Country star Kelsea Ballerini dedicated the 2023 CMT Music Awards to victims of gun violence in an emotional speech

• Kelsea Ballerini opened the 2023 CMT Music Awards with an emotional speech about gun violence.
• The country star paid tribute to the young victims of the recent school shooting in Nashville.
• Later in the night, she shared the stage with drag queens during a colorful performance.

Kelsea Ballerini opened the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday with a poignant dedication to victims of gun violence.

The country star, who cohosted the ceremony with Kane Brown, paid tribute to the children and teachers who were killed during the recent school shooting in Nashville. The assailant had legally purchased seven firearms before killing six people.

"On March 27, 2023, three 9-year-olds, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs, along with Dr. Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, and Mike Hill, walked into The Covenant School and didn't walk out," Ballerini said.

"The community of sorrow over this and the 130 mass shootings in the US this year alone stretches from coast to coast," she continued as she visibly teared up.

The 29-year-old musician also recounted her own experience with gun violence while growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee.

"I wanted to personally stand up here and share this moment because, on August 21, 2008, I watched Ryan McDonald, my 15-year-old classmate at Central High School, lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria," she said. "Tonight's broadcast is dedicated to the ever-growing list of families, friends, survivors, witnesses, and responders whose lives continue to forever be changed by gun violence."

—Pop Crave (@PopCrave) April 3, 2023

Ballerini previously told People that she suffers from PTSD after seeing her classmate die, and that loud noises at concerts can sometimes trigger her.

She concluded her speech by calling for "real action" to "create change for the safety of our kids and our loved ones," as well as honoring music's power to create "community."

Later in the evening, Ballerini delivered a colorful performance of her hit single "If You Go Down (I'm Goin' Down Too)." She was joined onstage by a quartet of drag queens who starred in "RuPaul's Drag Race."

A new law in Tennessee, passed in early March, makes staging adult cabaret performances on public property or that could be viewed by a minor a criminal offense — language that could be used to target drag performers, as well as transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

Ballerini, who walked Sunday's red carpet in Austin, Texas with her boyfriend, "Outer Banks" star Chase Stokes, has collaborated with LGBTQ musicians including Fletcher ("Better Version") and Halsey ("The Other Girl").

She has also been open about sexism in the music industry, particularly in the country genre, and opened up about her struggles with mental health in her poetry book, "Feel Your Way Through."

"I just try to be open about everything, whether it's that or whether it's like therapy or mental health in general," she told Atwood Magazine last year. "I'm very open about the deficit of women in country music and in the book, I talked about eating disorders and body dysmorphia, and then gun violence." 

"I'm still getting my footing on what I really want to stand for but I think the way that you do that, especially as a chronic people pleaser, is you just kind of word vomit all the things that you've experienced in your life and you find the things that you're really passionate about standing up for and then you just do your best to show up for those things," she continued. "I think I'm kind of still on that journey figuring that out."