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Steph Deschamps / March 29, 2023
Three children and three adults were killed Monday by a young woman who opened fire at an elementary school in Nashville, in the southern United States, before being shot by police.
Armed with at least two assault rifles and a pistol, she broke into a private Christian school in the morning, local police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference.
Officers were quickly dispatched to the scene. After hearing gunfire on the floor, they "immediately" went there and "killed" the assailant, he said.
The Covenant Elementary School has approximately 200 students and 40 employees.
Several elected officials from the state of Tennessee immediately shared their emotion on social networks. "I am devastated and heartbroken by the tragic news from Covenant School," tweeted Republican Senator Bill Hagerty.
The United States, where about 400 million guns are in circulation, is frequently plagued by deadly shootings, including in schools.
The most prominent tragedy was committed in 2012 by an unhinged man at an elementary school in Connecticut, in which 20 children aged 6 and 7 were killed.
Such a traumatic event was repeated in May 2022 when an 18-year-old man shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
In between these two tragedies, a high school massacre in Florida on February 14, 2018 in Parkland sparked a broad national movement, spearheaded by youth, to demand stricter regulation of individual guns in the US.
Despite the mobilization of more than one million demonstrators, the United States Congress did not pass any ambitious legislation, as many elected officials were under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the leading American gun lobby.
In a country where the right to bear arms is considered by millions of Americans as a constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as the generalization of criminal and psychiatric background checks before any purchase of a weapon.