Readers Write: Annunciation shooting grief

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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“… at all-school Mass …”

That was the news bite I couldn’t get out of my head all day. If you are a Catholic school student, parent or teacher, you know it well. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kindergartner, high schooler or a college student. If it’s the first week of school, you’re attending all-school Mass. Same goes for All Saints Day, Advent, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, Easter and all the way on through to the last week of school. All-school Mass is the binding force of the school calendar. All-school Mass is what makes a Catholic school, well, Catholic. The word “catholic” literally means “universal.”

On the morning of Aug. 27, parents made lunches and tied new school shoes and braided hair and reminded kids to put on their belt and asked them to please try not to lose that brand-new water bottle. They wrestled them out the door in the nick of time and kissed them at the curb and sent them on their way into school where the first activity of the day, written on the whiteboard with brand-new dry-erase markers, was to attend all-school Mass. So they lined up at the door, boys in their collared polos and girls in their trademark plaid jumpers. Single-file down the hall. Their teacher put a finger to her lips as they entered the sanctuary. Sneakers shuffled into the pews. Kneelers banged to the ground. A snicker erupted. A principal gave the look. Then the best part: the opening song. A loud chorus of unabashed, eager, joyful children’s voices erupted into harmony. (They are so much better at this than the adults, by the way.) And this cheerful, jubilant singing is the sign to the other daily-Mass-goers that school is back! The little people are here again! And they smile and they wink and they give small waves because it’s been a little bit lonely all summer without them. After all, “Let the little children come,” Jesus said.

So this. All of it. This is the sacred ritual that is all-school Mass. This is why when evil rains down on precious babies in our most hallowed space, it is impossible to think of them as anything other than members of our very own family. It could have been any of us because they are all of us. One, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Jenny Nash, St. Paul

What happened at Annunciation Catholic Church last week has left me shaken and feeling helpless. But not hopeless.

Elementary-age children took care of and protected the younger students. If these young people can do this amid the trauma and the terror that was unfolding, we as adults can certainly do our part to make this world a better place.

To start: Be patient — with the slow driver, the older person at the grocery store writing out a check, the crying baby on the airplane, etc. You get the idea. Do random acts of kindness. Spread love. Volunteer. Take the high road. Be the bigger person. You will feel better and so will those around you. Please. We are so much better than this.

Right now, it may seem impossible, but we will laugh again, smile again, celebrate again. We have to. We can’t allow evil to win.

Please help change the world one small act of kindness at a time. As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.”

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Thank you for the poignant article about the victims of the Annunciation mass shooting. The courage and heroism displayed by many of the children and teachers was inspiring. What struck me as appalling, though, was that so many of the victim’s families need to set up fundraising sites online to pay their medical bills. Sadly, mass shootings are alarmingly frequent. Somehow the government should be able to step in and help the families financially after these tragedies, much as the Federal Emergency Management Agency has done for natural disasters.

The simplest, and best, solution would be to modify Medicaid rules to cover all the expenses for the victims, but I don’t expect to see that happening under the current administration. Also, it seems certain that with today’s political climate, we will not be able to curb access to guns and in fact are likely to see current limitations rolled back. So I was thinking: Could we assess a large sales tax on the guns and ammunition most commonly used in mass shootings — maybe 100% — with that tax money going into a dedicated fund for the victims? Sort of a tariff on senseless violence?

Around here, it seems we are always willing to use dedicated taxes to build sports venues for millionaire team owners. Taking care of wounded children strikes me as at least as justifiable. And, if a super high tax (maybe 200%?) on assault rifles deters some people from buying them, so much the better. I don’t pretend to have all the details worked out; that’s what lawyers and politicians are for. But I like it conceptually.

Peter Sandberg, Minneapolis

Dear DFLers: Please do not push for a special session. It feels right to do so; it seems like a way to take effective action, but it isn’t. The DFL does not at this moment hold enough power in the Legislature to enact meaningful — not just “sensible” but effective — gun-related legislation. A special session cannot be limited to a particular topic, and even if the parties agree to do so, there is no way to limit members once the session starts. Antitrans elements within the bodies will push back on existing legislation protecting trans kids. Other unexpected things will happen. Steps will be taken, but they may be steps backward. We’ve had too much of that in recent months.

The smart move on the part of the DFL is to win a couple more districts, then get busy bringing the party in line with a strong plan to reduce gun violence, then put that into effect.

Meanwhile, people wanting better gun laws — and at this point this should be nearly all of us — please don’t yell at the DFL if they wise up and don’t call for a special session. Waiting is the smart move. Patience is a necessary virtue, though not too much patience: Better gun laws are a long time coming and have been needed for decades.

Greg Laden, Plymouth

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School shooters are largely absent of a political ideology. The usual reason provided for these shootings is a need for notoriety. Why notoriety? It seems to me that if you seek notoriety, you must feel invisible, totally unnoticed. I think this is what is happening, and it must be a despairing experience to feel such aloneness. So devastating that guns are picked up, legally or otherwise, in a quest to make the biggest impact possible. So that they will at last be seen and remembered for something.

To simply say that we must find potential shooters, even using artificial intelligence, or to say that these shooters are mentally ill and that we need more mental health facilities, does not get at the underlying problem. Why do these young shooters seek notoriety? That is the question to be identified.

Yes, we need more gun control, but that won’t address the problem of feeling invisible, unnoticed. I do not think these are individual actions apart from society at large. There is something amiss in our culture that leads young people to feel such desperation. This needs to be addressed. Let’s begin the soul-searching there.