← Bulwark Takes
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Hey everybody, it's Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I am here Today on Wednesday, August 27th to cover some horrifying and tragic news. I am speaking about the deadly shooting that took place earlier today in South Minneapolis at the Annunciation Church involving students there in a Pre K through 8th grade school. This is, you know, part of the American fabric at this point, frankly, that we have school shootings. I think this one in particular though stands out because it is the day that these kids went back to school and that's just horrifying. The numbers are grisly, as these things always are. In this case, the police chief who briefed reporters after the shooting happened said that two children are dead. Kids are 8 and 10. The police chief said that they were shot in the pews. The shooter also is dead. Shooter is believed to be a male in his early 20s. He had a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, according to the police chief. On top of that, 17 people are injured. Fourteen of them are children. Some of the descriptions of the injuries as documented by the Star Tribune, which is Minneapolis's newspaper, are horrifying. Gunshots to the head, people in critical condition, hospitals forced to move rapidly in emergency situations as victims came in. Some other details that just make it even worse. The shooter never actually entered the building, apparently just shot through the windows. There was one part of the briefing that really stood out to me. According to the police chief, the shooter approached the church building and then, as I understood it, put a 2x4 on the outside of the door to barricade the door so that apparently no one could flee outside that specific entry and exit. Basically shooting at them as they sat there. Yeah, this one is really difficult to talk about because I have a kid who's 8, I have a kid who's 5. They are back to school this week. They are. You know, they don't know what's going on. Like, this stuff. They don't. This isn't. You know, this isn't their reality yet, but they're aware that they have to be prepared for stuff like this. There. There's trainings. And as I was scrolling through the Minneapolis Star Tribune's live blog of this event, I. I was just stopped dead in my tracks at the pictures that they posted of the parents who had ran down to the church to get some sort of clarity about what the hell was happening, and obviously to see if their kid was okay. And you could just see the panic and angst on their faces. I can't even fathom how hard that must have been in that moment. And I certainly can't fathom what it's like for the parents of the deceased kids who sent their children off to school for their first day back and their kids are now dead. It's hard to talk about it, honestly. I'm from Connecticut. I'm from about 40 minutes outside of Newtown, Connecticut, which was the site of the Sandy Hook shooting. Obviously, that was a horrific event. It forever shaped our state, that community, the country. I had a very long conversation with Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut about it. He led the efforts to try to pass legislation in the aftermath of it. And what he told me in our conversation, we did this for a podcast I used to have, was just how hard it was to have to confront the parents in the aftermath of it, but how necessary it was for someone in his position to do it. And I remember him telling me about that. And I have to think now, to these parents who are just having to figure out how to move forward with their lives, somehow, I wouldn't know how to do it. I've talked to Fred Guttenberger about this, too. He lost his daughter Jamie in the Parkland school shooting. And he told me about how his surviving son actually wanted to run back into Parkland as the shooting was happened to find Jamie. And Fred was on the phone with him saying, no, you cannot do that. You cannot do that. I can't imagine having that conversation and having to tell my son, don't go back already. You can see how this is playing out in our larger political ecosystem, the hellhole that it is. People rushing to find out whatever information they can on this alleged shooter. You know, people who are saying, well, you know, we need to arm people to the teeth, get these schools, you know, completely militarized. I guess we've got to arm the nuns and the priests in this case because it's a Catholic school, others who are saying, you know, we got to get rid of the guns. And, you know, my viewpoint is there has to be some sort of holistic conversation about this, but guns has to be part of it. Yeah, the guy had a pistol. Sure. He shot with that, and he shot with a rifle. He shot with a shotgun. But any conversation that doesn't include the need to somehow get firearms away from these fucking nut jobs is not a real conversation. So that's where I come down in it. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, was talking about it and obviously, you know, doing what he had to do in the moment to talk about pulling together as community. He made the point that thoughts and prayers in this moment rings a little hollow because they were literally praying when they were shot.
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These were Minneapolis families. These were American families. And the amount of pain that they are suffering right now is extraordinary. Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends. They should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence. And their parents should have the same kind of assurance.
- [07:50]
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Clearly, we have a problem in this country with respect to school shootings. No other society would tolerate this. I don't know how we've come to tolerate it, but someone said, and I forget who it was, that if the killing of those kids in Sandy Hook couldn't prompt our country to do anything about guns, and it didn't, then the debate was essentially over. And I kind of go back and forth on that one. It certainly seems that if we can't collectively recognize that we have a serious problem after you see that much carnage among first graders, then, yeah, it does strike me that maybe we finished the debate and that it's over, but that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't try. And this shooting today in Minneapolis is proof point that we have a problem. We have to deal with it, and our kids shouldn't suffer and their parents shouldn't suffer because of our inability to. To effectuate change. And so I hate doing this video. I really hate it. I've been on TV several times now. It's not tv, obviously, but I've been on Morning Joe several times where I get into the studio and something overnight has happened with regards to a mass shooting. We've had to talk about it. And I think the thing that strikes me, and I guess I'll leave with this point. The thing that really has bothered me is how routine it now feels. And you get into some sort of routine response from a newsroom perspective where you know exactly how to cover it, you know exactly how these press conferences go, you know exactly how the reaction will be both online and in our political ecosystem, and you know exactly how little will be done legislatively to try to fix this. I think that's what burns me the most, in addition to, obviously, the horrible tragedies here, is that we've just become so callous to this stuff, and I wish it wasn't the case, but that is the truth. So we'll stay on the story. Thank you for listening to me rant about this. I'm shaken, obviously, by it, and I feel sickened to think that tomorrow a bunch of people are going to send their kids off to school again and they're going to be worried about whether they're going to see their children again and not wrongly so. Thank you for watching. Appreciate it. Subscribe to our feed if you feel like it, and we will be in touch. Bye.