by Karla Ciaglo
HARTFORD, CT — What does it mean to find common ground in one of America’s most divisive debates? That question anchored a recent panel at the Connecticut Legislative Office Building, where the University of Connecticut’s ARMS Center and the Yale School of Public Health, in partnership with the nonprofit Builders Movement, convened an event on preventing political violence and firearm injury. The program opened with a screening of The Tennessee 11 and was followed by a discussion about what it means to move past polarization.
The documentary follows 11 Tennesseans who came together after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. Organized by Builders, Inc. the group included pastors and educators, a firearms instructor, a veteran, a former law-enforcement officer, a student, a public-safety official, and a family therapist. They were deliberately chosen for their different views on gun rights and safety and asked to search for consensus where legislators often cannot.
Over three days, the group drafted five proposals focused on responsibility and prevention: developing tools for safe gun ownership, creating gun literacy programs for schools and communities, investing in neighborhoods to reduce trauma, broadening the role of school resource officers to include human services, and allowing temporary firearm removal when someone poses a risk. More than 30,000 Tennesseans later weighed in, and each idea received majority support. At least one has since been enacted into law.
The panel convened following a documented increase in political violence that included the shooting deaths of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
For Carrie Racian, a Yale researcher who reviewed the group’s work before publication, the process mattered as much as the proposals. She told the Hartford audience that not every idea will resonate, but the Tennessee 11 showed that even on the country’s most divisive issues, “the act of staying at the table” produces usable solutions.
Two of the Tennessee 11 themselves sat on the panel. Jaila Hampton, a college student and president of Texas Southern University’s debate team, described the project as “magical” and “out of the ordinary.” What struck her, she said, was that consensus emerged not by erasing differences but by asking deeper questions.
“Everything isn’t just black or white — it’s gray. I’ve learned to ask questions and dig deeper, because you never know why someone thinks the way they do,” she said.
Jay Zimmerman, a veteran and suicide-prevention advocate, said his experience taught him that disagreement doesn’t have to turn into hate.
“I can have a conversation with someone I disagree with, and I can do it in a way that’s respectful,” he said. I don’t have to agree with everything that people say, but I also don’t have to hate them for it.”
He warned that in today’s political climate, anger too often hardens into hatred — and “hate requires action,” which can easily turn destructive. The alternative, he said, is human contact:
“Talk to people. Don’t just do it online,” he said. “Have real conversations with real people.”
Connecticut state Rep. Renee LaMark Muir, D-Deep River, connected the discussion to her years as both a homicide detective and a policy analyst. She told the audience she had “responded to active shooters” and delivered death notifications, experiences that left her skeptical of legislation written without regard to how it plays out on the ground. At the same time, she noted, the research side is incomplete.
“Health data and criminal justice data are often siloed,” she said. “We’re really kind of using anecdotal information at this point to make complex decisions.”
She stressed the point that durable policy needs both the data to track what works and the field experience to test whether it’s enforceable.
Nelba Márquez-Greene, whose daughter Ana Grace was a victim at Sandy Hook, emphasized what’s at stake when communities are ignored. The deeper problem, she argued, is an “absence of humanity” that shows up in who policymakers listen to and who they don’t.
“We can fix this by looking at survivors not for their usefulness, but for their belonging, their dignity, and their worth,” she said, adding that cities like Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and New Haven have long been overlooked in statewide conversations about violence.
Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, closed by urging that firearm injury be treated like any other public-health crisis.
“You wouldn’t want me to guess how to treat your heart attack,” she said. “Yet somehow we ignore that basic strategy when it comes to violence.”
Ranney stressed that science is not separate from society: evidence depends on people willing to share their stories and data, and findings only matter if applied back in communities. She called the Tennessee 11 itself “science in action” — proof that structured conversations among ordinary people can generate testable, practical ideas.
Though rooted in Tennessee, the panelists said the lessons travel.
“A mother’s pain in Memphis is the same as a mother’s pain in Connecticut,” Márquez-Greene said, noting that gun violence “is everywhere” and that “all of us are at risk.”
She said the most important question was “whether we can meet each other with humanity first.”