this specific topic of conversation. We’re talking about the lives of children, about preparing our kids to go to school as if we were sending them off to fight for their lives, and Burchett — well, he doesn’t have to worry about that.
As Burchett so casually points out, not everyone does have the capability to home-school their children; some working parents would give anything to provide their children with the kind of safety that would remove the idea of a school shooting; but since the overwhelming number of parents can’t do that for their children, God forbid we attempt to rely on our government to help us keep our children safe and have a peace of mind so that we don’t spend our spare moments praying that our beloved little ones come home every day.
In an extended clip of the interview, Burchett goes into a bit more detail as to why he says those hard-to-hear words, but even then, it doesn’t soften the blow. Especially not when hearing the conviction in his voice about stopping those drag shows for child safety.
As this Twitter account above shares, this sounds like the makings of a pretty solid resignation letter, but no — Burchett took it a step further as he doubled down on his stance in an interview Tuesday.
“You can’t legislate evil; it’s just not going to happen. We’ve got evil in this country, and everybody else just needs to tone down the rhetoric a little bit because all that does is jin it up on both sides, and then they point the finger, and nothing happens.”
Burchett also declared that what we need is a “real revival in this country. Let’s call on our Christian ministers and our people of faith.” While thoughts and prayers are certainly a way to show compassion to those who grieve, it’s not the solution; it’s not the fix that our government seems to view it as. We can’t lump everyone into the category of not wanting change; President Joe Biden even says he’s exhausted his options, and it’s time for congress to make a move.
“I have gone the full extent of my executive authority, to do on my own anything about guns,” Biden said. “The Congress has to act.”
Other members of Congress are standing up and voicing their opinions in any way they can, and that was brought forward to everyone in a significant way as Senate Chaplain Barry Black noted in his morning prayer on Tuesday, it’s time to move beyond thoughts and prayers; it’s time to stop wishing gun violence away.
“Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.'”
Continuing his prayer, Black asked for change, and more importantly, he asked for movement, highlighting the idea that waiting for the miracle fix isn’t safe, and it’s certainly not enough; it has never been.
“Lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous. Use them to battle the demonic forces that seek to engulf us. We pray, in your powerful name, amen.”
Hence the continued frustration when leaders of our country brush off a school shooting as if it’s something they can’t — see also: won’t — fix. It all boils down to the idea that as long as we’ve got a standard of freedom in this country, we’ll have to learn to tolerate a number of losses, which can’t continue to be enough. Whatever your stance on gun control (a topic many choose to avoid in conversation), we can’t continue to live thinking what we’re doing now is enough; the numbers, the statistics, and the lives lost show that it isn’t.