Minneapolis Shooter Sought Out ‘Gun-Free Zone’ as Location for Attack

The 23-year-old who opened fire on kids at a mass in Minneapolis this week may have chosen his target because he believed the Catholic school would have little security, including armed school staff who could shoot back when he launched his attack. 

NY Post reporter Diana Nerozzi has shared portions of the shooter’s manifesto on X, including his thoughts on whether he’d face armed resistance if he picked his former middle school as the scene for his killing spree. 

He liked that the school would likely not have counter shooters:

“It also seems like the kind of school to not arm their teachers.”

“I bet that liberal school does not allow teachers to carry.”

— Diana Nerozzi (@diana_nerozzi) August 28, 2025

By all accounts, the killer was correct, but the same is likely true of the vast majority of schools in Minnesota. The state, does, however, allow educators to carry on the job so long as they have written permission from the school’s principal or “other person having general control and supervision of the school.”

Retired Professor Joe Olson, a former NRA board member, wrote the provision as part of Minnesota’s 2003 permit to carry law. 

“Basically what it says is you can have dangerous weapons, firearms, knives, BB guns, replica firearms in a school as long as you have permission of the principal,” he said.

Olson says he personally knows of at least two Minnesota teachers who have the written permission and are currently carrying guns in schools, but would not give us their names.

WCCO asked, “Could there be a lot more?”

“Yes there could be more,” Olson said.

Olson made those comments in 2018, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, but the law hasn’t changed since then. Because permission is obtained from the school principal and not the school district itself, it’s difficult to know how many educators are carrying on the job. This this isn’t really a policy that schools would want to advertise either, but my guess is that it’s an uncommon practice across the state, at least at the moment. In fact, in that 2018 report by WCCO, the head of Minnesota’s largest teacher’s union was completely unaware of the law’s existence, so many school staffers and administrators might not even know that’s an option. 

In the wake of the shooting at the Church of the Annunciation, though, that will hopefully change. As Dr. John Lott pointed out in a post at Crime Prevention Research Center’s website, the killer specifically said he wanted to target a gun-free zone since there would be less likelihood of an armed response, chillingly writing “That’s why I and many others like schools so much.”

Lott has provided strong evidence that the monsters who engage in these types of attacks often seek out places where their victims are unlikely to be armed, and research from Purdue University’s Homeland Security Institute suggests that the fastest way to stop an active assailant attack at a school is to have both a school resource office on hand who can seek out and engage the attacker, along with armed teachers who can shelter in place with their students and defend them in case the killer breaches the classroom door. 

SROs aren’t an option for every school district or private school, though, given the cost of hiring full-time security, and having armed school staff in place is better than nothing. In fact, I’d say that schools with armed staff on campus should advertise that fact (without divulging who, specifically, is carrying on the clock). That alone would likely deter some of these twisted individuals from carrying out their murderous plans, and I hope that more Minnesota schools will take let the public know they’re taking advantage of the fact that state law does allow for staffers to serve as a first line of defense against these cowardly killers.

Editor’s Note: The gun control lobby is using this shooting to demand more victim disarmament zones, gun bans, and other dangerous policies that make it impossible to fight back against these killers. 

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