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mass shootings
'Stop This Madness': 3 Killed in Mass Shooting at Rhode Island High School Hockey Game
"This is no way for our kids to live," said one gun control advocate.
Feb 16, 2026
Child safety advocates renewed calls for tighter gun control measures following a Monday mass shooting at a high school hockey game in Rhode Island that left three people including the gunman dead and three others injured.
WPRI reported that the father of a North Providence High School senior shot five members of his family at a hockey game at Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket at around 2:30 pm local time. The student's mother was killed at the rink, while his sister died after being rushed to a local hospital. Three other relatives are reportedly in critical condition at Rhode Island Hospital.
"We realized pretty quickly that it was a gunshot. It was very scary," hockey player Silas Core said during an interview with WCVB, adding that he and his teammates rushed into a locker room.
"We barricaded the locker room with our bodies. We were all pressing up against it," he said. "Everybody was, you know, worried about our parents and everybody."
Core's mother told WCVB that everything "just happened so fast."
"You don't even know. You know, you just see everybody else on the ground and you kind of get on the ground," she said. "This is really disturbing, you know? And it's the other team's senior day. Like, it was supposed to be a special day for the team."
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves said the shooting appeared to be “a family dispute," a “tragic” but "isolated" incident.
A woman who said she was the shooter's daughter told WCVB that the man suffered from mental health problems.
"He shot my family, and he's dead now," she said.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the agency "will provide state and local law enforcement any and all resources necessary and keep the public updated as we are able."
"In the meantime," he added, "please pray for the victims and their families."
Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee said that "as governor, a parent, and a former coach, my heart breaks for the victims, families, students, and everyone impacted by the devastating shooting at Lynch Arena in Pawtucket."
McKee added that he is "praying for our communities."
Gun control advocates demanded more than the customary thoughts and prayers.
People in this country should be able to enjoy school athletics without the fear of being gunned down. When will enough be enough?
— Moms Demand Action (@momsdemandaction.org) February 16, 2026 at 2:29 PM
"As a native Rhode Islander who has played many games in that very rink, this tragedy hits especially close to home," Stop Gun Violence board chair Brian Lemek said. "That space holds memories of community, competition, and joy—and now it’s filled with pain no community should have to carry."
"The only thing young athletes should worry about is the scoreboard—not their safety," he continued. "Our kids deserve spaces that bring communities together, they deserve to be safe, and they deserve a future free from this constant fear."
"This is no way for our kids to live," Lemek added. "We need to stop this madness."
Monday's incident follows December's mass shooting at Brown University in Providence—which is less than 10 miles from Pawtucket—that left two people dead and nine others wounded.
"We can and should work together to promote responsible gun ownership and pass legislation like safe storage laws and red flag laws—widely supported measures that keep guns out of dangerous situations while respecting responsible ownership," Lemek asserted Monday.
"I’m holding the victims and their loved ones in my heart," he added, "and I’m more determined than ever to build a future where our kids are safe in the places meant for joy."
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In Trumplandia, Peace Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be
Has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
Feb 04, 2026
This past January 15, the 2025 Nobel Laureate for Peace, Maria Corina Machado, took her prize medal, encased in a gold (of course) and glass frame, to the White House and presented it to our president. Beneath the medal, Machado had inscribed these words:
Presented as a Personal Symbol of Gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan People in Recognition of President Trump’s Principled and Decisive Action to Secure a Free Venezuela. The Courage of America and its President Donald J. Trump, will Never be Forgotten by the Venezuelan People.
While our “peacemaker-in-chief” was no doubt gladdened by Machado’s unprecedented gesture, he still sounded a bit pouty by claiming that having “put out eight wars, in theory, you should get [a Nobel Peace Prize] for each war” in which he boasted that he had “saved millions and millions of lives.”
The eight “wars” he takes credit for ending—Israel-Hamas, Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Serbia-Kosovo, and Egypt-Ethiopia—on the one hand, were all short-lived ceasefires or border skirmishes rather than the end of formal wars and, on the other, are places where tensions persist and conflict continues. Bottom line regarding all these faux wars is that Trump is as entitled to claim Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize as he is to take credit for walking on the moon long before Neil Armstrong did.
Where are our patriots—progressive patriots, five, eight, ten-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
Closer to home, has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
In his very first very “presidential” campaign speech, he launched his first anti-immigration salvo: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since Trump entered politics, a 2020 report from the FBI revealed that hate crimes increased by just under 20% in America.
According to CNN (January 26, 2026), the Obama years (2009-2016) saw 213 mass shootings at schools, churches, or shopping areas—an average of 26.6 shootings per year. Since Trump (2017-2025), the total number has risen to 556 and an average of 61.8 per year.
At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Trump contrasted his approach to campaigning to that of Charlie Kirk—himself no saint in the political arena:
He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them… maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Since Trump, instances of school bullying and antisemitic attacks have risen precipitously. These included the mass shootings in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in a Walmart supermarket in El Paso, Texas, conducted by white supremacists who embraced racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories popular in their circles. As to instances of bullying, just after Trump’s 2024 election victory an elementary school teacher in Georgia reported, “This is my 21st year of teaching. This is the first time I’ve had a student call another student the N-word.”
In 2022 a deranged attacker broke into the San Francisco home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Finding her husband at home, he asked, “Where’s Nancy?” Learning she was in Washington DC, he began assaulting Paul Pelosi, beating him with a hammer and fracturing his skull. Several days later, a number of Republicans, including the president, made light of the attack.
The president’s official coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution bears the face of Trump on one side and on the other his post-assassination image of a bloodied but defiant Trump admonishing his fellow Americans to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
During his 2016 campaign rallies, he urged his followers to punch protesters in the mouth, promising to pay their lawyers’ fees.
