An F in Humanity: The Minneapolis Shooting and the Shitty Brown Stain of Shame

6 minutes read time

Let’s be clear. This is not another news story. This is an indictment. This is a eulogy for a nation’s soul. On Wednesday morning, as children aged 8 and 10 sat praying in the pews of Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, a gunman fired 116 rounds from a high-powered rifle through the stained-glass windows, slaughtering them where they sat. This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is an unavoidable act of fate. This was a predictable, preventable, and uniquely American act of ritual child sacrifice, the latest entry in a 25-year-long litany of our nation’s most profound and unforgivable failure. The United States is the only industrialized country on Earth that has this problem consistently, over and over and over again. And for three decades, we have been screaming the same damn thing, and NO ONE IS FUCKING LISTENING.

The Agony of the Sane Response

In the immediate aftermath of the Minneapolis massacre, we witnessed the agonizing and all-too-familiar dance of a sane government attempting to function in an insane system. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, his voice heavy with grief and fury, immediately called for a special legislative session to consider tougher gun laws. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, his anger palpable, demanded the power to enact the city’s own gun restrictions, pleading, “If you’re not able to do it, or willing to do it there, give us the ability to keep our constituents safe.” These are the rational, logical, and minimally decent responses of leaders who have just seen children murdered in their community. They are talking about assault weapons bans, safe storage laws, and red flag laws—the very policies that a vast majority of Americans support and that have been proven to work in every other civilized nation.

But we know how this story ends, because we have seen it a hundred times before. The sane response will be met with the cynical political calculus of a divided legislature. The Republican leadership will offer their hollow “thoughts and prayers,” they will deflect to the red herring of “mental health,” and they will block any meaningful action from ever reaching a vote. The effort in Minnesota is doomed before it even begins, not because the solutions are unknown, but because one of our two political parties has been taken hostage by a death cult that values the theoretical freedom to own a weapon of war more than the actual, living reality of a child.

The Insanity of the Cynical “Solution”

As Minnesota wrestles with its grief and its political impotence, the state of Tennessee is offering the nation a glimpse into the depths of this moral and intellectual bankruptcy. This is the state that ranks sixth in the nation for gun deaths, a state where a child is 37% more likely to be killed by a gun than the national average. This is the state that, in the last few years, has systematically dismantled its gun safety laws, legalizing permitless carry, allowing more guns on school grounds, and banning red flag laws. And this is the state whose “solution” to this self-inflicted carnage is to now mandate gun safety training for five-year-olds.

Let the sheer, breathtaking stupidity and cruelty of that sink in. A political class that has “expressly abolished safety classes for adults who want to carry concealed weapons,” in the perfect and damning words of State Senator Jeff Yarbro, has now decided to shift the entire burden of gun safety onto the shoulders of kindergartners. They are not asking adults to be more responsible; they are asking children to be more vigilant. They are teaching a five-year-old to identify a “trigger, a barrel, and a muzzle,” a curriculum of pure, unadulterated madness.

The only sane response is to teach a five-year-old that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THEY TOUCH OR HANDLE A GUN OF ANY KIND. The Tennessee solution does the opposite. It normalizes the weapon. It tells a child that a gun is a neutral object, a tool that can be handled safely if you just know the parts. It is a lie, a dangerous and deeply irresponsible abdication of the most basic duty of any society: to protect its children. It is a policy designed not to save lives, but to protect the gun lobby from any meaningful regulation. It is a moral abomination.

The Bankrupt Argument and a National Failure

For three decades, the response to this carnage has been a single, intellectually bankrupt, and morally reprehensible mantra: “It’s not the guns, it’s the people.” BULLSHIT. If people are the problem, then why are you letting “the problem” have guns??? This is the question that exposes the entire lie. There is no coherent answer. It is a circular, bad-faith argument designed to shut down debate and ensure that nothing ever changes.

And the complicity in this failure runs deep. Democrats and Republicans alike have, for a generation, failed to find the political courage to confront this issue with the seriousness it demands. How many more names must be added to that brutal, 25-year-long list of school massacres before we, as a nation, finally ask the most difficult and necessary question of all: at what point does the Second Amendment become a suicide pact? How many of our children have to be sacrificed on its altar before we admit that the blood cost is too high? How deep does the pain have to go?

An F in Humanity

We, as a nation, are failing. The outrage we see this week over a list that may not exist, a Senator’s engagement, and the weekly college football polls—this is the grotesque and pathetic reality of our national priorities. We have become a people who are more passionate about protecting a brand than about protecting our children. Our national refusal to force this issue, our decline in marching and protesting against this specific, recurring violence, our complete and total inability to hold our elected officials accountable—it colors our country not in red, white, and blue, but in the shitty brown stain of shame.

We have earned an F in citizenship. We have earned an F in civility. We have earned an F in humanity. The time for thoughts and prayers and political cowardice is over. It is time to stand the fuck up and demand that we do something, and that we do it NOW, the president and the NRA be damned. The alternative is to simply accept that we are a failed state, a nation content to wash the blood of its own children from the floors of their schools and churches, and then wait for the next, inevitable massacre.