A new documentary that premiered yesterday pits the gun-confiscation movement against the schoolsafety world. That’s not how the documentary’s producers would describe it, of course.
The film, Thoughts and Prayers, made its debut on HBO. The 90-minute piece of anti-gun propaganda is the creation of Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock.
The gist of the dystopian film is that school shootings are big business in America, and for this reason, among others, there is no incentive to stop the violence. Of course, profiting from "gun violence documentaries" like theirs is not big business. I guess we’re meant to assume Canepari and Dimmock aren’t making any profit from their film?
At the world premiere of THOUGHTS & PRAYERS, director Jessica Dimmock explains how the kids at school are more willing to talk about gun control than the adults.
— DOC NYC (@DOCNYCfest) November 16, 2025
Watch the film online now until this Friday: https://t.co/g9viKeAIsQ pic.twitter.com/pcMrGYBZRL
There are a few things that immediately undermine the credibility of this project. First, the title. “Thoughts and Prayers” is a sardonic reference to a common reaction among well-meaning and God-believing people when something tragic happens to someone else. When someone dies and you’re talking to their family, you might say, “My thoughts and prayers are with you,” as a sign of encouragement.
The pro-gun-confiscation left hates that for a few reasons. First, while the left is generally agnostic if not openly atheistic, it still hates God nonetheless. Second, it can’t grasp or even imagine the true value and meaning behind faith at a time of tragedy. Third, since it disdains religion, attacking any manifestation of it is an opportunity too good to pass up.
In the end, the title of this documentary is designed at the outset to attack God-fearing people and their approach to the world’s problems.
Though the film is not a parade of politicians and talking points, another common assumption that comes through is the blurring of school shootings with mass shootings. The film relies heavily on leading viewers to assume that the school shooting problem in America is dominated by the type we’ve long associated with places like Columbine or Sandy Hook, and not the much more common scenario of gang-bangers from the inner city using illegally obtained weapons.
The fact is, the left hardly ever makes a distinction between mass shootings carried out with legally obtained guns and those carried out with illegally obtained guns; and it hardly ever distinguishes between Columbine-style gunmen and gang-bangers. Since, statistically, gang-bangers are more often in the protected classes, the left goes out of its way not to place the focus on the groups most commonly associated with mass shootings. For the same reasons, you won’t find the left giving any attention to the horrific newer trend of gender-confused perpetrators carrying out mass shootings, as Victoria Taft reported.
Thoughts and Prayers wants you to see all mass shootings as the stereotypical variety of school shootings.
Regardless, any attempt to make schools safer is met by the filmmakers with jaded cynicism. In their world, you can’t even have the discussion about solutions until after you’ve instituted gun control. The underlying message of the film is that it’s fruitless for school districts to try to fortify their school-shooting mitigation or response measures, and that it’s just a money grab by profiteers.
Another glaring omission from the documentary is any serious discussion of how the establishment of schools as “gun-free zones” has created an environment where schools are considered by potential shooters as soft targets, places where they will find the least amount of resistance. This has only made schools more inviting to shooters.
When you send your kid off to school in the morning, and he participates in an active-shooter drill that is conducted by trained professionals, you may feel at least slightly better knowing that your son’s school is taking safety seriously. Rolling Stone, however, sees these drills and the firms who conduct them differently and describes it all as “the dystopian morass of military-grade preparedness drills, innovations in school-hardening technology, and children who have accepted that any day a gunman could massacre them and their friends and forces the viewer to digest it.”
As for the film, Canepari and Dimmock describe their filmmaking style here as “impressionistic,” which I take to mean that when facts don’t support the narrative you want to create, do it with feelings and emotions that are triggered by carefully curated subjects and imagery.
“We wanted this to be visceral,” Dimmock told Rolling Stone. “We wanted people to really live in these experiences.”
Most of the attention of the documentary is focused on what it says is an industry that has grown up around the need to better protect students from mass shooters. The villains in this film aren’t the shooters, but rather the for-profit businesses that are working to help prevent tragedy.
“I feel really angry that this is what we’re living with,” Dimmock told Rolling Stone. “There is a rage I feel that this is the best we can do, that the best we can do is tell our kids from pre-K on a few times a year that they should squat under their desks and get items to throw at someone, because at some point someone could come into their school and shoot them.”
I have to admit that I do agree with Dimmock on this last point. It does feel pathetic that kids should have to practice squatting under their desks “and get items to throw at someone,” most likely someone who is armed and already committed to death and destruction. It would be nice if these two filmmakers would see the merits in hardening the target a bit. Treat schools the same way we treat our most valuable assets in society and make attacking them a lethal risk. Instead, the filmmakers would rather live in a dream world where gun confiscation is a cure-all.
Maybe someday they’ll do a sequel to this documentary. Let's hope that next time they’ll put the focus on the people who are actually doing the killing and how they got this way.
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