Why, you may ask, are we seeing Hamilton County Schools students arrested for threats of violence two and three times a week?
It’s not because the county has suddenly become a hotbed of juvenile criminals.
It is because Tennessee laws changed about the seriousness of threats.
Months before the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville that killed six people in late March 2023, a bill was introduced in the Tennessee state legislature that required a student in violation of a zero tolerance offense to be expelled for not less than one calendar year, although a director of schools could modify such expulsion on a case-by-case basis, for threatening mass violence on school property or at a school-related activity.
The bipartisan bill passed the state House 79-16 before the Covenant shooting and the Senate 31-0 after the shooting.