Prayers, and Some Thoughts, About the Annunciation School Shooting Yesterday

Duane Patterson 12:30 PM | August 28, 2025
AP Photo/Abbie Parr

It was very early in the morning Wednesday when I first discovered it was going to be a very grisly, depressing, heartbreaking, and infuriating day. 

James Lileks is a dear friend from Minneapolis whose house, Jasperwood, I've had the great fortune over the last couple of decades to visit now and again for a soiree to beat all soirees. James is one of the funniest and quick-witted men I've ever known, but a tweet Wednesday morning from him sounded very ominous. 

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Within minutes, the news broke nationally that there was an active shooter situation unfolding at a Catholic school in the Twin Cities, a whole lot of shots fired, and casualties inside the Church/School's sanctuary. Instinctively, I began to pray for God's intervention and protection. I don't have to see stats to know that I was joined by millions of others, whether they be Protestant, Catholic, or Jew. 

After the shock wave of another horror being visited upon America's schoolkids, the journalist in me kicked into gear to separate the noise from the facts, trying to get to the bottom of who committed the attack, if the situation was still ongoing, whether enough resources were deployed to neutralize the threat, whether the shooter had accomplices, and eventually, discovering the motivation behind the attack. 

Within a few hours, the name, or in this case, names of the shooter, apparently acting alone, were released. Shortly afterwards, it was divulged that the shooter was well-known to the school family there, and his mom worked at Annunciation until she retired in 2021, but continued to volunteer in some capacity. 

Until the names of the shooter and the shooter's online profile were made public, the left - political and media, instantly became 'narrative first responders'. It was disgusting to witness, but entirely predictable. 

As sure as day follows night, as west follows east, guns were to blame. And because guns were to blame, Republicans were to blame, because Republicans haven't done enough to ban them, regardless of what the 2nd Amendment has to say about it.

Evan Perez, CNN's senior justice correspondent, casually threw this out without knowing the first thing of which he was speaking.


Dozens of rounds with a single pull of a trigger. Gosh, that sounds awful. It's like James Cagney had come back to life wielding a Tommy gun, complete with a drum magazine. Did anyone on set - the guest, the host, editors, hell, the custodian, stop to think that we have no clue what the shooter was using before assuming and spouting nonsense like this? Of course, not. 

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who at least theoretically ought to know better, didn't, either. She didn't even make it two sentences in on MSNBC before saying we tried to remove automatic weapons from the streets and impose background checks, and that it's pretty clear this had to be an automatic weapon used, so the proverbial blood is on Republican hands. 


Within an hour, of course, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said that the coward used three guns - a semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. By the afternoon update, we also learned that the shooter had no priors, and had legally purchased those and more weapons he left at home. In short, even if the Republicans would have acceded to Klobuchar's legislative request, it would not have impacted what took place at Annunciation at all. It was ghoulish grandstanding by Klobuchar, and it was vile for her to go there before the condition of those wounded were fully known. 

But turning every crisis into the need for more gun control was only the first phase of the rapid response offered by Democrats and their accomplices in media. 

Phase Two of the response was to declare war on God, and more specifically, war on prayer. Dana Bash on CNN:

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Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis:


This is the Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius move of all time. Take a tragedy that would unite the hearts of 53 million practicing Catholics in the country, around 20% of the U.S. population, and 104 million practicing Protestant Christians, around 40% of the U.S. population, and mock the practice and efficaciousness of prayer in a derisive way. That's how you ingratiate your party back into the mainstream of American politics. 

My heart mourns and aches for the entire school and church community at Annunciation, but most especially for those whose child has been taken away from them. I pray for God's healing and comfort for what is the most unimaginable horror for a parent. 

And this may be a comment that only fellow Believers in Christ will understand. As many shots that were fired by someone with such evil intent, I'm thankful to God that there weren't more casualties than there were. I believe it's nothing short of miraculous that that many vulnerable children all sitting in one place were mostly spared from harm because of God's protection. Prayers do work. They work on you, and they work on those around you in ways you can't possibly fathom at times. But for the left in today's Democratic Party, prayers are worthless. And it's not just the kooks on the fringe saying this. 

Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost offered up this comforting word. 

Charming. 

