Those good guys with their guns were afraid of the shooter with an AR 15! Oh dear! They might have been shot trying to get him! And the NRA won’t let any of those law abiding, gun toting members into their convention with a gun! What hypocrisy and total evil. Makes me just sick!!!!
The coverage of Buffalo was all about the shooter targeting the black community. Uvalde is almost totally Hispanic. The Uvalde shooter was also Hispanic, so it's different. But I find myself wondering whether the armed police would have stood around - as you say, scratching their asses - if the school had been filled with middle-class white kids? Just a thought.
I've heard speculation along those lines from others, but I still don't know about the composition of the police unit on site. The chief's name is Arredondo and he is said to have grown up in town, which suggests to me that he might have been Hispanic himself. (He was recently elected to the city council.) I haven't seen names for anyone else in the unit, but I'm not discounting the possibility that they were mostly Hispanic and/or from Uvalde so I'm not leaping to any conclusions about why they delayed. Another thing I don't understand: This police unit is sometimes referred to as "tiny" and apparently it was specifically attached to the school district. Did this affect the unit's composition, or its training? No idea. In a town of 16K, it's highly likely that most of the officers knew some of the kids in the school, and their parents.
Let me vent. Certain police officers have no problem shooting unarmed Black men. Other police officers, it seems, have a big problem confronting a gunned up teenager who is slaughtering children. There are cops in my family, and I know that the vast majority of police are not like this. The police who ran into the Twin Towers knew they weren't coming out. But, still, the Uvalde response is indefensible.
Don't get it. If cops cannot deal with AR 15s, why don't they help ban them from sales to the general public? And, since so many of them have now been sold to Just Anybody, why aren't the cops trained in dealing with them?
In defense of the Uvalde police department—Uvalde is a small town. They are not staffed or trained for SWAT operations. What did you want them to do? Run in with guns blazing when the shooter was armed to the teeth with assault rifles? They had to wait for SWAT -trained officers from BORDER PATROL.
BORDER PATROL!!!!
The problem wasn’t with the police—the problem IS WITH US for allowing the right-wing and NRA to twist and distort the meaning of the Second Anendment.
The Pandora’s box of military assault weapons is now open, and even so, look who shows up to the NRA rally. Traitors, insurrectionists—liars and peddlers of misinformation.
And notice that Greg Abbott was out front w the cameras to give report—usually that’s the job of the law enforcement official in charge. But Abbott loves to gain the spotlight—and I’m glad that tactic bit him in the ass. He’ll use anything to promote himself….like tRump or DeathSantis.
I was saying the exact same thing to people! That's Abbott's long-established tactic. Claim "credit" he isn't due, always a publicity hog, and cast blame around to scapegoats for what he is directly responsible for (e.g., the Texas power grid failures).
I wish Beto had gone up and punched him in his smiley Orc face.
NB an nyTimes national correspondent's twitter thread: "I have spent the past few days researching the training of Uvalde officers, including the tactics they were expected to use to halt school shooters. The documents are jarring. Here’s a thread of our findings so far."
the author prints out what i think is a set of instructions given to uvalde police officers just 2 months ago in a live training session.
among other pertinent instructions it clearly states that in situations of an active shooter, their MAIN objective is to save lives of victims by taking immediate actions, EVEN IF they are solo.
This horror show was like one of those historical reenactments where the actors are hanging around waiting for the parade to start. Forty, fifty, or more guys walking around, hanging tough, with the only downside the sweat they're accumulating under their helmets and tactical gear.
This goes on for a solid hour until the Border Patrol contingent which arrived on scene a half hour after local law enforcement did, decides that they're going to move forward, overriding the On Site Commander. Inbetween, there's a lot of dickering back and forth about who's going to breach the door and save whoever may still be alive. This goes on for fifteen minutes. The rest of them continue to do nothing but look tough in front of the news media and cameramen.
Meantime, the kids who are still alive are crying for help, but you'd never know it from the nonchalance that's going full blast in front of the cameras, pushing parents and concerned citizens around, because that's what these Mayberries do.
The Border Patrol team forms its assault stack, and using a custodial employee's master key, gets through the door. No one has yet explained why it took more than an hour to find that guy and get his door keys. I'd have thought that would have been the first order of business by the first officer on the scene. Nope, that seems to have been overlooked in the rush to get the yellow crime scene tape unrolled in front to the media cameras, and calling the Governor's Office to let them know they have a bodacious photo opportunity brewing, and to get their asses down to Uvalde as fast as their helicopters could get them there. As for the kids trapped in the Robb Elementary School classroom, by now they're all probably dead, and their parents, nearly all of whom are Hispanic, don't vote Republican.
