Music News

Ariana Grande re-posted an emotional message from Josh Gad on Tuesday morning (March 28) in reaction to the nation’s latest horrific mass school shooting on Monday. Grande added Gad’s comments to her Instagram Story less than 24 hours after police said a 28-year-old former student entered a private Christian elementary school in Nashville and killed three nine-year-olds and three adult staff members before police fatally shot the attacker.

“Today THREE 9-year-old children were massacred alongside three adults,” wrote Gad. “There have been 140 mass shootings in American and it is March. When does this madness end? How are books being banned and not assault weapons? Drag hasn’t killed a single child but politicians are spending all of their time and energy making sure it’s banned, but every f—ing day another child is killed by guns,” Gad continued, referencing the barrage of recent and in-process laws backed by Republican politicians across the country aimed at banning drag story times and targeting the trans community.

Gad then went on to angrily brush aside the typical statements offered up by gun control-averse conservative politicians after yet another mass killing using semi-automatic weapons of war. “Spare me the ‘buts,’ spare me the ‘it’s mental illness,’ spare me all the faux outrage over emails and drag shows and pictures of a naked statue,” he wrote of the right wing media’s focus on stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, drag performers and the firing last week of a principal at a Florida charter school after some parents complained that they weren’t given a sufficient heads up about a sixth grade lesson on Michelangelo’s iconic David statue.

“Every single politician who takes a stand on all the bull—t but silently continues to accept money from the NRA isn’t simply a coward, they are complicit in the ongoing murder of our children, Gad’s note continued. “When do we say enough? When are we going to be angry enough to say our children shouldn’t have to fear every day at school being their last? When will it f—ing end?”

In addition to Gad’s note, Grande’s Story included the Everytown statistic that firearms are the #1 leading cause of death for American children and teens, as well as the names of the three fourth graders and three 60-year-old school staff members who were killed at The Covenant School, including the private charter academy’s head of school Katherine Koonce, 60. She also posted a slide urging her followers to contact their elected officials to ask them what they are doing to keep them and their children safe from gun violence, along with a list of organizations supporting common sense gun reforms.

Gad continued sharing his feelings on Twitter, writing, “The GOP have decided that guns are more important than kids. There are no two ways to look at this situation. It doesn’t matter how many children are massacred. They have decided it is okay to let kids die. Not mind you read certain books. That’s unacceptable. But dying is fine.”

Grande and Gad joined a loud chorus of musicians decrying the lack of action from Washington and state leaders to stem the deadly tide of mass shootings, which this year have far surpassed the number of days on the calendar. Kings of Leon drummer and Nashville native Nathan Followill tweeted, “A school shooting just happened near my sons school. Multiple children dead but let’s make sure that the gunman had his 2nd amendment rights. F–k you Bill Lee and f–k the NRA,” he said in reference to Tennessee’s Republican Gov., who tweeted thoughts and prayers on Monday nine months after he said he didn’t support restricting firearms or stronger gun control laws following the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which the shooter killed 19 children and two teachers.

Christian pop star Lauren Daigle postponed her planned third album preview concert on Monday night and turned the event into a prayer vigil for the victims of the mass killing.

See Gad’s tweet below.