The Real Cost of 'Making America Great Again': Our Children's Lives
It's Friday morning, and in the tragic ritual that has become as American as apple pie, we are again waking up to the news of a school shooting. This time, two young children were gunned down during morning mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis [2]. The details are horrific, a testament to a uniquely American form of cruelty: a shooter opened fire through stained-glass windows, turning a place of worship and learning into a scene of carnage. It's a tragedy that, under a different administration, might be a singular, national crisis. But here, in the second term of Donald J. Trump, it's just another line item on the daily news docket. Another morbid statistic to be filed away.
In a sane world, this would be a moment for profound reflection, a pivot point toward sanity and compassion. Instead, we have a President who, just last year, told his supporters to "get over" a deadly school shooting [4]. A man whose response to the epidemic of gun violence is not to strengthen safeguards, but to actively dismantle them. And we, the public, are supposed to simply "get over it." The audacity is simply breathtaking.
Since the inauguration in January 2025, the Trump administration has embarked on a systematic, almost gleeful, campaign to roll back any and all progress made on gun safety. An executive order, signed just weeks into his term, directed his Attorney General to review every single federal regulation from the past four years that may have "impinged" on Second Amendment rights [1], [4]. What does "impinged" mean in this context? It means anything that might have made it slightly harder for a would-be murderer to get their hands on a weapon of war.
It's a bizarre and deeply cynical agenda. The previous administration saw a significant, historic decline in gun violence, including a 24% one-year reduction in mass shootings in 2024 [3]. That's not a coincidence. That's the result of policies like enhanced background checks and the regulation of "ghost guns" [4]. Policies that the current administration is now working tirelessly to reverse. It’s as if they've looked at a problem that was finally starting to get better and decided, "You know what this needs? More carnage."
The President's solution, as always, is a masterclass in performative absurdity. He wants to "harden" schools [4]. Not with better mental health care, not by addressing the root causes of violence, but by turning our children's schools into armed fortresses. He has voiced support for arming teachers and offering them bonuses to carry guns [4]. Because nothing says "safe learning environment" like the constant, low-grade hum of anxiety that comes with knowing the person at the whiteboard might also be the person with a loaded firearm on their hip. It's a grotesque vision, one that trades genuine safety for a paranoid, hyper-militarized fantasy.
It all boils down to a profound moral failure, one that extends far beyond the man in the Oval Office. A recent survey showed that four in ten American parents fear for their child's safety at school [5]. That's not a partisan issue. That is a fundamental, heartbreaking indictment of our society. Yet, the Republican party, which purports to be the party of "family values," has so thoroughly tied itself to the gun lobby that they now consider this fear a non-issue. [4].
The truth is, every time a Republican politician votes against a common-sense gun safety measure—every time they parrot the absurd talking points of the NRA—they are, in a very real way, casting a vote for more funerals. They are actively choosing the abstract "right" to a semi-automatic weapon over the tangible, heartbreaking reality of a child's coffin.
The tragedy in Minneapolis is not an isolated incident. It is the logical, inevitable consequence of an ideology that prioritizes guns over people. It is the blood-soaked result of a political party that has decided that the only solution to a bad guy with a gun is an armed teacher, an armed security guard, an armed bystander, and more guns, guns, guns, until the very air we breathe feels thick with the threat of violence.
It's a choice. We, as a nation, are making a choice every single day. We can choose to continue down this path, to normalize the horrific and to "get over it," as our President so elegantly puts it. Or we can choose to be a society that values the lives of our children more than the profits of the gun industry. We can choose to demand better from our leaders. We can choose a future where a child walking into school doesn't come with the silent, terrifying question of whether they will walk back out again.
References
[1] "Protecting Second Amendment Rights", The White House, Feb. 7, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/protecting-second-amendment-rights/
[2] "US school shootings continue to claim young lives in 2025", Anadolu Ajansı, Aug. 29, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-school-shootings-continue-to-claim-young-lives-in-2025/3672235
[3] "Murphy: The Trump Administration Is Undoing The Biggest Two-Year Decline In Gun Violence In U.S. History", murphy.senate.gov, May 8, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-the-trump-administration-is-undoing-the-biggest-two-year-decline-in-gun-violence-in-us-history
[4] J. D. G. Thompson, "Gun control policy in President Trump's current administration examined", Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://aoav.org.uk/2025/gun-control-policy-in-president-trumps-current-administration-examined/
[5] Ground News. [Online]. Available: https://ground.news/article/4-in-10-parents-fear-for-childs-safety-at-school-survey_94785f
