Prominent Minnesota Democrats at the state and national level are leveraging the tragedy that unfolded at Annunciation Catholic School to push for new gun bans. The move is being deemed extremely cynical by opponents of the bill, particularly when the same people making these demands mocked the students earlier for praying.
For context, Annunciation was the site of a shooting Wednesday, August 27th when a single person opened fire from the exterior of the building and through windows where both students and adults were gathered for Mass. The identity of the shooter has been a focal point of conservative reactions, noting that the shooter, who went by the name Robin, self-identified as a transgender individual. Mainstream media outlets and Democrat politicians have downplayed or outright ignored this aspect, instead focusing only on the type of weapon carried out by the individual.
Representative Ilhan Omar was one of those people, appearing on CNN saying it was “unfortunate” that people were even mentioning the transgender identity of the shooter. She was reacting to a comment which said the shooter’s identity was central to the investigation, as it appears a large part of their motivation was in response to struggle with it.
After downplaying the identity of the shooter, and expressing disinterest in figuring out what exactly caused this person to carry out such a horrific shooting, Omar stated what she and Democrats are interested in, namely more gun bans. “One is to make sure that we are getting rid of assault weapons in our community,” she told the host on CNN.
Omar went on to explain that addressing “mental illness” was important, without offering much detail, before saying it was “ time for us to come together and figure out what the actual solutions are, so that there are no more dead angels in our communities.” Whereas Omar and her allies think removing guns from law-abiding citizens keeps kids safe from criminals, who by definition don’t follow the law, conservatives suggest that schools no longer be soft targets and include their own armed security measures.
Watch her appearance on CNN below:
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey also weighed in on the topic in the days following the shooting. He was less measured in his response, simply shouting to reporters that bans needed to happen. “We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons! We need a statewide and a federal ban on high capacity magazines!” he declared.
Frey continued in the press conference, explaining: “There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload. We’re not talking about your father’s hunting rifle here. We’re talking about guns that are built to pierce armor and kill people. Why do we have them coming in by the trunk loads onto our streets around the country? And this is not just about Minneapolis, because you can buy an assault rifle in Milwaukee, and that assault rifle is in Minneapolis by noon that very same day.”
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video