So National Guard troops deployed to clean up crime, and beautify the District of Columbia by cleaning up the trash is bad, according to the former press secretary for Joe Biden and communications director for Barack Obama? What would she rather have? National Guard troops deployed to arrest mentally ill trans people with homicidal social media profiles? On this, I would have to circle back and say we are in agreement. Your terms are acceptable. 

Before we leave the left's attack on prayer, and by extension, the One that hears and responds to those prayers, this is the same Jacob Frey on June 9th, 2020 at the funeral service for George Floyd.

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So prayers were appropriate then, Jacob? And just curious, to whom were you praying without the same disgust you showed Wednesday? Trust me, we'll come back to Jacob before this column is finished. 

The shooter, it so happens to turn out, is, or was before the coward turned one of the guns on himself, a trans person. He was born male, and got his mom to petition the court when he was 17 to change his name and gender to female. When he pulled the trigger to end the shooting spree by ending his own life, no court decree will be able to alter the fact that there were X and Y chromosomes in the remains on the ground. That disclosure in the news cycle changed the entire arc of how media covered it, or covered it up, as the case turned out to be. 

Phase three of the Democratic response, once gun control and giving God the business by attacking the natural and appropriate response of Believers had been deployed, was to run away from the story. Nothing more to see here. 

MSNBC, along with the rest of the networks, found the YouTube manifestos, such as they were, complete with shocking photos of the shooter with his guns and vile hate written on them. He was anti-God. He was anti-Semitic. He really hated Trump and wanted to kill him. Pretty much, if you wanted to see what left-wing incitement over the last few years could possibly produce, it was embodied in the personage of this young trans killer. Did MSNBC focus on the details and online clues, motivation big enough even Harjinder Singh could drive a truck through? Nah.

By January 7th, 2020, this same crowd in media knew the motivation and intent of everyone involved with the scuffle at the Capitol. They knew and reported what was in all of their hearts, and knew for absolute certainty that Donald Trump had incited them to riot with his violent and hateful rhetoric. And yet, with this shooter, we won't ever know what his reasoning was, so it's time to move along. By Nicolle Wallace's show, they were back to original Trump-hating programming.

On the Alphabet networks' evening newscasts, turning the page while glossing over the salient details was in full order. 

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Somewhere in all of that, the fact the shooter was a mentally ill trans person didn't make the cut. 

Scott MacFarlane, who told you the details about J6 participants down to their shoe sizes, overlooked the trans part. 

And on ABC's World News Tonight, David Muir, who did his best to play blocking tackle for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump in their one and only presidential debate, ignored the background, and hatred, of the shooter. 

The whitewash is on its second coat by now. By morning, you won't hear much of anything more from the Twin Cities. It's disgusting how quickly media gets disinterested in a real story once it doesn't fit their narrative anymore. The human toll doesn't weigh on their decision making one iota. If it doesn't make Trump or Republicans look bad, they go full IowaHawkBlog on X - they smother the story with a pillow until it quits moving. 

I mentioned we would return to Mayor Frey. He seems to be the only one thus far to deploy Phase Four of the Democratic response to a school shooting - ordering you to defend the community from whom the shooter originated. 

You might want to give the guy who's about to have his tail handed to him in Minneapolis' mayoral race by Captain Phillips' kidnapper a break, because he's grieving. But after this press conference, Frey went on CNN with Erin Burnett and doubled down. 

Here's the thing. I know it's all very chic among the left to call Donald Trump Hitler, Nazi, authoritarian, fascistic, dictatorial, and king with every other breath. It doesn't have to be proven so, but that's the narrative, and it increases your Democratic Party base street cred to keep repeating tripe like this. But the true fascist here is Frey telling me, no, demanding that I rally behind those in a lifestyle my faith tells me to avoid. And it's not just that lifestyle. All sexual immorality, meaning any sex outside of marriage, is sin, and we're to avoid it. 

Mayor Frey thinks everyone noting the gender dysphoria of the shooter is engaging in hate. I reject that entirely. The Bible instructs all believers to love the sinner, but hate the sin. Mayor Frey can attempt to tell me what I can and cannot hate, but I answer to a higher authority. I hate the fact that I entertained the thought that Sydney Sweeney looked really good in those jeans. That's something I have to work out with God in prayer. With respect, Mr. Mayor, buzz off. 

