The 2023 CMT Awards opened on a somber note Sunday evening (April 2). As the show began airing from the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, host Kelsea Ballerini addressed the school shooting that happened in Nashville on Monday, March 27, where three 9-year-old children and three adults were gunned down by a lone shooter.
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Dressed in black, Ballerini shared an impassioned speech about gun violence and senseless loss of life, especially our children.
“On March 27, 2023, three 9-year-olds, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs along with Dr. Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, and Mike Hill walked into the Covenant school and didn’t walk out,” Ballerini said through tears. “The community of sorrow over this and the 130 mass shootings in the U.S. this year alone stretches from coast to coast.”
She continued, “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. Tonight’s broadcast is dedicated to the ever-growing list of families, friends, survivors, witnesses, and responders whose lives continue to forever be changed by gun violence. 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.”
Watch Ballerini’s speech below.
Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for CMT
