When Americans were confronted Wednesday with a headline that has become all too familiar – another U.S. mass shooting – the news was fraught with unthinkable horror: The victims were mostly children, obediently sprinkled throughout the Catholic church pews at a Mass celebrating their first week back at school in Minnesota.
Mass shootings, it seems, take place everywhere – on college campuses, in public parks, at house parties, mobile home parks and warehouse stores. But the morning attack at Minneapolis’ Annunciation Church seemed to plumb unusually heinous depths of cruelty, even as crimes driven by religious bias continue to rise.
“It hits so hard because children haven’t had a chance to live their full lives,” said Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It calls us all to think about how fragile life is, particularly in a day and age where random violence is so prevalent. It really breaks your heart.”
Two children, 8 and 10, were fatally shot in the attack, while 14 of the 17 others injured were also children, two were left in critical condition.
“We are horrified and devastated by yet another school shooting,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “This doesn’t need to keep happening. Our children, and all of us, deserve to live free from gun violence.”
