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People pray at a memorial at Annunciation Catholic Church after Wednesday's school shooting, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Thoughts and prayers.

The invocation appears like a litany after every mass shooting — and the backlash is just as inevitable.

As if the slaughter of children amid screams and shattered stained glass wasn't cause enough for grief, American opinion makers were convulsed once again this week in a debate over the role of prayer in the wake of a mass shooting , this time at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

Those who support some legal restrictions on guns, often Democrats, say that Republican politicians who appeal to prayer are trying to distract from the

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