Ann Stovner kneels by a makeshift memorial at Annunciation Catholic Church Aug. 28, 2025, after a school shooting the day before in Minneapolis. (Abbie Parr/AP Photo)
"You read these manifestos and diaries. Over and over again, these guys know that they're going to commit suicide," Lott said. "They know or they believe they're going to die. People have always wanted to commit suicide, but someplace along the line, people who felt unappreciated, who didn't think people knew what a great person they were, or whatever, realized they could get national and international attention by killing lots of people."
The Minneapolis shooter committed suicide during the Wednesday morning rampage.
"They know if they go to a place where their victims are defenseless, they're going to be able to go and kill more people and get more media attention," Lott said. "And so the thing to stop these attacks is to take away this notoriety that they can get."
Lott has long called for the obliteration of "gun-free zones," and said the Trump administration has the opportunity to "harden" schools by removing such zones, as well as the signs designating them, which essentially advertise that no one inside a facility has a firearm.
Instead, Lott said, schools and other common "soft targets" should install signs noting that select teachers and staff are armed with concealed weapons to protect students and others.
Wednesday's shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church unfolded as young students of the church's parochial school attended mass during their first week back in classrooms. The tragedy ultimately left two children, aged 8 and 10, dead and 17 other students and people injured.
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Karoline Leavitt said Kennedy's Health and Human Services was investigating potential prescription drug links to mass tragedies, and that the health arm of the federal government had an ongoing focus on the nation's mental health woes. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Amy Swearer told Fox News Digital that the Trump administration should end the U.S.'s historic and "absurd focus" on gun control in reaction to school shootings as it maps out next steps to address such tragedies.
"Focusing on this through the lens of gun control is generally not conducive to actually solving any problems here, especially when we're talking about school shooters in particular," Swearer said.
"Generally, when we see school shooters, you either have individuals who are underage, who can't legally buy guns, who are taking them from parents or other family members," she continued. "Or you're dealing with individuals like we saw in Minneapolis, who fall into the broader category of adult mass public shooters, who unfortunately, the problem isn't that they were prohibited people who are circumventing our laws. … It's that they were mentally unstable, showed signs of being a danger to themselves or others, but hadn't yet committed a disqualifying felony or misdemeanor offense."
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Police work the scene following a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School on August 27, 2025, in Minneapolis. (Getty Images)
Like Lott, Swearer said "soft targets" such as gun-free school zones, are frequently preyed upon by mass shooters as criminals can carry out deadlier attacks without resistance from their victims. She called for schools and other "soft targets" to at least have the option to protect themselves.
"There is a general rule: hard targets protect people," she said.
Lott added that a killer's "goals" must be taken from them if mass shooting tragedies are ever to significantly decrease.
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"The way you take away their goal is having somebody there quickly, or they believe somebody's there quickly to be able to stop them before they can kill many people," he said. "I forced myself to read their diaries and manifestos, and time after time after time they say, ‘If I can only kill more people than such and such did, I can get even more media attention. I can get my name in the history books.’"
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