More than six weeks after a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, it’s clear it’s going to take a lawsuit to have the murderer’s manifesto made public. The contents remain secret, despite calls from local, state, and national figures for authorities to allow the public to see what was in the journal the shooter left behind in her car before entering The Covenant School, where she killed three adults and three 9-year-old children. The female shooter had assumed a transgender identity, purporting to be a man, and had attended the school as a child.
The Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Police Association have sued to get access to the journal. They’ve now been joined by America First Legal and argue that both the city of Nashville and Davidson County are violating the state’s Public Records Act by not releasing the manifesto. At the same time, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is suing the FBI to get access to the document.
Corporate media outlets and anti-hate crime advocates, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), usually trumpet the contents of such manifestos and seize on any evidence they can to portray mass killers as part of a network of far-right extremists that pose a threat to democracy. But they have been conspicuous by their silence about the issue of the Nashville manifesto.
The reason for that silence is painfully obvious, and the authorities’ explanations that the manifesto is part of an ongoing investigation are patently disingenuous.
