A documentary entitled “The Tennessee 11,” directed by Rod Blackhurst, focuses on eleven Tennessee citizens who came together to try to reach consensus on solutions to gun violence in the state. The eleven were: Tim Carroll, Arriell Gipson Martin, William Green, Jaila Hampton, Ron Johnson, Brandi Kellett, Mariah Levison, Adam Luke, Alyssa Pearman, Ashley Phillips, Mark Proctor, Kevin Shrum, Kelly Wilder and Jay Zimmerman. The record of their discussions towards that goal became the documentary “The Tennessee 11.” It will be showing at the Nashville Film Festival on both September 21st and September 24th.
The opening of the film, which involved body cam footage from Officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, responding to a call of a school shooting at 33 Burton Boulevard at the Covenant Christian School in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville on March 7, 2023, was riveting. On March 27, 2023, 28-year-old Aiden Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale), a transgender man and former student of the Presbyterian Church elementary school, killed three nine-year-old children and three adults, before being shot and killed by the brave officers. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.
The music and pacing and credits at the beginning of the film were riveting. I could only pray that the first 22 minutes accurately represented the rest of the 79 minute film. But quelling a shooting turned out to be more interesting than watching eleven people disagree politely for an hour, although the study of the differing viewpoints was absorbing in a more cerebral way.
CURRENT TENNESSEE GUN LAW
Demonstraters in Nashville.
Permitless carry became legal on July 1, 2021 for handguns in Tennessee. Tennessee does not require a permit to carry an open or concealed handgun in public and also expressly allows a person to carry any firearm, loaded or unloaded, in a lawfully possessed motor vehicle or boat, as long as they are not prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm. Many Tennessee natives are upset about this. They have been demonstrating in an attempt to convey their unhappiness about lax supervision of firearms.
This eleven member group was formed to try to reach consensus on some realistic solutions to the problem of gun violence in the United States. It was quite the task, given the vast differences in perspectives of the Tennessee Eleven. While the group seemed to make some slight progress and a bill was actually passed that represented 5 of the suggestions the panel made, that bill didn’t require any kind of permit for a firearm. Sadly, the statement about “the transformative power of conversation” seemed to fall apart upon further scrutiny.
Much more to the point was the remark, “What good is awareness without action?”
MASSACRES OF THE PAST
That latter remark reminded me of the day that President Obama said was the worst day of his presidency: December 14, 2012. On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people, after shooting and killing his mother. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old; the other six were adult staff members. Not much was done to stem the tide of violence after Sandy Hook, and the parents of those children murdered twelve years ago are still fighting in court for change, including trying to get Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show, which insisted the event had been staged, off the air. There is an interesting HBO original 2024 documentary directed by Dan Reed entitled “The Truth vs Alex Jones” that shows the struggle of the families of the murdered children to bring Jones to justice, which I highly recommend.
Citizens of the United States might look at what was done in Australia after their worst massacre in modern history. The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 led to sweeping gun law reforms in Australia. It occurred on April 28, 1996 when Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others in a mass shooting at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. Sweeping gun reforms were enacted in Australia, but here in America we can’t get our act together and “The Tennessee 11” illustrates why we can’t. Let’s not bring up the Las Vegas concert shooting or the Uvalde,Texas elementary school shooting that killed 19, because there have actually been more mass shootings this year, so far, (385) than there are days in the entire year. (Talk about depressing.) A mass shooting is defined as an event that took 4 or more lives.
THE GROUP
Like all groups, some individuals contributed more than others. The members ran the gamut from the man of God, Kevin Shrum, a pastor, who said, “When did gun violence start bleeding out in the way of guns?” Oh, I don’t know, Reverend…maybe when it became so easy to get a gun and carry it around without much (if any) attempt to regulate who gets a gun or where that gun can be carried. Reverend Shrum talked about “soul work,” adding yet one more layer of difficulty to finding any kind of workable solution to the problem.
JAY ZIMMERMAN, VETERAN
Jay Zimmerman (left) and Mark Proctor (right).
Veteran Jay Zimmerman, a member of the Tennessee 11 who helps counsel other veterans with PTSD, said his work involved suicide prevention. He was one of the dyed-in-the-wool members of the group who kept insisting that his need to have a gun was “a love instilled in me by my grandfather.” He also mentioned “hunting for food” as essential. He was a veteran and referenced his own personal failed suicide attempt. Jay was quite vocal about “the right guaranteed to me in the Constitution” to have guns and was shown strolling about in a wooded area with a rifle. I was less impressed with Zimmerman when he revealed that he had a best friend (Vic, from Fort Bragg) to whom he spoke on February 16, 2016, the night that Vic took a gun and killed himself. So, the last person to speak to him was a suicide prevention specialist and also his best friend. Vic’s wife called up the next day, wanting to know what Vic’s last words had been. (She may have had a few other blunt questions for Jay; I know I would have had). Jay seemed impossible to convince that guns kill people and letting them be so easily obtained might not be in the best interests of the veterans he counsels, himself, or the residents of Tennessee. He was very big on his Second Amendment freedoms, however, and seemed to have little concern for the blowback from letting every Tom, Dick or Jay have a gun that they enjoyed shooting just for fun, as he said he did.
