Another Tragedy, the Same Debate. We Need to Ask Why Schools.

I’ve spent years producing conversations on this issue. I share them again now so the deeper questions aren’t lost in the noise.

We debate guns and mental illness, but rarely ask why schools themselves are the setting for so much rage.

On August 27, 2025, in Minnesota, another school shooting claimed two lives and forever scarred others. The cycle is by now familiar: saturation news coverage, immediate political arguments over guns and mental illness, and then—silence, until the next time, and somehow we know, tragically, there will be a next time.

It’s as terrifying as it is infuriating to watch this cycle repeat without anyone in the journalistic class considering the possibility that crafting narratives isn’t the way to solve problems, and in fact might even exacerbate them—especially when the narratives not-so-subtly imply that anyone who challenges them is a bad person. Don’t want more gun control? You care more about guns than children’s lives. Don’t want to spend more money on demonstrably ineffective, likely iatrogenic mental health programs in schools? You have “blood on your hands.”

We debate guns and mental illness, but rarely ask why schools themselves are the setting for so much rage.

The School Connection to Trans-Identified Shooters

The Minnesota shooter, Robert (Robin) Westman, legally changed his name at 17—while still in school. That fact matters. It suggests he identified as trans during his school years, in the very environment where so many young people now first encounter “queer theory”—not as a marginal idea, but as part of the curriculum and celebrated culture of the classroom.

This is a pattern worth noticing. Several recent school shooters have been trans-identified, and the link back to schools is not incidental. Schools are where these identities are often introduced, affirmed, and reinforced. For disturbed and alienated students, they can become anchor points for deeper confusion and hostility.

We are told, “Affirm, or they will die.” But then we’re forbidden to call what they suffer a mental illness.

Yet affirmation—new pronouns, clothes, or names—does not resolve psychiatric distress. Nor do puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. In fact, research shows they can worsen depression and increase aggression in both sexes.

And this is playing out against the backdrop of a youth mental health crisis already at historic levels:

• By 2023, the CDC reported that 40% of high school students felt persistently sad or hopeless, 20% seriously considered suicide, and nearly 9% attempted it.

• A stunning 42% of Gen Z has already been given a mental health diagnosis (Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier).

This picture isn’t just reflected in government data. Even the Trevor Project—whose suicide statistics have been criticized for exaggeration—acknowledges the scale of the crisis: nearly 39% of LGBTQ youth report seriously considering suicide in the past year. But notice what this does not demonstrate: that affirmation resolves distress. On the contrary, even when affirmed, these young people remain at profoundly high risk. The narrative of “affirm or they will die” collapses under the weight of its own data.

These numbers do make one thing clear: schools are not just the stage for violence, they’re also the incubator of fragile identities and untreated distress. The ideology of affirmation is not curing children—it is entrenching their suffering.

Beyond Guns and Therapy

Gun laws are not working. Minnesota’s strict waiting periods and permitting requirements didn’t stop Westman from stockpiling thousands of dollars in weapons. Nationwide, states with tight restrictions continue to experience school shootings. Laws don’t deter the determined. What shooters do rely on are “gun-free zones,” which guarantee defenseless targets.

Mental health spending has exploded, but children are worse off. Nearly every school in America now provides some kind of mental health service: in 2021–22, 96% of public schools offered at least one program, 84% provided one-on-one counseling, and 34% screened every child for distress. Yet outcomes keep deteriorating.

As Shrier documents in Bad Therapy, this is not neutral care. Screening every child, pathologizing normal angst, and embedding diagnoses into identity often does more harm than good. The result is the most heavily “treated” generation in history—and also the most fragile.

The paradox of care. Parents are told affirmation is suicide prevention, yet gender dysphoria is no longer treated as an illness. The same system that insists affirmation is life-saving also insists we are cruel—or even “genocidal”—if we recognize it is something clinical to treat. This contradiction leaves vulnerable youth adrift, untreated, and unhealed.

These are not failures of funding or awareness. They are failures of clarity and courage.

If we want to move beyond empty debates and actually confront these realities, we need to dig deeper. The resources below do just that.

1. Our Killing Schools: A Written Series

Part 1 by C. Bradley Thompson
Brad Thompson examines how the structure and culture of American schooling has made it the recurring stage for these tragedies.

2. Why Does This Keep Happening?

A Closer Look at the "School" Aspect of School Shootings
An exploration of how schools, as environments, breed the resentment and hostility that so often fuel these acts.

3. What Really Makes American Schools Unsafe?

With Pamela Garfield-Jaeger and Cyndi O’Brien
A probing discussion of the cultural and institutional vulnerabilities that make American schools uniquely unsafe compared to other nations.

4. Uvalde: The Way Forward

With Larry Sand
On grieving, demanding accountability from schools, administrators, union officials, and politicians, so we can move forward without reducing the debate to legislative talking points.

5. Normalizing Evil: The Rising Threat to Child Safety

With Dr. Alaric Naudé
A look at how cultural shifts have blurred moral boundaries, leaving children more vulnerable to predation and violence in general, but especially where they spend most of their time: at school.

6. The High Cost of Pathological Empathy

With Dr. J.D. Haltigan
On how well-meaning but misguided “empathy” can undermine child safety by normalizing confusion and even serious mental illness instead of confronting and treating it.

With the exception of C. Bradley Thompson’s series, the conversations above are all from my own YouTube channel.

Conclusion

School shootings are not going away. If anything, the cycle will continue to accelerate unless we confront the uncomfortable truths we’ve been avoiding about schools, identity, mental health, and the way we respond to warning signs.

I care deeply about this issue, not for clicks, not for attention, but because the lives of children depend on us rewriting the script. Please share these resources, discuss them with others, and most importantly, refuse to let the hard questions be drowned out by the political noise.

We owe our children clarity, courage, and the will to face reality. Nothing less will make them safer.

Author’s Note: With the exception of C. Bradley Thompson’s series, the resources linked here are all drawn from my own YouTube channel, where I’ve worked to keep these conversations alive even when they’re uncomfortable. My aim is not to sensationalize, but to make sure the hardest questions don’t get buried.