At least a dozen families spent Thanksgiving with an unoccupied chair at the table and an empty place in their hearts following the slaughter of 12 people at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
The Nov. 7 attack marked the 307th mass shooting in the United States in the first 311 days of 2018. The Country Music Association acknowledged the tragedy as Garth Brooks led a moment of silence for the victims at the start of the CMA's 52nd annual awards on Nov. 14.
In contrast to that silence, the Borderline incident seems to have made country artists more vocal about the subject of guns. Most of them on the red carpet before the CMA Awards -- and the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC songwriter awards that were held the three preceding nights -- were willing to address the issue, revealing a mix of sorrow, rage, fear and resignation. Beyond their concern for the victims, they addressed their own worries about stepping onstage and how the shootings affect them and their fans.
Much like the nation at large, the artists don't have a single, easy solution to fix the ongoing problem, but their willingness to at least field questions represented a remarkable change in attitude in the past year.
"The fact that it's even being uttered in conversation is some sort of step forward," said Maren Morris on the CMA Awards red carpet.
Indeed, artists' responses to questions this year about the issue are a sharp reversal from the 2017 CMA Awards, which occurred 39 days after the massacre at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, where 58 country concertgoers were killed and another 441 were injured. With the industry's emotions still raw, the CMA initially