MARK PROCTOR, HIGHWAY PATROL CAPTAIN
Mark Proctor.
Then there was the Highway Patrol Captain, Mark Proctor, who, as an officer of the law, wanted to know that there were some gun laws in place that might help assure him that he was going to be able to return home safely at the end of his work day. Proctor was one of the better voices for sensible permitting regulations, but he was immediately opposed by firearm instructor Tim Carrol ( who valued his job security more than the lives of those who might be shot with a weapon they would not have been able to purchase if sane permitting laws existed), saying, “You start to chip away at what freedom is when you start limiting people.” Tim found the idea of having to have a permit to carry a handgun infringed upon his freedoms. He shared that if he endorsed one of the more creative solutions put forth regarding permitting in Tennessee, his career as a firearms instructor would be over. Mark and Tim did not seem to be on the same page or even reading from the same book. I sensed a great deal of disagreement between the lawman (Mark) and the firearms instructor (Tim) with the veteran allied on Tim’s side (Jay) and Mark only able to count on the female college professor (Brandi Kellett). When Mark said “my back-up might be 30 minutes away” and having some sensible rules about whether or not people were allowed, willy-nilly, to buy and carry firearms would help him stay safe during highway traffic stops, Tim retorted, “When seconds count, police are minutes away.” So, judge for yourself if those three are ever going to really reach an agreement.
Ron Johnson.
Ron Johnson—the only Black man on the panel— was a former gang member who had reformed and become the Director of Safety in Nashville for Governor Bill Lee. He contributed very little useful information. At one point the phrase uttered by someone was, “We can’t trust the man.” I don’t think it was intentionally aimed at Ron, but he was The Man. I wondered if bringing in an actual current gang member might have been an interesting contribution to the pace and language of the documentary. (We’ll never know.) The contention that we must all be allowed to have guns to protect ourselves surfaced. Usually, the person using the gun in these discussions was portrayed as 80 years old.
FROM THE GROUP
The Tennessee 11 at the state legislature
There were some creative suggestions that the members of the group contributed. My favorite was the idea of the gentleman shown addressing the legislature as the film ended, who contributed the idea of firearms training being a deductible amount of money that you would be able to subtract from your taxes. He was quite clear that the deduction would be “an incentive, not a “mandate.” At that point the conversation disintegrated into an exercise in semantics involving the term “incentive” versus the term “mandate.” There was the creative use of acronyms to sum up an entire range of issues represented by ACES, (which meant Adverse Childhood Experiences &/or Adverse Community Environments. It could also mean: All Consensus Eludes.)
Most of the female members of the group either remained relatively silent or expressed sensitive statements about how gun violence had affected them, personally, often in tears. College instructor Brandi Kellett contributed this statement: “The laws have only served gun owners’ needs.” I got the feeling that she could have articulately expressed the pro permits point of view and run circles around the Reverend and all but three of the other panel members.
Young Jalia Hampton, a 16-year old Black student activist from Memphis was also articulate, mourning the loss of her best friend, Braylon Murray, who was killed at 17. She talked about the violence in Memphis and how it had escalated dramatically. At one point she is shown visiting Braylon’s crypt, which took us out of the same room for a bit (a welcome relief).
Alyssa Pearman, a teacher, was reduced to tears as she shared experiencing the shooting of one of her 16-year-old students on April 29, 2022, saying, “It’s one thing to see it on the news, but it’s another to live it.” Alyssa then lost a second female student February 10th. She said, “I can’t seem to separate from it because it keeps happening.” Another good series of remarks talked about mental health impacting gun violence. As one female member of the group said, “A child who does not feel the love of a village will burn the village down.”
THE BAD
The group got into the weeds and began trying to “address the underlying issues” which were so many and so major that bringing ALL of them up pretty much guaranteed failure . In addition to the front-and-center gun violence epidemic, the group discussed, among other weighty issues: the right to live freely; poverty; the lack of quality education; childhood trauma; the lack of communication skills; empathy for the killers as well as the victims and so many other major issues that my head began to swim. There was talk of the stigma around mental health issues and cultural stigmas and how the state (and, presumably the nation) needed to strengthen counseling services. [Gee…maybe pay teachers a living wage, since they are always expected to pick up the slack when home and counselors fail to do their jobs well].
The film slowed down after the very promising opening, but it still contained a semi-positive ending, when the legislature—which had previously been mired in stasis (and chaos)—did pass something that reflected 5 of the points that the Tennessee Eleven had come up with (and on which 30,000 Tennessee citizens had commented, online).
It’s a start, but, coming from Texas where I live 8 months of the year, I’d say without fear of contradiction, that there is much room for improvement on the part of the Tennessee (and Texas) legislature(s).
What are your thoughts?