A report from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) issued Wednesday highlighted the Minneapolis trans shooter’s desire to follow in the footsteps of mass shooters James Holmes and Adam Lanza by attacking unarmed people.
James Holmes is the gunman who opened fire in a gun-free movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, 2012, killing 12 and injuring dozens. Adam Lanza carried out the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 28 people including himself and injuring two others.
CPRC used its report demonstrate that the trans attacker who allegedly shot and killed two children at Annunciation Catholic school and wounded many others wanted gun-free victims, like the ones Holmes and Lanza shot.
They translated a portion of the trans shooter’s manifesto, which was written in Russian, and it says:
I recently heard a rumor that James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, may have chosen venues that were “gun-free zones.” I would probably aim the same way… Holmes wanted to make sure his victims would be unarmed. That’s why I and many others like schools so much. At least for me, I am focused on them. Adam Lanza is my reason.
On the same page of the manifesto on which he noted his focus on attacking a schools, because they are typically gun-free, the trans shooter admitted that localities and facilities with security are unattractive targets: “I understand that high-security places like prisons or airports are different.”
In 2018, the CPRC released a study showing that 97.8 percent of mass shootings that occurred over a 68-year period were carried out in “gun-free zones.”
Breitbart News reported that three people were shot in New York City’s gun-free Times Square August 9, 2025, and, three days earlier, five soldiers were shot at Fort Stewart which also has gun-free policies.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at [email protected].
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