Wednesday’s mass shooting at a church where Catholic school students were attending Mass in Minneapolis was the latest in a long list of attacks targeting students.
LA CROSSE, Wis. — Vice President J.D. Vance addressed the mass shooting at the Annunciation Church on Thursday, calling for hard questions about the “root causes” of the violence.
Vance was speaking during a stop in La Crosse, Wisconsin, when he said it’s time for the nation to have a conversation about mental health.
“I think it’s time for us to start asking some very hard questions about the root causes of this violence, and I’m going to be part of that, and the first lady and the president are going to be part of that, but that’s going to be an American conversation that we’re going to have together,” said Vance.
Wednesday’s mass shooting at a church where Catholic school students were attending Mass in Minneapolis was the latest in a long list of attacks targeting students since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.
The shooter who killed two Catholic school students and wounded more than a dozen children sitting in the pews of a Minneapolis church once attended the same school and had been a member of the church.
Authorities are scouring over videos, writings and the movements of the shooter, but remain uncertain what motivated 23-year-old Robin Westman to open fire through stained-glass windows as children celebrated Mass on the first week of classes at the Annunciation Catholic School.
“Everything we’ve seen so far is a classic pathway to an active shooter,” Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said. He added that investigators have seen nothing “specific to trigger the amount of hate that occurred yesterday.”
The shooting has quickly transformed into a political firestorm, with Democrats calling for stricter gun control measures and Republicans arguing the violence is related to mental health and not the guns used in the shooting.
At a vigil on Wednesday night, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called for a national ban on assault rifles.
Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.