To close, here is the real problem Democrats are facing. They love to call for more stringent background checks in order to buy guns. Yet at the same time, the left has de-stigmatized the entire trans lifestyle from being referred to as mental illness. As recent as 2019, the World Health Organization classified trans-expressing people as having a mental illness. There have been six mass shootings in the United States alone committed in the last seven years by trans people. The shooter Wednesday passed his background check and legally owned those guns he used to kill children. If the left had not pushed to change that classification, he would not have passed the background check, and would not have been legally able to buy those weapons. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom ill-advisedly dipped his toe into the online discussion earlier in the day. 

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This ghoul made California the first state in the Union to be a sanctuary state for trans youth. He was fully willing to provide transportation, lodging, and medical expenses at California taxpayer expense for gender dysphoric youth to come to the Golden State, even if it meant without notifying their parents, to have gender reassignment surgery. This is after Newsom made California an abortion sanctuary state as well. Perhaps the well-being of kids is a subject on which he ought to take a seat...silently.

In March, Mayor Frey made a similar declaration about Minneapolis being a sanctuary for trans people.

 
It begs the question, doesn't it? Where is the safe space for Catholic children in your city?

Three days ago at the Democratic National Committee summer meeting in the Twin Cities, after the obligatory land acknowledgement that we're all evil as a nation and stole the land from the Indigenous tribes, Minnesota Attorney General made this proclamation. 

Yeah, that's really going to resonate after seeing who and what decided to prey on a bunch of praying kids. By the way, the DNC meetings? They were abruptly cancelled in light of the shooting. It may be the only sensible thing Chairman Ken Martin has done. By scuttling it, it kept potential video from going viral of someone from the podium saying the Catholic kids deserved what they got. 

You think I'm being harsh, don't you? Have I introduced you to Minnesota's lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan? 

You're probably thinking that this is AI-generated. No politician could possibly be this tone deaf. 

As for her boss, Helicopter Hands himself, Tim Walz at the DNC meetings Monday also chose to list as one of his chief accomplishments as governor of the Gopher State making the place a trans sanctuary state. 

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By the time we got to the afternoon press briefing after the shooting, Walz appeared to not want to make the situation worse, but had no earthly, or Heavenly, idea how to offer up words of comfort. 


A wish that words could make it better? He's in front of a Catholic Church that just had over a dozen children shot, two of them fatally, and wishes is all he has? Then he refers to the church/school as founded on community, service, and family? Most churches I'm familiar with, at least Scripturally sound ones, are founded on saving faith in Jesus Christ. And it's that saving faith and grace that helps get through days like this. But the Governor doesn't seem to have it in him to embrace or talk about faith. As his comments droned on, he did a drive-by on thoughts and prayers, but it was part of a word salad at that point. Tim Walz cannot offer words of comfort, because he doesn't appear to have any understanding of the One that is the ultimate Comforter. 

I hope God moves in Walz' heart, too. That's an earnest prayer that could result in all sorts of good things down the road. Until such time, Walz said there shouldn't be words for times like this, because times like this should not happen. I couldn't agree more. 

Oh, did I mention that for two years, while Walz was busy rolling out the normalizing red carpet for trans people with mental illness, he also could have approved a direct request to beef up security at Independent and Catholic schools? Alas, Walz turned down that request. Had he not rejected that request, would this shooter have attacked a more hardened target of opportunity? Maybe. Might he have been met with a response faster than an overtaxed police force several minutes after the bullets started flying? Almost certainly. Might lives have been spared? That's a question Governor Walz should be asking himself in the mirror every day. That's a question any respectable reporter should also be asking him. But they won't. 

We already know, thanks to Donald Trump, what the Democrats are now for: Hamas terrorists, Iran, crime, criminals, illegal immigration, teenage gangs, shoplifting, government shutdowns if they'll prevent crackdowns on crime, human smuggling, MS-13, Tren de Aragua, unions controlling schools instead of parents, higher energy prices, high-density housing, higher taxes, boys playing in girls' sports, and a whole lot more. Wednesday, because of the events in Minneapolis, we can now add that Democrats are also anti-God, anti-faith, and anti-prayer. 

And yet, I will still pray for every one of them while simultaneously fighting against what they represent. I will continue to pray for those deceived by the trans lifestyle, and that God will lift the fog from their eyes and draw them to Him. And yet I will also work at the same time to prevent those on the left seeking political opportunity at the expense of trans people from coarsening the culture further. 

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