Can Country Music Lead America Out of Its Obsession With Guns?

According to Ketch Secor, frontman for the alt-country music group Old Crow Medicine Show (which won a Grammy for best folk album in 2015), it’s time for country music artists to step up to the plate on the issue of gun violence. In the wake of the March 27th, 2023, deadly Covenant Christian elementary school shooting which took the lives of three children and three school employees (including the head master of the school Katherine Koonce), Secor’s April 5th, 2023, op-ed in the New York Times sounds a clarion call for action from the country music community on the issue of gun violence, particularly school shootings. Ketch Secor is a Nashville resident and father.

What the South needs now is an anti-assault-weapons movement driven by voices from the center, by interdenominational faith leaders, by students — Nashville is called the Athens of the South because it is teeming with scholars at its many colleges — and by country singers who are tired of bending to the whims of fearmongers and who are ready to speak from their platforms to an impressionable audience.

Conservative musicians are always vocal when it comes to the culture wars, but stars with moderate views tend not to weigh in publicly. The motive is genuine: We don’t want to offend anyone. But in times as dire as these, silence is complicity. It’s time for country music makers to use their platforms to speak candidly to their conservative audiences. Our outrage needs to move from the green room to center stage.

Now that the tragedy of school gun violence has come to Nashville, our city is poised to help lead the nation toward effective regulations such as red-flag and safe-storage laws, a ban on military-grade weapons, stricter background checks and the repeal of permitless carry laws.

Ketch Secor in the New York Times

READ THE ENTIRE OP-ED BY KETCH SECOR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES.