​Fighting insanity with sanity

By Ed Raymond

Congratulations! A world record held by Trumplican Party and NRA!

During the Minnesota Legislature’s discussion of gun controls, Republican State Senator Drew Roach of Farmington said he would never ban assault weapons such as the AR-15 or ban high-capacity magazines because gun ownership and the Second Amendment is a “God-given right.” He didn’t say where he found this directive in the Bible approved by God or when God informed him by text that He blessed distribution of military weapons with high-capacity magazines and 100-round drums to everyone who wanted one. I wonder if Roach would still insist on his position if he had witnessed the assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut in 2012 when Adam Lanza murdered 20 first graders, the principal, and five teachers.

Here is a quick summary of one of the worst school shootings in history — so far: Twenty-year-old Lanza, who had several mental health issues, used one of the firearms, a 22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle his mother had bought for him, to murder her in her home with four rounds to her head. He then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary, fired 154 rounds from an AR-15 Model Bushmaster XM15-E-2S in less than five minutes.

First, he shot out a window next to a locked security door to enter the school. He shot the principal and school psychologist who challenged him. In a first-grade classroom, a teacher tried to hide students in the bathroom. A lawman later stated the room was the worst murder scene he had ever witnessed. Students and teachers were piled on each other and human flesh and blood were splattered everywhere. One male student had been hit with eleven rifle rounds.

Lanza also carried two pistols, a Glock 20SF and a Sig Sauer P226 9mm, and several hundred rounds of ammunition in high-capacity magazines. He used the Glock to kill himself in the school. In the trunk of his mother’s Honda Civic he also had a semi-automatic Izhmash Saiga 12-gauge shotgun.

One six-year-old girl survived by hiding in the corner of the classroom under a desk. She later told her mother: “Mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead!” The school was demolished in 2014 and a new school was built on the site.

The United States is the world’s champion of school shootings

Researchers at the World Population Review traced school shootings in the world between 2009 and 2018 and labeled the Divided States of America the world’s champion, with an overwhelming lead of 288 school shootings over second-place Mexico, which had eight. Other countries in the survey include South Africa (six), Nigeria and Pakistan (four), Afghanistan (3), and Russia, China, Germany and Turkey with one school shooting each.

The estimates for school shootings between 2019 and 2025 range up to 300 incidents because criteria differ with researchers. There were also school shootings in Serbia and Czech Republic in 2023, and one in Austria in 2025. The U.S. averages about 87 school shootings per year. Most school shooters are motivated by mental illness, depression, bullying, and a desire for recognition.

The Violence Project’s K-12 School Shooting Database counts incidents where a firearm is brought to school, or brandished, or is on school property as a school shooting incident. In both 2022 and 2023, more than 300 incidents were logged, including those that closed the schools for a day or several days. In 2023 there were guns fired in 137 incidents.

We started to have serious firearm problems in the early 1930s as The Great Depression deepened and New York and Chicago crime mobs were “going to the mattress” with guns to kill each other. To counter the use of firearms, Congress passed the 1934 National Firearm Act that regulated and banned dangerous and unusual weapons such as sawed-off shotguns and machine guns. But these weapons were soon replaced by semi-automatic rifles firing high muzzle velocity bullets that blew up organs and bodies instead of making holes in body parts. There are rifles on the civilian firearm market that will fire bullets with 3,160 ft. per second velocities that blow up bodies. Trauma surgeons testify to the terrible damage done by high-velocity ammunition.

What is the leading cause of death of children? Firearms!

Dr. Christopher Moertel, professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota nails the situation: “Hardly any children in the US die from measles or pertussis or polio, because we had the good sense to require vaccines. If we applied the same stupid logic used to defend assault rifles, we’d say ‘Screw vaccines, let diseases rip through kids’ while defending AR-15s as sacred mementos. That’s not just policy failure — that’s stupidity. And no, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines does not mean banning all guns. That is another stupid lie peddled by the NRA and repeated by politicians who care more about campaign contributions than about dead children.”

Ever since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, the promise of safety at school has been broken by a single day of school violence. As one Gen Z commentator put it: “We learned to hide before we learned long division. We practiced silence as a survival skill. We sat on cold tile floors with the lights turned off, breathing as quietly as we could, hoping the drills would be enough if the day ever came. Even as children, we understood what it meant. Safety was no longer promised.”

Who decides how many gun drills we have a year?

