Secor is best known for the country/ Americana standard "Wagon Wheel." He's trying to be the catalyst for a return to reason and decency. His NY Times Op-Ed is linked in the piece excerpted in the OP above , and says in part:
"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/opinion/nashville-school-shooting-country-music-gun-violence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bVA.GPQ-.-pOPkoxQ-UVM&smid=url-share
"....My band, Old Crow Medicine Show, which first struck up a tune in Nashville 25 years ago and was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2013, has always played a fringe role on the country scene. Though we lean left politically, our signature song, “Wagon Wheel,” has become a mainstream anthem for audiences that consistently lean right. When I hear it blasting from a pickup truck, I often spy an N.R.A. sticker on the bumper. In my experience, country stars tend toward centrism. The right-wing groups we most often encounter are not our bandmates but our audiences.
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.
....
If conservative Christian gun enthusiasts need a calling to lay down assault rifles after the tragedy at Covenant School, they need look no further than Isaiah 2:3-4, the Scriptures’ peace crusader passage, in which swords are beaten to plowshares and spears to pruning hooks. If they need a soundtrack, they need only crank up Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” written by Kris Kristofferson, a sharpshooting veteran turned peace activist. In the song, a spiritual journey during a Sabbath-day hangover returns the singer to something that he’d “lost somehow somewhere along the way.” The country community has lost its way if it thinks owning an AR-15 is more important than a child’s right to safely attend school.".... (more)
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