Nashville School Shooting: US First Lady Jill Biden to Join Candlelight Vigil in Tennessee

US First Lady Jill Biden will visit Nashville Wednesday to attend a candlelight vigil for those killed in the mass shooting at a school there, the White House said.

The massacre by a former student at the Covenant School left three children and three staff dead, and once more opened the debate over gun control in the United States, where mass shootings are agonizingly common.

Biden, a lifelong educator, “will travel to Nashville, Tennessee to join a candlelight vigil to honor and mourn the lives of the victims of The Covenant School shooting," her spokesperson Vanessa Valdivia tweeted.

Two nine-year-old girls, a nine-year-old boy, two teachers and a school custodian died in the Monday attack.

Police have said that the shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was a former student of the school who had been receiving treatment for an emotional disorder, but that the search for a motive is still ongoing.

Hale, who was also killed during the attack, was armed with two assault rifles and a handgun upon entering the small Christian academy of about 200 students.

Identified by police as a female who had used male pronouns on social media, the shooter had maps of the school and left a manifesto that suggested more attacks were planned.

In the wake of the shooting, President Joe Biden once again urged Congress to reinstate a national assault rifle ban, which was in force from 1994 to 2004.

Efforts to ban the powerful weapons have run up against opposition from Republicans, staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms.

The political deadlock endures despite an uproar over recurring school massacres and other mass shootings in the United States.

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