On August 27, 2025, a school shooter killed Fletcher, age 8 and Harper, age10 in the sanctuary of Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis and wounded 30 other children by firing 116 rounds at them from an AR-15 in two minutes. That weapon is designed to fire 700 rounds in one minute if you could cool the barrel.

Harper’s parents were given her mutilated body after the crime scene was cleaned up. They decided to have her body cremated because it was so torn up by bullets. A week later they were given another part of her body that was discovered after the cleanup, so they were forced to have another cremation. I still have in my files a note from the Sandy Hook shooting that a first-grade boy killed in the school bathroom pile had been hit by eleven bullets.

How many children would have to be killed and wounded before the Second Amendment would be dropped, amended or modified? 75? 300? The rest of the Western world thinks that it is absolutely crazy that 34 million Americans possess an estimated 450 million firearms, including .50 caliber spotting rifles. No doubt in their minds, we love guns more than we love children. We don’t seem to want to develop a vaccine or laws that will save our children from semi-automatic pistols and rifles.

The mother of nine-year-old Vivian St. Clair, who is slowly recovering from two gunshots in her back and one gunshot in her arm puts it on the line for Republicans who love guns more than kids: “Please come to our house when we are cleaning her wounds and dressing them with bandages. Look her in the eye and tell her you are against changing the gun laws. When will lawmakers and other people in power do something? Who the hell is going to do something? Are you courageous or a coward? Do you care about our kids? Don’t tell us the answer, show us. Prove it.”

What does the American gun lobby cost the economy each year?

The gun lobby has supplied the Divided States of American gun owners and kids with an estimated 450 million firearms in the last 100 years. Lanza paid about $80 for the 154 rounds he fired in five minutes at Sandy Hook. The Annunciation shooter paid about $60 for the 116 rounds fired in two minutes in the church.

The organization Everytown for Gun Safety estimates that the average 146,000 killed and wounded each year costs the economy $557 billion or about $381,000 for each casualty. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) figures the annual total economic cost for fatal and nonfatal incidents costs about $4.2 trillion, and a single work-related shooting incident runs about $1.5 million. Perhaps Congress needs to appropriate money to affirm or deny these figures. This kind of money leaves a lot less to service the “common good” and the UN Happiness Country Survey.

Kollin Konitzer of South St. Paul is not the typical gun owner in the DSA, but he has a lot of brothers spread across the country. He represents what is wrong with our gun control laws. He is currently jailed because of four counts of felony drug possession while possessing about ninety guns of various types, including a scoped rifle with tripod aimed at his front door. He’s in jail because he couldn’t come up with $100,000 bail. The Tribune story did not include anything about the amount of ammunition Konitzer had in his home. He must have had thousands of rounds and cartridges to service his variety of weapons. He also had a safe in his bedroom where he kept fentanyl and other drugs, including methylphenidate, a drug used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

If we had adequate gun control laws and personnel, he would not be allowed to be near a weapon. Obama’s Surgeon General Vivak Murphy had declared gun violence was a public health issue on the DHHS website. The Lyin’ King removed it.

Lots of people make lots of money because of millions of guns

Each year the National School Safety Conference attracts hundreds of businesses that offer equipment, materials and designs that might interfere with a bullet’s path. New schools have curved hallways so shooters do not have a straight shot. Doors have locks, windows have bulletproof glass, playgrounds have tall fences with barbed wire, alarm systems, medical supplies and equipment, panic buttons, armored entrances with speaker systems, armored desks and tables, shields that students can carry, armored backpacks and countless other products that may prevent a killing. It is called “hardening the school” by security experts. A bulletproof window in a classroom door costs an extra $350. What does a curved hallway cost compared to a straight one? How much is an armored locker?

After hunting as a farm teenager, after commanding a heavy machine gun platoon and rifle company in the Marine Corps during eight years of service, after serving as a teacher, principal, personnel director in the Fargo schools, after teaching college seniors at Concordia and PhD candidates at North Dakota State, and studying the NRA and the gun lobby for about 75 years, I think we will continue to murder children and adults at an “exceptional” American rate. We do not have the guts or ability to limit civilians to semi-automatic weapons with six-round magazines or track purchases of ammunition that have been limited to muzzle velocities of less than 1,000 ft. per second along with other necessary measures such as red flag. It will not happen. By the way, I also have a Marine Expert Rifleman’s Medal.