Minneapolis Mass Shooting Regnites School Safety Policy Discussions

Two children were killed and 17 others were injured when a shooter opened fire during a morning mass for a Catholic school in Minneapolis, the nation later delegating the tragedy and the debate reviving on the means of preventing such horror in the future.

“This kind of violence is very recent. It is a new thing in human history,” said secretary for health and social services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during an interview Thursday morning on “Fox & Friends”. “There was no time in the past where people entered a church or classroom and started to shoot people. And that does not really happen in other countries. This happens here, and we must examine all the potential culprits that could contribute to it.”

The FBI investigates the shooting, which the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, called “an act of domestic terrorism and crimes of hatred targeting Catholics”, while officials of the Trump administration offer prayers and seek means to fight against the continuous crisis of mental health of the country.

John Lott, the founder and president of the Prevention Research Center crime, told Fox News Digital of some of the main variables involved in such shots, including the killers seeking to attract as much media attention as possible by targeting areas where people are not armed.

Melania Trump calls for a preventive intervention in identifying potential school shooters ”

Ann Stovner kneels by a fortune memorial at the Annunciation Catholic Church on August 28, 2025, after a school that turned the day before in Minneapolis. (Abbie Parr / AP Photo)

“You have read these manifests and these newspapers. Again, these guys know they are going to commit suicide,” said Lott. “They know where they believe they are going to die. People have always wanted to commit suicide, but somewhere along the line, people who did not feel appreciated, who did not think that people knew how much they were a great person or something else, realized that they could attract national and international attention by killing a lot of people.”

The Minneapolis shooter committed suicide during the raising on Wednesday morning.

“They know that if they go to a place where their victims are defenseless, they will be able to kill more people and attract more attention from the media,” said Lott. “And so the thing to stop these attacks is to withdraw this notoriety that they can get.”

Lott has long called for the erasure of “unarmed areas” and said that the Trump administration had the possibility of “hardening” schools by removing such areas, as well as signs designating them, which essentially announce that no one inside an installation has a firearm.

Instead, said Lott, common schools and other “soft targets” should install panels noting that some teachers and staff are armed with hidden weapons to protect students and others.

The Wednesday shooting on Wednesday at the Annunciation Catholic Church took place while the young students of the parish school of the church attended mass during their first week in the classrooms. The tragedy finally left two children, aged 8 and 10, dead and 17 other students and injured people.

The firearms used by the shooter of the school of the church of Minneapolis, Robin Westman, were bought legally, according to the police

The members of the community kiss after a shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School on August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis. (Alex Kormann / Star Tribune via AP)

Police identified the shooter like Robin Westman, 23, who would have used a legally purchased trio of firearms, including a rifle, a pistol and a hunting rifle, to devastate.

The judicial files previously reported by Fox News show that a minor of Minneapolis named Robert Westman acquired a legal name change in Robin Westman in 2019. Patel confirmed that the shooter was born Robert and then identified as Robin.

Local police also said that they were aware that the shooter had published a manifesto on YouTube, although the video was withdrawn and was the subject of an investigation.

The White House held a press conference on Thursday in which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Kennedy’s health and social services were investigating the potential bonds of prescription drugs for mass tragedies, and that the health branch of the federal government had focused on the country’s mental health problems.

“I know that the Secretary of Health and Social Services said this morning that HHS may investigate links between some of these drugs and these prescription drugs that some of these minors can increase violence,” said Leavitt. “And obviously, we have mental health problems in this country that this administration and secretary Kennedy will continue to express themselves and the work we do to resolve it.”

In response to Kennedy who made a potential link between shots and certain prescription contribution, the main advisor in America First Legal Ian Prior told Fox Digital that the conservative group discovered the FDA “Documents showing the government knew that puberty blockers increase depression and suicidal thoughts. “”

“However, they have always pushed them on vulnerable children. We flood children of drugs who destabilize their minds – blockers from puberty to the SSRI – then acting surprised when tragic violence bursts,” he said. “Instead of protecting children, federal regulators have created a generation struggling with the instability that endangers themselves and the public. If we want to end mass fire, we must face these underlying causes.”

Karoline Leavitt said that Kennedy’s health and social services were investigating the potential bonds of prescription drugs with mass tragedies, and that the federal government’s health branch has focused on the country’s mental health problems. (Cell Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)

The senior legal woman of the Heritage Foundation, Amy Sweater, told Fox News Digital that the Trump administration should end the next historical and “absurd” stages on the control of firearms in reaction to school fire because it extinguishes the next steps to fight against these tragedies.

“Focusing on this through the objective of controlling firearms is generally not conducive to problem solving here, especially when we are talking about school shooters in particular,” said Sweater.

“Generally, when we see school shooters, you have either minor people, who cannot legally buy firearms, who take them from parents or other family members,” she continued. “Or you are dealing with individuals as we have seen in Minneapolis, who enters the wider category of public adult mass shooters, who, unfortunately, is not that they were prohibited from people who bypass our laws. … It is that they were still unstable, showed signs of danger for themselves or others, but had not yet committed a congratulations or a disqualizing infringement.”

The twins denounce a fatal shooting at the Catholic Church of Minnesota as a “incomprehensible” attack

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, is sitting on the Schools of the Annunciation church while the police responded to a mass shooting reported on August 27, 2025, in Minneapolis. (Abbie Parr / AP Photo)

Democratic legislators came out in force to express support for additional firearms control after the shooting while denouncing “armed violence” and “weapons of war” in the American streets.

“I am horrified by the shooting of the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis and on monitoring the situation. Chuck SchumerDN.Y., wrote on X. “Students and teachers should not put their lives in play simply by returning to school. We have to do more to stop armed violence in America.”

“Pray for children, families and the first speakers during this moment of unimaginable terror and sorrow,” said the minority chief of Hakeem Jeffries, Dn.y., about the tragedy. “Weapons of war have no place in our neighborhoods, our streets or our schools.”

Police work on the scene following a mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School on August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis. (Getty Images)

Like Lott, Sweater said that “soft targets” such as unarmed school zones are often practical by mass shooters, because criminals can make more deadly attacks of their victims. She called for schools and other “soft targets” to at least have the possibility of protecting herself.

“There is a general rule: hard targets protect people,” she said.

Lott added that the “objectives” of a killer should be removed from them if mass shooting tragedies should never be considerably reduced.

Click here to obtain the Fox News app

“The way you remove your goal is to have someone there quickly, or they believe that someone is quickly there to be able to stop them before they can kill many people,” he said. “I forced myself to read their intimate newspapers and their manifests, and repeatedly, they say:” If I can only kill people than such, I can attract even more attention from the media. I can get my name in history books. “”