As students across the country return to school, a mass school shooting in Minneapolis has again reignited debates about the proliferation of guns in the U.S., campus security — and youth embrace of violent online extremism.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz this week announced plans to convene a special legislative session to consider tougher gun laws in the wake of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting that took place while students attended an annual Mass to kick off the new academic year. Two children were killed and 21 people, 18 of them students, were injured.
Vice President JD Vance and his wife went to the church Wednesday, met with the parents of the two slain children and visited one of the hospitalized young survivors. The injured girl’s father, Harry Kaiser, questioned Vance on whether he would “earnestly support the study of what is wrong with our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem?”
As has happened in shooting after shooting, attention quickly turned to the assailant’s online presence as people sought to understand what could motivate such a heinous act. On social media, unfounded claims about the shooter’s motives — from anti-Christian hate to the radicalization of transgender people — reached millions of eyeballs…