People offer thoughts and prayers after any tragedy. It's the first thing they do, mostly because doing more requires more time and organization. And, in most cases, people understand that. They understand it perfectly well, and no one bats an eye.
After the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, though, we got a reminder that it's only acceptable in the wake of some tragedies.
See, while some have mocked "thoughts and prayers" for some time, it got particularly ugly in the aftermath.
As if the slaughter of children amid screams and shattered stained glass wasn't cause enough for grief, American opinion makers were convulsed once again this week in a debate over the role of prayer in the wake of a mass shooting, this time at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.
Those who support some legal restrictions on guns, often Democrats, say that Republican politicians who appeal to prayer are trying to distract from their own inaction on such things as red flag laws or stricter background checks on gun purchases.
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told a news conference after the shooting, in which an assailant killed two Annunciation students and wounded 18 other people attending Mass.
Of course, it's not like Frey didn't catch criticism for his comments.
Critics, especially on the right, chided the Democratic mayor.
“It is shocking to me that so many left wing politicians attack the idea of prayer in response to a tragedy,” Republican Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, posted on X. “Literally no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action. We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe that God is listening.”
The problem here isn't that Democrats have a problem with thoughts and prayers specifically--oh, many do, but that's not what this is about--it's that they have a problem that our thoughts and prayers won't force us to embrace their so-called solutions.
The preferred policies of many anti-gun lawmakers, mostly Democrats, tend to be soft on criminals and hard on law-abiding citizens. They've resulted in orders of magnitude more deaths than from all the mass shootings in this country's history combined, but those aren't relevant in their mind. Those are just good policies, and shame on you for bringing them up in the wake of some awful tragedy.
But they'll politicize anything and everything when they get a chance, including the fact that pro-gun folks offer their thoughts and their prayers in the aftermath.
Look, my prayers are for the comfort of those who lost people they care about in the attack, because I've been there and I know it hurts. I offer prayers for those injured to heal quickly and completely. I offer prayers that those who were there can find peace in the wake of something indescribable.
And I'm not going to stop because some jackwagon thinks that my refusing to give up my rights because some other jackwagon did something terrible is something that should shame me into silence.
It won't.
They think that our refusal to embrace the things they claim are solutions is some admission that we don't care about anything, but where the hell was Frey telling us how the red flag law Minnesota passed failed to stop this horrific incident? Where was the admission that the killer sought out a gun-free zone where he could kill the innocent? Where was his acknowledgement of gun control's complete and utter failure here?
There's an irony here in people like Frey attacking prayer in the wake of a shooting that took place while the victims were literally praying. It's a sick irony, but it's still irony.
Especially since his policies failed, but he's mad that we pray for the fallen but won't back those same policies.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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