If ‘words are violence,’ why won’t the left own theirs?

A grim pattern plays out every time a mass shooting happens in America. Before the victims are buried, before the facts are in, Democrats rush to the microphones to cast blame.

The pattern always goes one of two ways. If the killer can be tied to any semblance of a right-wing ideology, it’s a Republican problem. If the ideology runs the other way — or worse — touches one of the left’s sacred identity groups, then it’s a gun problem. Never their own movement. Never their own rhetoric. Never their own political tribe.

When the killer looks like someone Democrats already despise, it’s open season. When the killer looks like one of their own, the ideology vanishes, and the weapon is to blame.

The Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis last week makes this pattern undeniable. The killer — a former student, a biological male identifying as a trans woman — wrote “Kill Trump” and “6 million wasn’t enough” (a nod to the Holocaust) on his rifle before the attack.

This wasn’t a generic outburst of violence; it was laced with the same extremist left-wing, anti-Christian, anti-conservative hatred that Democrats wink at every single day. Yet no Democratic leader stood up and said, “This is what our rhetoric creates.” Instead, they changed the subject — to guns.

Democrats’ hypocrisy

The hypocrisy is as predictable as it is insulting. When a white extremist commits murder, the left shouts that Republicans have “blood on their hands.” They blame Trump rallies, Fox News, Christian nationalism, you name it. But when a mass murderer hates Christians, embraces the transgender ideology, and openly calls for President Donald Trump’s death ... crickets.

Cue the same refrain: gun bans, universal background checks, confiscation. They exploit tragedy to seize power.

Let’s not forget the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump. Thomas Crooks, who shot at Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, wasn’t a right-winger. He was a registered Democrat who donated to a progressive group.

Ryan Routh, who was arrested outside Trump’s Florida golf course with an AK-style rifle, described himself as a Biden voter who celebrated January 6 prosecutions online.

Where were the breathless op-eds blaming Joe Biden’s rhetoric? Where were the lectures about “dangerous political climates”? The media memory-holed their affiliations as soon as they didn’t fit the narrative.

An evil pattern

This isn’t new. In 2017, James Hodgkinson opened fire on a congressional baseball practice, nearly killing Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders volunteer, a man who posted constantly about his hatred of Republicans. Did Democrats take ownership? Did they tone down their language about “Republicans killing people” over health care? Not at all. They shrugged, called him a lone wolf, and moved on.

In 2019, Connor Betts murdered nine people in Dayton, Ohio. He described himself as a pro-Satan leftist, a gun-control supporter, and a backer of Elizabeth Warren. Did Democrats connect his politics to his crime? No. They blamed Trump for fostering a “culture of hate.”

Then came the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting. A transgender shooter targeted a Christian school. Rather than mourn the victims, the Biden White House declared a “Trans Day of Visibility.” They stonewalled the shooter’s manifesto for months — because it revealed too much about motive and ideology.

This pattern is too obvious to ignore. When the killer looks like someone Democrats already despise, it’s open season. When the killer looks like one of their own, the ideology vanishes, and the weapon is to blame.

Guns don’t vote Democrat or Republican — but shooters do. And the record shows plenty of killers in recent years have aligned with the Democratic left.

The ugly truth

The ugly truth is that Democrats care more about using mass shootings for their political advantage than stopping them. They use them to smear Republicans as extremists and push gun control. It’s why Biden could call half the country “semi-fascists” in one breath and then act shocked when his supporters try to take Trump’s life in the next. It’s why the same party that insists words are violence refuses to acknowledge that their own words — calling Trump a dictator, Christians bigots, Republicans Nazis — might radicalize someone to pick up a gun.

And their rhetoric has been shameless. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) once told a crowd, “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gas station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn’t far behind, declaring, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”

These aren’t just slips of the tongue. This is licensed hostility — leaders telling their base that Republicans are illegitimate, dangerous, even deserving of harassment. And then Democrats act surprised when that rhetoric finds its way onto the barrel of a gun.

Meanwhile, conservatives say the obvious: Murderers are responsible for their murders. But we can also recognize that culture, rhetoric, and ideology matter. We should confront the roots of violence wherever they grow — whether in white supremacy or in radical gender ideology, whether on the right or the left. Democrats refuse to do this because it would mean admitting that their own movement produces violence too.

Instead, they hide behind platitudes. “Thoughts and prayers don’t work,” they sneer, mocking faith communities while proposing policies that wouldn’t have stopped the crime in the first place. They will never admit that the shooter who targets Republicans, who targets Christians, who scrawls “Kill Trump” on his weapons, is soaked in the very rhetoric their side promotes daily.

RELATED: Tone-deaf Democrats lash out over prayers for Christians murdered in devastating Minnesota shooting

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Democrats had 12 years at the highest levels of power to do something meaningful about this. Eight years of President Barack Obama, four years of President Joe Biden. They promised “commonsense gun reform.” They promised unity. They promised safety.

Yet what did we get? Nothing but more division, more pandering to activist groups, and more empty speeches. No progress, because their goal has never been real solutions. Their goal has always been to weaponize tragedy to advance their ideology.

Enough is enough

As a father, I can’t sit quietly anymore. All of my kids attend Catholic school. They go to weekly Mass. When I read about a shooter storming into a Catholic parish school with “Kill Trump” written on his gun, I don’t just see headlines. I see my children. I see my wife. I see my parish family.

I want real solutions. I’m tired of the empty suits across the Republican aisle and the cynical blame-shifting of Democrats. Enough is enough. If they won’t protect us, if they won’t be honest about the problem, then we, the people, need to take matters into our own hands.

We need bold leadership at the local level — parents, parishes, and communities willing to protect our children, defend our faith, and confront the truth. Because the politicians won’t do it. And our families can’t wait any longer.