Thoughts and Prayers

By Megan Hansen, MHS student

“Thoughts and prayers”. It’s a phrase it seems like we hear all too much. What does this phrase really mean? Is it an easy way to acknowledge the situation and move on? It feels to me like it carries very little meaning. 

Though counts vary, there have been as many as 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2025 alone, one of them being close to home. When you see it on the news, it feels so far away, like it could never happen to us. Slowly, though, it creeps in. The Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis is only 70 miles from here. It really isn’t that far. The father of one of the children killed, a Menomonie alumni.

Across the country at Brown University, a shooting occurred during the week of their final exams, leaving two students dead and many more injured. Two students who were at the university at the time of the shooting said they weren’t strangers to such an event. So why does nothing change? Why do we still utter these words and make no change? “It isn’t that simple,” people say. But if it isn’t that simple, then why don’t other countries struggle with this issue?

Everytown Research says that per 100,000 residents, the U.S. has 4.382 gun deaths. By comparison, the United Kingdom has 0.049 per 100,000 residents and Norway sits at 0.038 per 100,000 residents. Chile, which is second to the United States in gun-related deaths, still comes in just below 1 death per 100,000 residents, sitting at 0.956. Why has gun violence risen to be one of the number one killers of children in this country?

Thirty years ago, parents didn’t send their children to school wondering if they would come home. Their children didn’t have to prepare themselves for the possibility that at any point, someone could walk into their school with intent to kill. It just wasn’t commonplace.

Now, we find ourselves practicing what to do in different scenarios. Students think to themselves what the best way to get out would be in each of their classes. They and their parents worry if they will come home each night. So why? Why has this become so normalized? Why don’t I get to go to school with peace of mind? Why do I have to worry if I will be safe? Why?

These questions aren’t a dramatization, rather, questions that float through students' minds each day. It is the reality too many people have become accustomed to. As a society, we haven’t done enough, and now this tragedy has been allowed to become “normal”. Something as tragic as this should never become so common that we become numb to seeing it on the news, so common that it becomes something we expect to hear every day. Never should a parent have to send their child to school and go to work worrying if they’re going to get that dreaded call that something has happened, or, God forbid, that their child was a victim.

Since the 1999 Columbine school shooting, though data varies, there have been an estimated 440 fatalities resulting from school shootings. This number may be higher, as there is no exact count. Gun legislation is something that has been proposed many times, but never truly been acted upon. Many argue that any gun legislation would infringe upon Americans’ Second Amendment rights. But shouldn’t there be a way to work around this if it means protecting children from tragedy? The school shooting epidemic in this country isn’t normal. It isn’t something that we should have to worry about. But we do.

We even have to worry about it beyond school grounds. It is everywhere: on the street, in the grocery store, at the beach. Everywhere we go, the possibility is always there lingering in the shadows. The gun violence epidemic is a virus, one that has grown and mutated and spread across the country. This has become my future: one where I worry every day about leaving the comfort and safety of my home, one where I worry about whether or not I will become a victim and my face will be all over the news that night.

I may not know much, but I do know something has to be done. If not for everyone, then for the children. The children who deserve their innocence. The children who deserve to be able to find joy and happiness. The children who will never again get that chance. The children who deserve to just be children. Thoughts and prayers never have been and will never be enough. Words without action have little meaning, not when lives are on the line.

This article was originally posted on the Menomonie High School online school newspaper, the Mustang Messenger.