***** “And let’s be honest about the real issue here: guns. It always comes back to the guns”
{ Sam Hasler; Annunciation parent; 9/3/25}
This post concerns excellent comments made in the 9/3/25 Minnesota Star Tribune. Excerpts follow:
1]. “Annunciation parent: This is not normal And we need to stop pretending it is.”
A] “I’m sad knowing this will happen again – in another school, in another town – and we’ll do it all again. the GoFundMes. the social posts. the trauma interviews.”
B]. “My kids are alive…but my sense of their safety is gone, and I don’t knoe how to get it back.”
C]. “Some politicians – and the people who keep them in power – have decided guns matter more than kids.”
D]. “I’m angry that the Constitution has become a convenient excuse to avoid real solutions.”
E] “But real healing, for me, would mean knowing this won’t happen again – and I don’t believe that. So how am I supposed to heal?”
F]. “How many dead children are we willing to tolerate to protect some notion of freedom?”
G]. “We are not the only country with mental illness. Or social media. Or divided politics. But we are the only one where this happens again and again – and we shrug it off and stall because regulating weapons of war is somehow off the table.”
H]. “If the right to own these guns matters more than children’s right to live, then say that out loud.”
[[Sam Hasler: “Annubciatiin parent; this is not normal”; Minnesota Star Tribune; 9/3/25]
2] “Minnesota Nice, American evil”; David Schultz; Minnesota star Tribune; 9/3/25]
A] “Evil, like the recent shooting and assassinations, festers not only because of individual pathology but because communities fail to confront it.”
B] “The shock is not only that these crimes occurred but that they happened in Minnesota.”
C] “..a convergence of psychological, cultural and structural forces that make Minnesota a case study in how American innocence shatters.”
D]. “The psychology of evil is rarely sudden. It is cumulative, hidden in plain sight.”
E]. “Part of that denial is woven into Minnesota nice.”
F] “Millions suffer from mental illness without harming others. To equate the two is to stigmatize the vulnerable while missing the obvious: So-called “law-abiding citizens” commit acts of domestic abuse, impulsive homicide and suicide every day – with firearms.”
G] “The scale of daily and ignored violence is staggering.”
H] “Evil here is not exotic. It wears familiar faces, lives next door and buys weapons at the same stores as everyone else. Yet we comfort ourselves with denial, focusing only on the mass killers, labeling them insane while ignoring the violence in our family and neighbors.”
I]. “This brings us back to the trinity of evil haunting Minnesota: Chauvin, Boelter, Westman. Each represents a dimension of violence..”
J]. “The lesson is sobering. Evil does not arrive with fanfare. It arrives with a smile, with a shrug, with a neighbor who “almost said something.” Until Minnesota and America find the courage to speak, act and legislate against the forces enabling violence, we will remain trapped in †his cycle. And the tragedies will continue to unfold – here and everywhere.”
[. All it takes for evil to succeed, it for good people to do nothing]
With Justice For All 