Country music star Kelsea Ballerini kicks off awards show with tribute to Nashville shooting victims

Country music star Kelsea Ballerini used the opening segment of country music’s CMT Awards show to pay tribute to the victims of last week’s school shooting in Nashville, Tenn. 

“On March 27, 2023, three 9-year-olds – Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs — along with Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill walked into the Covenant School and didn’t walk out,” Ballerini said at the top of the award ceremony. “The community of sorrow over this, and the 130 mass shootings in the US this year alone, stretches from coast to coast.” 

The 28-year-old shooter was also killed by police after opening fire last week inside the private Christian elementary school in Nashville. 

Ballerini also shared her personal experience with gun violence, saying that she witnessed a classmate die in a shooting at her Knoxville, Tenn., high school in 2008. 

“I wanted to personally stand up here and share this moment because on August 21, 2008, I watched Ryan McDonald, my 15-year-old classmate at Central High School, lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria,” Ballerini added. 

Ballerini, who hosted the annual country music award show alongside fellow country music star Kane Brown, said the broadcast was dedicated to everyone affected by gun violence in America.

“Tonight’s broadcast dedicated to the ever-growing list of families, friends, survivors, witnesses, and responders, whose lives continue to forever be changed by gun violence,” Ballerini added. 

“I pray deeply that the closeness and the community that we feel through the next few hours of music can soon turn into action, like real action that moves us forward together to create change for the safety of our kids and our loved ones.” 

The Nashville shooting has once again spurred efforts among Democrats to pass federal gun control legislation, while Republicans have largely resisted those proposals.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies (D-N.Y.) last week pressed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to hold on a vote on  “common sense gun safety legislation.”

“The American people, regardless of political affiliation, overwhelmingly support common sense gun safety measures,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to McCarthy. “The House should do likewise.”