Content Warning: This op-ed contains mentions of gun violence and death.
The scene was tragically familiar: In the wake of a devastating school shooting, a politician spoke near the site of the incident and called for increasing gun control as a way to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
“Every child in America deserves these protections,” they said. “Reducing gun violence is a national challenge.”
The man who spoke these words was not Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who gave a similarly impassioned speech last Wednesday in the wake of a shooting that injured 18 and stole the lives of two children, but former President Bill Clinton. The year was 2000, and Clinton was speaking a year after the shooting at Columbine High School, the deadliest school shooting at that time, claiming 13 lives.
Clinton’s speech was two years before the shooter at the Annunciation Catholic School last week was even born. In other words, the U.S. had more than the murderer’s entire lifetime to figure out how to keep a gun out of their hands.
Nevertheless, little progress has been made; despite the fact that firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., the murderer legally bought the weapons, even noting that it was “shockingly easy” to do so.
To blame the despicable act on a singular factor would be wrong — to commit such an act requires a mind inconceivably twisted.
Still, we have decades of evidence to prove that the high rate of mass shootings in America follows a clear, perverse pattern: When disturbed people have nearly unfettered access to deadly weapons, as they do in this country, death will follow.
It is for this reason that school shootings are as American as hot dogs and fireworks; it is a tragically dark side of our nation’s exceptionalism.
The ubiquity of guns in America created a situation in which the students in Minneapolis seemed deeply shaken, but not totally surprised by the incident. One student, ten-year-old Weston Halsne, told an interviewer that at school, they practiced active shooting drills monthly.
But knowing how to duck doesn’t offer much protection when a shooter can fire 116 rounds in about two minutes. One of the students, Victor, heroically threw himself on top of Weston. That decision of bravery and selflessness, made in a split second, is astounding. Victor was hit, while Weston was not.
A different student, fourth grader June Holine, spoke to CBS News, and said that she was afraid to go to school, knowing that it would probably not happen again, but still worrying that it would. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, right?
As it turns out, however, mass shootings are a lot more common than being struck by lightning. About 7% of U.S. adults report being present in a scene where four or more people were shot, according to a JAMA Network Open study. After the shooting at Michigan State University in 2023, for example, the New York Times interviewed college students there who had also lived through mass shootings in both elementary and high school.
Online and on talk shows, there’s a debate on the value of prayers. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) went on Fox News to chide those who doubt the usefulness of these words. To be clear, I am for praying; when an unfathomably terrible thing happens, it’s only natural to want to seek guidance as to how to move forward in a time when someone you love can’t. But if prayers were enough on their own, they should have worked by now. Those two children would still be alive.
I would like for the politicians who sit back, offering measly prayers and shrugs, to have to look the parents of the deceased in the eye and explain that the supposedly American freedom of carrying an assault weapon is worth more than the freedom of their children to go to school without being murdered.
Instead, these parents are left to write eulogies. They’ve been written for more than two decades, outlined in a sharp pencil that hasn’t dulled, cutting at the heart each time. All eulogies are sad, but the ones of children are uniquely so — they attempt to capture not only who they were, but the infinities of possibilities of who they could’ve been.
Who would these children be if they had come home from school that night to finish the book splayed out on their nightstand, if they grew old enough to have their first loves, to grow wrinkly, to live out their wildest dreams of becoming an astronaut or baseball player or mom? At eight and 10, dreams are another way of saying unrealized plans. We lost two of these infinities last week.
As a writer, I aspire to propose original arguments. I don’t think I’ve done that here. But to swallow these weathered refrains, to choose not to publish this piece because it’s been said countless times before, would imply that this is normal — and that would only add to the tragedy.
The plague of gun violence has ravaged America for too long. And every additional day that it exists, it carries a fatal cost. So we must continue to demand change. Demand change so that all children can lead beautiful, infinite, dream-filled lives. Demand change so that parents don’t have to talk about their deceased child’s love for Harry Potter, like eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel’s did last week.
The last image of this shooting that stays in my mind is a harrowing photo of a mother from behind, running toward the scene, captured by the Minnesota Star Tribune. Nothing, not even her shoes (she runs barefooted, holding them in her hands), her jeans or the threat of death, will stop her from reaching her child.
We do not know her identity. She could’ve been any mother before her, and unless we do something about it, any mother after her.
As the parents of 10-year-old Harper Moyski said at her funeral, “Change is possible, and it is necessary.”
As has been said for decades now, every child in America deserves these protections.
Talia Winiarsky is a rising Weinberg senior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
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