In his first term, on immigration he wondered why the US could not get more migrants from, say, Norway instead of from “shithole countries” in Africa or elsewhere.
In his first off-year election (2018) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) were all elected to the US House of Representatives and became known as “The Squad.” On July 14, 2019, Trump publicly advised them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led the fight(s) to impeach Trump, one of whose followers left Schiff a warning in the congressman’s voice mailbox: “I’m gonna f-ing blow your brains out,”
As his first term was ending, Trump encouraged some 2,500 of his closest friends to march on Congress and “fight like hell” on January 6, 2021. Later, very early in his second term he pardoned them and awarded some of them the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When informed that the “patriots” had hung a noose from makeshift gallows on Capitol grounds to “hang Mike Pence,” as the chant admonished, Trump, the defender of evangelical Christians, replied, “So what?”
All through his second campaign for the presidency (2024) he centered his message on anti-immigration, frequently referring to immigrants as “not even human. They’re animals.” He warned that these newcomers would increase crime in the streets and, in a quotation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “poison the bloodstream” of America.
All the while, America’s megalomaniacal monster waved an imaginary Christian flag and promised to fight for it. That is one reason evangelicals were less than unenthusiastic about a potential Mike Pence presidency. As sociologists of religion Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry explained, “[T]he fight was more important than the faith… Pence had the faith, but Trump had the fight. And the fight was really all they cared about.” (The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, 3.)
All of which has brought us through several weeks of clashes between masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and American citizens using their First Amendment right of free speech to protest Trump’s dragnet of blue states, searching and destroying Black and brown families—some illegal, some documented, some American citizens—that have brought the nation to the boiling point.
Nowadays we have no “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” lamenting “four dead in Ohio.”
But we do have a president who makes Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout. And we have Bruce Springsteen:
King Trump's private army from the DHSPeace, it would seem, is not what it’s cracked up to be. In Trumplandia, it appears, P-E-A-C-E spells MURDER.
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn's early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26….
Now they say they're here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight….
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis...
But where are our patriots—progressive patriots, 5-, 8-, 10-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
In 1970, massive numbers of protesters marched to Kent State University. Millions of others showed America that nonviolent protest could work. So where are those of us willing to chant; spill some of our own blood, if necessary; and chant, “Hey, hey, Donald J, how many protesters did you kill today?” until “We the People” come face to face with Mr. Trump, call on Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment, and tell them all: “NO MORE KINGS!?”Keep ReadingShow Less
No, We Can't Deport Our Way Out of Gun Violence
Rather than embrace human complexity, we choose to create enemies. But this is exactly the mindset that motivates mass shooters.
Dec 21, 2025
I stare blankly at the news. Little men with guns once again stir the country—the world—into a state of shock and grief and chaos. Attention: Every last one of us is vulnerable to being eliminated... randomly,
On Saturday, December 13, there’s a classroom shooting at Brown University, in Providence. Rhode Island. Two students are killed, nine others wounded. A day later, in Sydney, Australia—in the midst of a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach—two gunmen fire into the crowd of celebrants. Fifteen people are killed. The shock is global. The grief and anger flow like blood.
So do the questions: Why? How can we stop this? How can we guarantee that life is safe?
Usually, the calls for change after mass shootings focus on political action: specifically, more serious gun control. Ironically, Australia does have serious gun control. And, unlike the US, mass shootings there are extremely rare, but they still happen, which indicates that legal efforts can play a significant, but not total, role in reducing violence.
Good guy vs. bad guy—good violence vs. bad violence—is the essence of linear thinking.
But that ain’t gonna happen in the USA—not until God knows when, which seriously expands and intensifies the nature of the questions we must start asking. Yeah, there are an incredible number of guns in the United States. Some 400 million of them. And embedded into American culture along with the presence of guns is the belief that they are necessary for our safety, even as they also jeopardize it. Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. What a paradox.
And here’s where the process of change must begin. Good guy vs. bad guy—good violence vs. bad violence—is the essence of linear thinking. One person wins, one person loses. And if I draw my gun first, yeehaw, I’m the winner. This simplistic mindset is, and has long been, part of who we are—ultimately resulting, good God, in stockpiles of nuclear weapons, giving humanity the opportunity to commit mass suicide.
And while nukes may be declared to be simply deterrents for our enemies—threatening mutually assured destruction (oh, the MADness)—the global, and especially the US, non-nuclear military budget is itself almost beyond comprehension: larger by far than what we spend on healthcare, education, diplomacy, or environmental salvation, aka, human survival.
As Ivana Nikolić Hughes writes at Common Dreams: “But I think that the problem is far deeper than lack of gun control. The problem lies in having a state, a society, a world, in which violence is not only excused and sanctioned on a regular basis, but celebrated both as a matter of history, but also the present and the future.”
And this thinking isn’t sheerly political. It permeates our social and cultural infrastructure. And it gets personal. “We live in a culture of violence, where weapons are a symbol of power,” Ana Nogales writes in Psychology Today. And having power—over others—also means having the ability, and perhaps the motive, to dehumanize them. And this is the source of human violence—both the kind we hate (mass killings) and the kind we worship (war).
All of which leads me to a quote I heard the other day, in regard to the Bondi Beach shootings, which left me groping for sanity. The speaker was Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks, speaking on Fox News. “In America,” he said, “we have to do more to deport terrorists out of the United States to make sure this doesn’t happen in the homeland, and root out antisemitism around the world as well.”
Flush ’em out! All of them—you know, the ones that are different from us. Skin color, whatever. This is the essence of dehumanization, and it’s how we govern. Rather than embrace human complexity, we choose to create enemies and declare them... deportable, and if necessary, killable. This mindset is infectious. Just ask the students at Brown University or the Hanukkah celebrants at Bondi Beach.
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