My wife’s friend, the one whose 6yo son was shot during school mass last week, and thankfully survived, she posted the following to her various social media accounts.
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I don’t post on social media much, but this has been far from a normal week. Many of you may know the Vice President visited my children’s school community this week. This is the letter I wrote when I found out he was coming:
The longest fifteen minutes of my life were the fifteen minutes I waited to learn what hospital my six-year-old had been taken to after a shooter opened fire on him, his siblings, and their classmates at the first school Mass of the year.
The day had started like an ordinary morning. It was a little chaotic. We weren’t fully back in the school routine. But lunches got packed, backpacks grabbed, and my first grader’s brand-new school shoes double-knotted because he hasn’t yet mastered tying them himself.
By 9:01 a.m., I knew there had been a shooting.
By 9:25, I was parking near the school.
By 9:38, I was calling my father—a nurse at Children’s Minneapolis—to check the ER because no one could tell me where David was, only that he had been put in an ambulance.
By 9:52, we were reasonably certain he had been taken to Hennepin County Medical Center.
In many ways, my family is extraordinarily lucky. Emergency services reached David so quickly that he was likely in the operating room before I even arrived at the school. HCMC delivered world-class care to my son, who had a lacerated spleen, shrapnel scattered through his body, and a graze across his head from a bullet.
They saved his life. They saved my whole world.
I was raised Catholic, taught to believe that every human life carries inherent dignity. No one earns it. Everyone has it. It is our job to protect it.
Our leaders—you—have failed to do that.
You have failed to protect our children from weapons that kill and maim. You have failed to protect the very institutions that keep them alive when the unthinkable happens.
The weapons that pierced my son’s body have no place in a society that values human dignity. No one’s gun is more important than the children in that church on Wednesday. No one’s gun is more important than any human life.
Every moment that passes without greater regulation is a gross failure of moral leadership.
And while Hennepin County Medical Center saved my child, the hospital itself is under threat. Cuts to Medicaid and federal public health funding have already compromised essential institutions like HCMC. A society that values life invests in protecting it—not only from bullets, but also by guaranteeing care when tragedy strikes.
No one deserves what happened to my family, but without action, it will happen again and again and again. And without investment in medical care, the next families may not be as “lucky” as mine.
If you seek a position of public trust, you have a duty to protect the people you represent. I am begging you:
Ban the sale of assault weapons, bump stocks, high capacity magazines and end immunity for the gun industry.
Implement universal background checks and stronger licensing requirements.
Fund school safety measures like school threat assessment teams, that protect children without turning classrooms into prisons, and commit to keeping all guns out of K-12 schools.
Protect and expand Medicaid and public hospital funding so victims of gun violence can receive lifesaving care regardless of income.
You must do better. Our children cannot wait.