This week, dozens of Republican Indiana state legislators traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Nearly 60 of them met with Vance on Tuesday in the Eisenhower Building, the Indianapolis Star reported.
The Indiana General Assembly’s top two Republican leaders — House Speaker Todd Huston (Fishers) and Senate President Rodric Bray (Martinsville) — met privately with Trump in the Oval Office.
That seems like an elaborate journey for state lawmakers, considering Indiana’s part-time legislators concluded their 2025 session in April.
What was the point of the trip? Indiana legislators — Republicans only — were invited last month by the White House to meet with the Trump administration for a State Leadership Conference to learn ways to implement the president’s agenda, the Star reported. But the administration’s primary objective was to persuade Hoosier lawmakers to concoct new congressional district maps — six years early, no less — to gain additional Republican U.S. House seats in the 2026 election and, thus, preserve their majority to continue enacting Trump’s agenda.
The state legislators, and the White House, could go to such great lengths to address a far more important issue — making America’s schoolkids safe from gun violence again. And members of Congress — those in office right now — could do the same.
Meaningful changes need to happen at the state and federal levels. The steps already taken are clearly not fixing the situation for schoolchildren, and for that matter, average Americans in public places like stores, theaters, warehouses, festivals and really anywhere.
On Wednesday morning as Annunciation Catholic School students were attending mass in Minneapolis, a 23-yearold shooter fired 116 rifle rounds through church windows, killing an 8-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl and injuring 18 other people, including more youngsters and three parishioners in their 80s.
The assailant committed suicide and, according to the BBC, left notes of premeditation, racism and antisemitism, and threats to public officials. Troubled backgrounds are typical in such horrid incidents, with a wide variety of grievances. But the most common denominator is the guns used.
Too many lives are being taken, and too little is being done to curb the carnage.
The Minneapolis tragedy adds to a long, ongoing list in the U.S.
There have been nine mass killings in the nation this year, according to the Washington Post, based on data compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. There have been 492 mass killings in the U.S. since 2006 in big cities, small towns, red states and blue states.
The mother of a 4-year-old girl, who laid flat and covered her eyes as the shooter fired those 116 rifle rounds into the Minneapolis church, told the Washington Post, “The American political sphere allows this to happen over and over and over again. There’s a problem of a culture of violence in America.”
Even a Fox News host who staunchly defended gun rights as a congressman expressed the exasperation felt by most Americans. “Our system is reactive. Something bad happens, we react to it. What people are crying for now is, ‘How can we prevent this? How can we stop it?’” Trey Gowdy said. “And the only way to stop it is to identify the shooter ahead of time, or keep the weapons out of their hands. So we’re going to have to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children.”
Sixty-one percent of Americans think it is too easy to get a gun in this country, according to a Pew Research Survey cited by the Post. Fifty-eight percent of Americans support stricter gun laws, such as increased background checks and waiting periods.
State and federal elected officials need to expend more energy on curtailing gun violence. Map-drawing schemes to retain political power look petty in comparison.
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