Earlier this year, the Trump administration launched a crusade to address falling birth rates in the United States, which they and other conservatives view as a matter of grave concern.
In order to galvanize families, and women in particular, into having more kids, they proposed everything from $5,000 birthing bonuses to menstruation classes, so people could better track their ovulation cycles – instead of universal childcare, or other forms of study-backed, government-subsidized assistance.
And none of their proposals involved protecting our children from the gun violence that continues to plague the U.S., to a degree unheard of anywhere else in the world.
We’ve been reminded, this week, of how dangerous our schools are because of this problem, by a gutting mass shooting in Minneapolis. As of publication, two children died – ages 8 and 10 – and 17 people were injured when suspect Robin Westman (who also died, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound) opened fire during a morning mass at the city’s Annunciation Catholic School.
Of the 17 who were hurt, 14 were kids. Some of them were as young as 6 years old.
“These were American families,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a press briefing. “Don’t just say this is about ‘thoughts and prayers’ right now. These kids were literally praying.”
Yet that’s largely what conservatives, including President Donald Trump, had to offer in the wake of the attack. “Please join me in praying for everyone involved,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, with Vice President JD Vance offering a similar call. “My prayers are with everyone involved in this tragedy,” Attorney General Pam Bondi also posted.
The solution to our gun-violence epidemic should be to pass more stringent gun laws. Experts have found that the sheer tonnage of guns available in the U.S., and the ease with which they can be purchased, makes ours a deadlier, more dangerous nation to live in. And study after study has shown that gun violence could be curbed significantly through policy prescriptions.
But for this particular shooting, after praying for peace, conservatives found an alternative scapegoat: Transgender people. Despite the fact that the vast majority of mass shootings are committed by cisgender men, Westman was a trans woman, so some are using this shooting to further anti-trans agendas.
Attacking a community that is already subject to extreme discrimination, while refusing to enact legislation that would see gun violence lessened, and then offering boiler-plate calls for prayer in the aftermath… None of this does anything to actually help the children they claim to want, the children they claim to care about.
None of this helped 10-year-old Weston Halsne, who survived the Minneapolis shooting because his equally-young friend shielded him from gunfire, and was injured in the process. “It was like, shots fired, and then we kind of, like, got under pews,” he recalled to members of the press. “They shot through the stained glass windows I think, and it was really scary.”
Weston added that was praying for his friend’s recovery – because it’s the only recourse he, a traumatized child, has in the U.S., where people with the power to enact laws that would protect children from shootings like this fail to do so over and over again.
Conservative politicians and pundits continue to pressure women to bring more lives like Weston’s into this world, into this country – while at the same time demonstrating a refusal to even try to keep them safe. Over 400 school shootings have taken place in the U.S. since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, with dozens killed, hundreds injured and thousands traumatized by these attacks.
Vance took to X to defend calls for prayer the morning after the Minneapolis shooting. “Literally no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action,” he posted. “We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe that God is listening.” But they aren’t taking action that could turn this tide. They have opted, once again, to assign blame to anyone besides themselves, and then to pray in the aftermath of tragedies their inaction permitted. All before they go back to calling for more children to be born – to replace the ones we’ve lost to their cowardice, one supposes.
There is an African proverb this situation evokes, one that prominent civil rights activist and former Rep. John Lewis often evoked: “When you pray, move your feet.” Our leaders would do well to heed those words. ◼️
