While I love my home state of Georgia, I have concerns about the direct things are going here. We went from a firmly red state to a swing state just recently and I’m not sure if the swinging will go back. That means that while we’re now a constitutional carry state, gun control may be coming down the road before too much longer.

One state I’ve looked at relocating to is Tennessee. It’s close enough to home for reasonable visits and no hurricanes–which is why Florida isn’t an option. My wife is nervous about bad storms.

Yet after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, parents of students at the school are also trying to change the nature of the state.

The Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows Action Fund (CFBTAF), a nonprofit started in the wake of the shooting to push for stricter gun laws, said in a media release on Sunday that it is “prepared to drive legislative change in the upcoming 2024 session to ensure responsible firearm ownership, safe schools and accessible adequate mental health care of individuals across Tennessee.”

The group pushed hard for new, stricter gun laws during Gov. Bill Lee’s special-called legislative session to address public safety following the shooting. However, many gun reform advocates were disappointed as the August session ended without meaningful gun reform legislation.

“While we are extremely disappointed that no meaningful firearm legislation was passed in the August 2023 Extraordinary Session, we plan to continue our advocacy during the 2024 regular session,” said CFBTAF co-founder and Covenant parent Melissa Alexander in a statement. “Our families remain committed to working with lawmakers to craft and pass laws that help increase the safety of all Tennessee citizens. We are actively monitoring any and all draft legislation that pertains to firearms, mental health and school security. We will be present this session to weigh in on these bills and continue sharing our stories while honoring the lives of our victims and survivors.”

The question is, though, will CFBTAF be able to convince lawmakers that their trauma is enough to warrant gun control?

Probably not.

The best opportunity for that to happen was in the special session, immediately in the wake of Nashville. Right then, people were still very emotional and emotional people aren’t generally as likely to be reasonable.

As they calm down, they start to see the harsh reality at play–that gun control won’t solve the problem.

In the Covenant shooting, the issue was school security. The killer skipped her first choice of target because security was too tight. That meant moving down the list to find a softer one, which happened to be The Covenant School.

Now, I’m not blaming them. It’s not the schools fault they were attacked. The only person responsible is the dirtball who decided killing kids was a good thing.

But if we’re going to try and make the case that changes need to be made, I find it very difficult to assume that I should give up my right to keep and bear arms when heightened security could have prevented this atrocity and probably been good in other ways as well.

Gun control isn’t the answer, but as time passes, the opportunity to pass it diminishes. That’s ultimately good news, no matter how some people might view it.