NASHVILLE, Tennessee – GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy held a press conference at the Davidson County Courthouse on Wednesday to call for releasing the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.
“I’m here as a father and as an American. We can’t fix the past, but we can prevent tragedies in the future, and the only way to do it is to learn from those mistakes of the past,” Ramaswamy said. “When an airplane crashes, we recover the black box for a reason – we never want to make that same mistake twice. We have a tradition in this country as law enforcement to do the same thing when there’s a mass shooting…We have to learn from tragedy to prevent it in the future.”
More than four months ago, on March 27, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as transgender, opened fire at The Covenant Presbyterian School in the Green Hills neighborhood in Nashville and killed six victims, three of which were children, before MNPD officers fatally shot the 28-year old.
During his press conference Wednesday, Ramaswamy held a moment of silence for the six victims.
Shortly after the shooting, MNPD confirmed that a manifesto from the shooter was recovered.
After listing the incidents of which the manifesto of mass shooting killers was released to the public “within 48 hours of the tragedy,” Ramaswamy noted that despite the immediate public demand for the Covenant School killer’s manifesto, “we’re sitting here in August with nothing other than stonewalled silence from our government.”
“That is wrong, that does not build public trust – that erodes public trust,” Ramaswamy stated before issuing his demand to Governor Lee, MNPD, and the FBI to immediately release the manifesto.
Ramaswamy went on to address the concerns of releasing a manifesto to the public.
“I understand that there are legitimate concerns that we do not want – details released that will motivate copycats – I don’t want that. I want to go on record and say it would be perfectly reasonable for the police to redact any sections of this manifesto that lay out specific plans – that lay out specific premeditated plots on details of execution that could be copied by another individual,” Ramaswamy explained.
“But what we do need to know is this killer’s motives – this killer’s psychological state of mind. The truth of the matter is that we have a mental health epidemic in this country that is driving a wave of violence around this country, and we’re going to have to deeply understand it if we’re going to address it,” the GOP presidential candidate added.
Watch the full press conference here:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy.
Where was the governor, the mayor, or council members…..obviously they do not support releasing anything.
Release records on Scotty Campbell. Today.
That was an excellent statement by Vivek Ramaswamy! Too bad Gov Lee wasn’t there to support him and act accordingly.
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.” —John F. Kennedy