Mirror of Society

The unthinkable has happened, and now we know that we are not safe even in the most sacred spaces in the United States.

I’m referring, of course, to the terror attack at Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis this August, when Robert Westman, a “transgender” former student of the parish school, unleashed a barrage of gunfire through a stained-glass window on the nearly full nave during a school Mass. He shot 21 people, 18 of them children, before turning his gun on himself. Two young innocents died in the attack: eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel and ten-year-old Harper Moyski. May God grant them eternal rest.

As was to be expected, in the days that followed, the monstrous incident was presented as yet another example of why we need greater gun control. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wasted no time in calling a special legislative session to vote for more restrictions. Yes, there are too many guns getting into the hands of the wrong people. According to the Gun Violence Archive (GunViolenceArchive.org), there were 503 mass shootings in the United States in 2024 (with mass shootings defined as those in which four or more people are injured or killed). Such shootings have escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking at 689 in 2021. Gun violence is a pandemic of its own sort. And there’s no sanctuary from it. A mass shooting could happen to any one of us, anywhere, at any time. We’re not safe even in the sanctuaries of our churches.

Yet there is legitimate debate about the effectiveness of gun control. Some states with restrictive gun laws, such as Illinois and Maryland, have high rates of gun homicides. The city with one of the highest rates of gun violence, Chicago, has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation. Meanwhile, Westman, 23, had no prior criminal record, and all the weapons he used were legally purchased. “There is no simple correlation of gun control severity and violence rates,” said Gary Kleck, emeritus professor of criminology at Florida State University. The U.S. Congress passed the Gun Control Act in 1968. Ask yourself: Are we safer in this country since then? Pushing for greater restrictions, though important, is just tinkering around the edges of the problem.