Books and Bullets: A Nationwide School Shooting Crisis

Article by: Amelia Finley / Graphic by: Kailyn Mai

The nationwide school shooting crisis continues. August 27, 2025, at Annunciation Catholic School in South Minneapolis marked the forty-fourth school shooting in 2025 (on both K-12 campuses and University/college campuses). This shooting also marked the first shooting in the new school year, as the students were only 3 days into their 25-26 school year. Children at the Annunciation Catholic School were attending mass, a Catholic Church service, when a 23-year-old gunman began to fire shots. These students had practiced their lockdown drills in classrooms, but never in the chapel; they never had to, and they never should have to. Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. Students who were interviewed after the shooting explained how they protected themselves by hiding under the pews. One student, Weston, explained how the events played out. He noted that he was sitting near the stained-glass window when the first shot was fired, and it was only about 3 minutes into the service. He continued to explain that he and all his classmates hid under the pews, some watching their classmates get shot. Another student, Victor, lay on top of his peers, putting their safety before his own. It was confirmed on the Sunday following the shooting by the Minneapolis Police Department that 21 people were injured by the gunfire, including 18 children and 3 of the parish adults, who were in their 80s. Two of the elementary school students were killed in this tragedy: 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel, whose father spoke out about his son’s life, and how he hopes Fletcher can be remembered. He aims for Fletcher not to be remembered as a tragedy, but as a loving kid who lived a very full life, loving every sport there is to love and spending time with his family. Harper Myoski, a 10-year-old girl who was described as a joyful, bright, well-loved girl, was also killed in the gunfire. Unfortunately, this was not the first school shooting, and it will not be the last. 

Furthermore, one of the deadliest school shootings was the Sandy Hook shooting of 2012. On December 14, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, 20 students and 6 teachers were shot and killed. This was 13 years ago. In 2018, a shooting in Florida took place at a local high school, killing 14 students, 3 staff members, and injuring 17 more. The K-12 School Shooting Database published data explaining that in about 42% of incidents, the shooter is a student from the school. Other statistics revealed a huge spike in shootings from 2021-2024. These tragic losses and influx of traumatic events are not normal. 

Additionally, since the early 2000s, gun laws have been changing and adapting, positively and negatively. In 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired after 10 years and was not renewed. This banned automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. Similarly, the Trump administration has reversed the previous administration’s “harsher” gun regulations, claiming they infringed on the 2nd amendment right. In comparison, some states have banned certain weapons from being purchased at all, very similar to what the Federal Assault Ban did, while other states have created more hoops to jump through to obtain firearms. For example, more training in weaponry and gun safety, as well as more thorough background checks. Overall, it is inconsistent. Each state has its own way of managing its weapon purchases and permits, creating loopholes and ways around the regulations currently in place. It needs to be constant, nationwide. Enforcing stricter gun laws looks like harsher background checks, conversations, and normalization around mental health, gun safety classes, limiting the weapons that are purchased, gun safes, and more. The gun violence in the United States is not normal; let us not normalize it. 

On a personal level, I cannot illustrate the fear these students felt on the worst days of their lives. What I can do is illustrate the fear I experience while walking to the bathroom each day at school. On my 30-second walk down the hallway, I am on the lookout for the nearest open classroom because you really, truly never know, it could be us next. What we can do is use our voice. Share this information, contact your governors, and make a difference. What I can, and you can too, do is try my very hardest to encourage a system that prevents this from happening again. Books and bullets should never be in the same sentence, yet here we are. 

Works Cited

National Institution of Health. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10024039/. Accessed 5 Sept. 2025.

New York Post. nypost.com/2025/08/28/us-news/harper-moyski-10-idd-as-second-child-killed-by-minneapolis-gunman-robin-westman/.

Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(2000%E2%80%93present).

K-12 School Shooting Database. k12ssdb.org/all-shootings. Accessed 5 Sept. 2025.