Some thoughts on the Minneapolis school shooting

On the morning of Aug. 27, I attended Mass with my two youngest children at the Catholic Church where they attend school. You could sense among the parents, children, and teachers the excitement, nervousness, and anticipation associated with the first days of school. After Mass, I gave my kids a hug before they gathered their bookbags and headed to school. I left feeling happy and gratified for my children and their wonderful Catholic school. 

Soon after I got to my office, I learned the horrific news about the deadly school shooting at the all-school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Early on, we all learned that two young children had been shot and killed. The gunman also injured 18 other schoolchildren and three senior citizens attending the Mass and killed himself at the scene. Later, we learned that the shooter was a 23-year-old young man who identified as a transgender female and had graduated from the school in 2017. 

Since the Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colo., in 1999, where two high school seniors took the lives of 13 of their fellow students and one teacher, there have been hundreds of school shooting events in the United States. Sadly, we are all too familiar with some of the higher profile names—Sandy Hook (Cont. 2012), Parkland (Fla. 2018), Uvalde (Texas 2022), Covenant School (Tenn. 2023), and now, Annunciation School (Minn. 2025). 

All these school shootings are terrible tragedies. Mothers and fathers drop their children off at school in the morning, only to learn later in the day that one of their most precious gifts from God had been taken from them by the senseless and cowardly action of a deranged person. My heart breaks for the children, parents, teachers, and others affected by these school shootings. 

Why do these school shootings keep happening? Many things come to mind—a secularized culture that rejects God, too easy access to guns, the breakdown of the family, rising cases of mental illness in young people, an epidemic of isolated young men filled with despair and anger, and a culture of death that disregards the value of human life.  

While we should exercise caution in trying to point out just one cause, there are some contributing factors that seem just plain obvious in the case of the Annunciation school shooting that any reasonable person should be able to recognize.  

First, it was too easy for the shooter to obtain a military-style assault weapon and high-capacity magazines. The shooter used a legally purchased AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity ammunition magazines, which allowed him to fire more rounds without stopping to reload in just a two-minute period, increasing the number of victims. Investigators discovered three used shotgun shells at the scene, but the overwhelming majority of shots fired into the Church (116 rounds) came from the assault rifle. 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has long supported a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as part of a broader call for common-sense gun control measures to curb gun violence. While the Church respects the right of citizens to own firearms, weapons that are increasingly capable of inflicting great suffering on large numbers of people in a short period of time are simply too accessible. Semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines are effectively weapons of war, so that making them easily accessible to civilians is opposed to our duty to promote the common good, protect human life, and preserve peace in society.  

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but like most rights it is not absolute. Public safety demands common-sense limits on gun ownership that allow communities to live without fear of violence at church, school, work, or in other areas of daily life. By way of comparison, the First Amendment protects free speech, but it is not an absolute right either. It does not allow a person to engage in defamatory or fraudulent speech or to cry “fire” in a crowded theater for amusement. Similarly, the right to religious freedom under the First Amendment has guardrails that prohibit harmful religious practices like human sacrifice, polygamy, use of illicit drugs, or violent attacks on non-believers. 

Second, the Minneapolis school shooting cannot simply be chalked up to easy availability of dangerous firearms. Deeper spiritual and cultural causes led to the shooter’s violent behavior. The young man was angry, deeply troubled, and in the grip of a dangerous ideology. The shooter, born male but identifying as a female, ensnared by the delusions and psychopathology of the trans movement, made a desperate bid for attention through a hateful act of violence against Catholic schoolchildren. The young man was profoundly conflicted over identifying as a woman. After the incident, investigators discovered that he had left behind a manifesto in which he wrote that he was “tired of being trans” and wished he had not “brainwashed myself” into being trans. He wrote he could not cut his long hair, meant to make him look female, “as it would be an embarrassing defeat.” The shooter also wrote, “I know I am not a woman, but I definitely don’t feel like a man.”  

To be clear, the vast majority of persons who consider themselves transgender do not commit public acts of violence. It would be wrong to paint all transgendered persons with such a broad brush. The Church insists that all persons who are confused about their gender must be treated with compassion, kindness, charity, and respect, and therefore opposes any form of hatred, violence, or unjust discrimination toward them.  

Even so, the Church adamantly opposes the trans movement as a false and dangerous ideology that is wreaking havoc in our culture. It is aggressively promoted by academia, the media, popular culture, and a politicized medical establishment, and often fosters in those who consider themselves “trans” a sense of victimhood, resentment, and even hatred toward those who do not accept these lies. But the idea that one can be born in the wrong body or transition to the opposite sex is a metaphysical and biological impossibility. The human person is not a soul trapped in a body, but rather a body/soul unity, made either male or female. While our Christian faith reveals that human beings are created male or female (Gen. 1:27), it is also obvious according to the order of nature. Gender ideology, however, denies this reality and convinces vulnerable young people they can transition to the opposite sex by presenting themselves as the opposite sex, taking puberty blockers, receiving cross-sex hormones, and undergoing sex-change surgeries. Instead of helping troubled young people, these ideological falsehoods and medical mutilations compound and exacerbate their mental health issues and inner conflict.  

Let’s pray for wisdom, courage, and truth in our leaders and in our communities as we grapple with these difficult issues in the wake of another school shooting. In the midst of our pain and sorrow, we should heed the hopeful words of Archbishop Hebda of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, after the Annunciation tragedy: “While we need to commit to working to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies, we also need to remind ourselves that we have a God of peace and of love, and that it is his love that we will need most as we strive to embrace those who are hurting so deeply.”