Person of interest released as Search for Brown University shooter enters third day, Trump claims “things can happen.”
In another stunning display of Trump’s empathetic abilities, he has now dismissed the gravity of the deadly shooting at Brown University that left two students dead. According to Trump on Sunday, “[these] things can happen”. The hunt for the shooter is back on, as police released the suspect they had in custody over the weekend. The shooting happened in an engineering building, during an exam review class for the Fall semester. So far, two students have been pronounced dead, and another nine have been injured. Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov were the students killed in the shooting. Providence police confirmed on Monday that the suspect used a 9mm handgun to commit the shooting.
Brown University, great school… really one of the greatest schools anywhere in the world, [these] things can happen. So to the nine injured – get well fast; and to the families of those two that are no longer with us, I pay my deepest regards and respects from the United States of America.
The statement sounds like Donald Trump is dismissing the trauma that the victims of the tragedy have experienced. The sentence “get well fast” feels completely devoid of empathy, and Trump quickly shifted topics away from the Brown shooting to foreign affairs, which has been the focus of his administration. Trump mentioned the shooting in Australia, as well as the attack in Syria that killed two Army soldiers and an interpreter travelling in a convoy of American and Syrian forces on Saturday. Trump claimed there would be “big damage done” in Syria in response to the attack.
We had an attack in Syria, and we had three great patriots terminated by bad people, and not the Syrian government; it was ISIS. The Syrian government fought by our side.
‘[These] things happen’
Contrary to what Trump is peddling, in the rest of the world, these things do not happen. From 2009 to 2018, there were 40 school shootings across the globe. In that same time frame, there were 288 school shootings in the US. From 2000 to 2022, the US made up more than a third of all global mass shootings. The only countries that could be compared to the US in terms of gun violence are Russia, Yemen, the Philippines, and Uganda: all countries that Donald Trump has made degrading statements about. It’s important to note that the gun violence in these countries still pales in comparison to that in the United States.
Donald Trump has been a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms- and has consistently downplayed mass shootings and the victims of gun violence. In 2017, Trump was caught sending his ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the wrong victims after a mass shooting in California, an ironic demonstration of just how many mass shootings the US experiences. There are so many, Trump can’t even keep them straight! Trump also downplayed a school shooting that took the life of a sixth grader in January 2024, stating less than 48 hours after the tragedy that “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it; we have to move forward.” Telling the family of a murdered sixth grader to “get over it” is something most people would consider cruel. In another piece of irony, being a convicted felon, Trump isn’t actually allowed to own a gun himself. His support of the 2nd amendment is a political strategy, not a belief Trump actually has.
Since January 1, 2025, there have been 392 mass shootings in the United States, and more than 2000 American citizens have been killed or injured in the shootings. Note that a shooting is only considered a ‘mass shooting’ if there are four or more victims involved. There have been 589 shootings involving children in 2025. More than 300 children have been killed, and more than 600 injured across those shootings.
The number one cause of death for American children is gun violence.