The silence was deafening. Some were crying. Others were laying flowers to honor the two young children, aged 8 and 10, who had lost their lives.
As I walked among flowers of different colors, surrounded by people in grief in front of the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis – the place where a mass shooting occurred on the morning of August 27, during a scheduled school-wide Mass – a single question kept coming to mind: has the United States grown accustomed to living in mourning?
That question was not only mine. Scholars, too, have been warning that what looks like isolated grief is in fact rooted in a deeper transformation of American society.
The brutality of the scene felt unreal. Two weeks earlier, a 23-year-old gunman had opened fire through the church windows, killing two children and injuring 18 more. While I thought about this, a group of children, carefree as they should be at their age, played on a playground just steps away from the church.
The church had become both a sanctuary for the victims and a space to express what America should be longing for: peace. That same word was written on the ground in blue chalk. Walking slowly among the posters and candles, I stopped to read the messages people had left behind: “We want to read books, not eulogies” and “Enough.” There were also words of love, powerful posters against gun violence and teddy bears that remind us of the injustice of lives cut short in an unspeakable act of violence.
A teddy bear left outside Annunciation Church in Minneapolis
Gun violence indeed has become a defining issue in the United States. Last Wednesday, in a completely different context, the cycle repeated. Charlie Kirk, a prominent far-right influencer, was murdered in Utah during a political rally held outdoors.
What is happening in America?
“Our nation is broken,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, just hours after the killing of Kirk.
Spencer pointed to a string of violent attacks targeting both Democrats and Republicans, including the recent killings of State Rep. Melissa Hortman, D-Minn., and her husband Mark Hortman, the shootings of State Sen. John Hoffman, D-Minn, and his wife Yvett Hoffman, as well as the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
The number of guns in civilian hands today is staggering: Americans collectively own more than 430 million firearms, according to estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation in 2023.
For David Schultz, a distinguished professor of political science, environmental studies and legal studies at Hamline University, these shootings represent a broader pattern.
“Violence has always been part of American history,” he said during a meeting with the WPI fellows at the university. “But what makes this period different is the combination of polarization, social media and unprecedented access to guns.”
As in the Annunciation Church, the silence is no longer just mourning. It is America confronting the cost of its divisions.
