Zioness is horrified and heartbroken by today’s shooting in Minneapolis, where Catholic children were gunned down during prayer. We share deepest sympathies with the families who lost a child, and with all the children at Annunciation, in Minneapolis, and across this country—those physically injured and those whose psychological wounds may never heal.
In a country where “thoughts and prayers” have become a hollow refrain after every mass shooting, children engaging in sacred prayer were yet again targeted in a mass shooting and act of domestic terrorism. America suffers from mass shootings on a scale and frequency that compares to no other country on earth. Thoughts and prayers would be welcome—if they were accompanied by gun violence prevention policies that protect innocent children from high capacity weapons of war.
It cannot be ignored that the shooter espoused murderous antisemitic, anti-Zionist ideologies—like other mass shooters targeting Black parishioners in Charleston, Hispanic immigrants in El Paso, Jewish congregants in Pittsburgh, Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, high schoolers in Parkland, LGBTQ clubgoers in Orlando—and the list goes on and on.
Antisemitism is a malignant and metastatic form of bigotry that intersects with every other form of hate to endanger us all—and it is a threat we must fight together as a shared society.
We are also outraged to see people and publications amplifying the shooter’s transgender identity to direct more anti-trans hate and target the trans community—which is already experiencing extreme and unacceptable marginalization.
If we want to prevent future mass shootings, future domestic terrorist attacks, and future violence against children in America, our focus should be on understanding motives, addressing mental health, confronting hateful ideologies, opposing the normalization and even glorification of extremist violence in our society, and enacting policies that limit access to weapons of mass murder.
Our elected officials, no matter their party, must find the courage and conviction to do more, to fight the urge to let this be just another mass shooting. The American people, of every political, racial, religious and socioeconomic background, deserve a country where deranged, hate-filled individuals can no longer access firearms to murder any innocent people in prayer—let alone children.