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PBS Guest Blames GOP, 'Culture in America Surrounding Guns' For School Shootings
Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr pinch-hit for MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart on Friday’s PBS News Hour and, during the discussion on the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis, blamed the GOP and its embrace of gun culture for mass shootings in America. New York Times columnist David Brooks wasn’t much better. While he refrained from that kind of rhetoric, he still pushed more gun control while using female pronouns to describe the shooter.
Host Amna Nawaz rounded out the trio and wondered if anyone actually cares, “David, from Sandy Hook to Parkland to Uvalde, nothing has dramatically changed to keep this sort of thing from happening again. Is it too cynical to say that there's a numbness that has set in to kids being shot in school here?”
Brooks began with his gun control pitch, “I think people still have the capacity to be appalled by somebody who shoots their children through stained glass windows. And so I do think that. Will there be action? JD Vance just said prayers and actions. Well, what are the actions he's proposing? The shooter in this case got her guns legally. She passed through the red flag law, which they have in Minnesota, the permitting. And so clearly more needs to be done.”
Brooks then moved away from gun control to suggest, “Blue states should be experimenting with more stuff. You know, one of the things that comes up in this case is, she left a pretty big online trail. Like, is there a way to use AI to sort of find these people a little better than apparently we are, when no red flags are set off and this young person was writing all this stuff online? And I think the thing that's most chilling to me about this particular case is not only the need for guns. It's not only the need for mental health alertness. But she wrote in one of her comments, ‘this is about nothing.’”
Brooks concluded, “Some people kill because they have some crazy ideology like the Unabomber. She has no ideology. The FBI now has a category of terrorists which are nihilists, people who just believe in nothing. And we're seeing a rise — the anarchists 100 years ago were killing people, but now we're seeing this tide of nihilism. So, I look at it as a gun problem, as a mental health problem, and really as an intellectual problem about our culture, that you have people who believe in nothing and just want to destroy.”
Nawaz then turned to Stohr and, with a similar sentiment to her question to Brooks, wondered, “Kimberly, we reported earlier Governor Walz seems to be suggesting he's going to call a special session to try to address this. We don't have details beyond that. But does the Democratic response, in particular, does it feel a little more muted to you this time?”
Atkins began repeating the liberal line about thoughts and prayers, “I feel like all of it is muted. I think that Americans, who are sending their children to school to start their school year, are hearing about the thoughts and prayers and these ambiguous actions that may or may not be coming, and they are gutted by that, because they know that none of that protects their children.”
Stohr then blamed people who had nothing to do with the shooting, “I think that this is not about trying to prevent the last shooting and figuring out what led to that one. It's about, how do we change the culture in America surrounding guns? Because this does not happen other places. It does not happen in other countries that have much more lax gun laws than we do on the books.”
She concluded, “This is about a society that believes that the right to carry guns is something like a religion unto itself. And that's from messaging that comes from Republicans about the Second Amendment and how any measure that is commonsense that is meant to prevent guns from getting in the hands of people that shouldn't have them is somehow not just unconstitutional, but sacrosanct in itself. Until we can change that, until we can loosen the grip of the gun industry, the lobby here in Washington and across states, this will not change and children will continue to die.”
In addition to being outrageous, that makes no sense. Stohr admitted that countries with “more lax” gun laws do not see these types of shootings, and then she said the problem is the power of the gun lobby. Maybe that proves blind partisan mudslinging isn't the answer.
Here is a transcript for the August 29 show:
PBS News Hour
8/29/2025
7:36 PM ET
AMNA NAWAZ: David, from Sandy Hook to Parkland to Uvalde, nothing has dramatically changed to keep this sort of thing from happening again. Is it too cynical to say that there's a numbness that has set in to kids being shot in school here?
DAVID BROOKS: I think people still have the capacity to be appalled by somebody who shoots their children through stained glass windows. And so I do think that. Will there be action? JD Vance just said prayers and actions. Well, what are the actions he's proposing? The shooter in this case got her guns legally. She passed through the red flag law, which they have in Minnesota, the permitting. And so clearly more needs to be done.
Blue states should be experimenting with more stuff. You know, one of the things that comes up in this case is, she left a pretty big online trail. Like, is there a way to use AI to sort of find these people a little better than apparently we are, when no red flags are set off and this young person was writing all this stuff online?
And I think the thing that's most chilling to me about this particular case is not only the need for guns. It's not only the need for mental health alertness. But she wrote in one of her comments, “this is about nothing.”
Some people kill because they have some crazy ideology like the Unabomber. She has no ideology. The FBI now has a category of terrorists which are nihilists, people who just believe in nothing. And we're seeing a rise — the anarchists 100 years ago were killing people, but now we're seeing this tide of nihilism. So, I look at it as a gun problem, as a mental health problem, and really as an intellectual problem about our culture, that you have people who believe in nothing and just want to destroy.
NAWAZ: Kimberly, we reported earlier Governor Walz seems to be suggesting he's going to call a special session to try to address this. We don't have details beyond that. But does the Democratic response, in particular, does it feel a little more muted to you this time?
KIMBERLY ATKINS STOHR: I feel like all of it is muted. I think that Americans, who are sending their children to school to start their school year, are hearing about the thoughts and prayers and these ambiguous actions that may or may not be coming, and they are gutted by that, because they know that none of that protects their children.
I think that this is not about trying to prevent the last shooting and figuring out what led to that one. It's about, how do we change the culture in America surrounding guns? Because this does not happen other places. It does not happen in other countries that have much more lax gun laws than we do on the books.
This is about a society that believes that the right to carry guns is something like a religion unto itself. And that's from messaging that comes from Republicans about the Second Amendment and how any measure that is commonsense that is meant to prevent guns from getting in the hands of people that shouldn't have them is somehow not just unconstitutional, but sacrosanct in itself.
Until we can change that, until we can loosen the grip of the gun industry, the lobby here in Washington and across states, this will not change and children will continue to die.
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