Thursday, September 03, 2026
PMT: Again. and Again.
I have a lovely view from my 4th floor office at work, looking over the downtown area of Minneapolis.
Yesterday, I rode my bike into work, and it was safely leaning against a bookshelf in my book-filled office as the sun got low in the September sky. I was thinking of heading out for home when I noticed an unusual number of sirens outside. It seemed that every police car and ambulance in the metro area was converging on a spot just a few blocks from where I stood.
And then even more came, marked and unmarked, sedans and armored vehicles and more.
My heart sank. The last time I saw something like that was the morning of the shooting at Annunciation School, and I knew that what was happening a few blocks over was likely some kind of mass shooting. And it was.
There is some sickness in our society that leads people to want to address their grievances with guns, by shooting people. It's a cultural issue, and one we need to address. It does matter that so much of our entertainment is violent, people shooting each other in television, movies and video games.
Violent crime is at record lows in many places, in fact. I do think that decline is largely cultural-- it does not correlate to police numbers or any kind of interdiction. But we need to go farther, and consciously.
I don't want to spend another moment in my office, hearing the sirens, and knowing what that means.
