Opinion | Beyond ‘thoughts and prayers,’ what are we doing about the gun violence epidemic? Not much.

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The tragic mass shooting Wednesday at Annunciation Church in south Minneapolis, coming on the heels of other shooting fatalities in the city over the past few days, and the proliferation of killings around the nation, has elicited ineffectual lip service and equally ineffective action from President Donald Trump and his administration.

While disappointing, that dual disinterest is not surprising as the president is adhering to his campaign pledge to do nothing to curb widespread gun availability and, by extension, gun violence. Promise made, promise kept.

The president has framed his sending of military troops into Washington — and his hankering to do so in other cities like Chicago and, perhaps, eventually Minneapolis — as a means of curbing crime, including gun violence. But those efforts do not address the fundamental problem of the virtually uninhibited availability of firearms and ammunition, accompanied with encouragement by commercial interests and some legislative bodies and at executive levels, too, to obtain and deploy these weapons.

Otherwise, his cliche about his empathy for the victims and directing the flying of the flag at half mast looks like about all that he will do to address the pervasiveness of the problem.

But the president is not alone in not doing anything effective about the epidemic of gun violence, joined by his subordinates and complicit courts. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice has proposed rolling back some existing measures on the books such as restrictions on gun possession that could impact domestic violence abusers.

The Minnesota Supreme Court, for its part, earlier this month came up with its own ruling invalidating the restriction on “ghost guns” under state law, an ill-advised departure from the decision of its federal counterpart.

Many of the court rulings have picked up on the “historical tradition” canard promulgated by Justice Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court case three years ago entitled New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Joined by his five conservative colleagues, he concocted a novel doctrine to assess the validity of limitations on firearm regulation. It invoked as a measuring rod whether particular restrictions are akin to those in place in 1791 when the Second Amendment provision “to keep and bear arms” became part of the Constitution, a time when assault rifles another rapid-firing weapons of mass destruction were unknown.

Under that rubric, several courts have stricken state laws restricting purchase or possession of firearms by youths under age 21, including a ruling of the federal district court here in the Twin Cities two years ago, which was affirmed by the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court declined this spring to review it.

So the beat — and the fatalities —go on with a shooting du jour, encompassing elected officials, first responders, churchgoers, estranged spouses, students and educators, and a host of other civilians.

At least some GOP/MAGA solons have muted that ineffectual cliche that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the firearm victims and loved ones. Even a few of them are coming to the realization that this nonsensical nostrum is hardly of solace in lieu of concrete action to reduce gun violence.