The Minneapolis Catholic School Shooting: A Columbiner Crime, Not a Trans Story

Two days after the first day of school, Minneapolis was shattered by an act of cruelty few can comprehend. On Wednesday morning, during a Mass at Annunciation Catholic School, a gunman opened fire through the windows of the church. Two children, ages eight and ten, were killed instantly. Seventeen others were injured, fourteen of them students between the ages of six and fifteen, along with three elderly parishioners in their 80s.

Police say the shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman of Richfield, died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound (aka, the coward’s way out) inside the church after the attack. Westman was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, all of which were legally and recently purchased. Investigators believe all three weapons were fired during the assault. A possible smoke bomb was also found at the scene. Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that Westman had no criminal history.

Court records show that Westman, who was born Robert Westman in 2002, petitioned to change their name in 2020, citing gender identity. The request was granted when Westman was 17 years old. This fact quickly became a talking point online, with some seizing on it to push anti-trans narratives. But as Mayor Jacob Frey correctly emphasized, this tragedy has nothing to do with gender identity.

This was not an impulsive act. According to investigators, Westman barricaded doors before firing dozens of rounds into the pews. Children in their uniforms were forced to crawl under benches and hide as bullets tore through stained glass. Staff rushed them into the gym when it was safe to do so. O’Hara called it “a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping.”

Hours before the attack, Westman uploaded a series of disturbing videos to YouTube. In them, Westman displayed firearms and ammunition covered in handwritten slogans. Some carried racist and antisemitic messages, while others included a call for the assassination of Donald Trump. Four pages of handwritten notes were shown, addressed “to my family and friends,” referencing depression and a desire to “fulfill a final act.”

The videos also showed notebooks filled with drawings. One depicted the inside of a church, pews lined up as if in preparation for the very scene that played out in Minneapolis. A sticker on one of the notebooks read “defend equality” with the silhouette of a rifle. Another sticker referenced a German band once embraced by the Columbine shooters, likely Rammstein or KMFDM. Both bands have long since denounced such violence, but their names continue to echo in Columbiner spaces online, where Harris and Klebold are still idolized.

All of Westman’s online material has since been removed, but its contents paint a clear picture. This was an ideologically confused but culturally deliberate act.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. For more than two decades, Columbine has spawned a twisted fan culture. ‘Columbiners’ are not just curious true-crime followers. They are people who glorify Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, trading their writings, building archives, and, in some cases, fantasizing about carrying out similar attacks. Online, Columbiners produce fan art, edit videos, and write tributes on the shooters’ birthdays. In its darkest corners, the community treats Columbine not as a tragedy but as a blueprint.

Westman’s writings, drawings, and choice of symbolism suggest an immersion in this world. The band sticker, the church sketch, and the staged video showing weapons and notes. All of it mirrors the ritualized performance Columbiners aspire to. Just like Harris and Klebold recorded their ‘Basement Tapes’ before their attack, Westman prepared their own manifesto and video to be released after the bloodshed.

This isn’t about being trans. It’s about being a Columbiner. And it’s about the Columbine effect still echoing through American culture, decades after April 20, 1999.

Mayor Jacob Frey captured the emotional stakes best when he said, “These kids were literally praying.” He also made an important point in condemning the transphobia that quickly surfaced after Westman’s identity became public. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community has lost their sense of common humanity,” Frey said. He was right. This wasn’t a ‘trans shooting.’ It was a Columbine copycat.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pledged that the state will stand with grieving families. Our tangerine-tinged sex criminal of a president ordered flags flown at half-staff until Sunday and spoke with Walz to offer condolences. Former Presidents Obama and Biden also issued statements urging the nation not to grow numb to mass shootings. The FBI, meanwhile, is investigating the case as both domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.

Two children are dead because a young adult who legally acquired weapons allowed a Columbine-inspired fantasy world to consume them. They turned that fantasy into a plan and that plan into an act of terror against children.

The real danger here is not gender identity, but the continuing pull of Columbine’s dark mythology. Until we confront why Harris and Klebold still hold such sway over disaffected young people and why those people continue to find easy access to firepower, tragedies like Minneapolis will repeat.

And sadly, this shooting will likely fade from the headlines as quickly as it came. In a country where mass shootings are a weekly reality, the deaths of two children in a Minneapolis church will soon be eclipsed by the next tragedy. That doesn’t make this crime any less horrific; it only underscores how numb America has become. All because of weak men and women whose altar is that of the gun.

Stay tuned for a rant about the ‘tots and pears’ crowd later tonight.

(Sources)