Using their key to gain entry, the Border Patrol breaches the locked door, and the perp shoots off one round before he's shot fifteen times, and he's dead before he hits the floor. One Border Patrol officer receives a scalp wound. I don't know whether the Border Patrol hands out Purple Hearts, but I'm confident he'll be awarded a certificate attesting to his valor, as he should. But you can bet that Team Texas, from Governor Greg Abbott on down will be wanting everybody to know what a wonderful job that he, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and all their minions did to bring justice to Uvalde and its residents. Except that they didn't. From the time the first shots were fired, Governor Abbott and his crew of spinmeisters couldn't get their stories straight. The following day, faced with the enormity of this unnecessary tragedy, Abbott whined before the cameras that he had been 'misled' and for that he was 'livid'! You heard it right and from his own mouth. This was all about HIM being made to look bad. Not one fucking word about the tragedy of nineteen small children under the age of ten whose lives were lost, some of whom might have been saved had things been done differently. Not a word, either, about the two teachers who lost their lives trying to protect their students. No condolences to the families whose children never returned home from school that awful day. But hey, what would you expect from officials who view the dead and injured and their families as expendable props, cardboard cutouts in their stories celebrating their self-glorification. Like every disaster movie, nobody knows who those bit players are when the credits roll on after the audience gets up to leave the theater. We owe those dead children and adults, and the people of Uvalde something better than the obligatory and perfunctory acknowledgements of their heartbreak and loss.
But for Republicans of a certain stripe, it's just another 'thoughts and prayers' tragedy they hope will all fade away in time for the Memorial Day weekend celebrations. That's what Abbott and his scumbag retinue want us to think, because that's the way they think about us and everyone else.
What I don’t understand is if police could break down the door to Brianna Taylor’s apartment with their no-knock warrant, why couldn’t these yahoos break down the schoolroom door? There were enough of them so that the ones breaking down the door could have been guarded by the rest of them.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I say that many if not most of these good-guy cops armed to the hilt will be decidedly bad guys if civil war were to break out.
TCinLA reports in his Substack column "That's Another Fine Mess" that in the USA we have gone from 40,000 assault weapons in 1994 when the ban was lifted, to 40 MILLION now! Currently the U.S. Army has about 1 million troups. The U.S. National Guard about half a million. Give each soldier 2 AR-15's = 3 million. Folks, we are badly outnumbered in the coming UNcivil war.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson reported that when the ban was lifted, the number of assault weapons increased to 20 million, not 40. Her source is an author of a book that is being written about the AK’s in our own midst.
Here is a comment by J.S. on Heather's Herd (political actuvist group):
"If you are so inclined and able, you may want to donate to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety. Mike Bloomberg is matching donations 3-to-1 for the rest of May.
Consider joining a local group.
TRIPLE Your Impact: Give Now to End Gun Violence
Donate before Tuesday, May 31st at 11:59pm ET to triple your impact. Every dollar you give before the deadline will be matched by Mike Bloomberg. Your contribution will help us:
Defeat the gun lobby's guns everywhere agenda
Oppose armed extremism
Pressure lawmakers to improve our gun laws
Educate the public about common-sense gun laws and responsible gun ownership
Mobilize grassroots supporters
Amplify the voices of survivors of gun violence
Moms Demand Action is a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence. We pass stronger gun laws and work to close the loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our families. We also work in our own communities and with business leaders to encourage a culture of responsible gun ownership. We know that gun violence is preventable, and we’re committed to doing what it takes to keep families safe.
Lucien, your column left me with one awful conclusion. After all these years of arming the police like the military and spending millions to up armor police forces to resemble crack military units we have the best police in the world at crowd control and the worst at gun control.
What we now have resembles third world dictatorships and not a democracy. Just recently we had a former SecDef tell us a sitting President was all in on having DC police "shoot demonstrators outside the White House in the legs" so it would appear it might now be government policy to actually do that?
Evidently, police leadership in Uvalde had all the weapons they needed but little of the training for such a situation. To be fair the situation and scene was chaotic but should not some of the money we have spent as a nation over the years to "equip" our police for such situations gone to preparing the police for what to do when a crisis like this arises?
But, not to worry because yesterday Abbot signaled where the next wave of spending must come. Since all our police have more than enough guns we need to spend a lot more on "mental health" to , literally, stop the bleeding. So , look soon for a new mantra from the right. "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure we put everyone on a 48 hour psyche hold when we think you are a threat." Then we can look for a lot of BLM activists locked up by all the good guys with their good guns. Problem solved.
"Much has been made of the fact that he was not old enough to buy a beer, but he was old enough to buy a rifle capable of firing two to three bullets per second."
Will Texas answer to this be to reduce the legal age for drinking?
I wish this column would appear on every media platform nationwide. We are told Uvalde is a very Hispanic community. Is the police force representative of that community? How many Hispanic officers are there? Does the town government look like the community? How many Hispanics are in town government? I haven’t seen any reporting on that rather important data. Perhaps if we knew the lack of a successful intervention to stop this atrocity would become clearer. Perhaps, when all the “good guys with gun” realize who the bad guys really are something will change. Perhaps when an well-armed minority group takes out a White supremacist attack, something will change. Perhaps when the children of some of the NRA’s bought and paid for politicians are murdered something will change. I’m not implying that the ‘change’ will be positive.
Let me vent. Certain police officers have no problem shooting unarmed Black men. Other police officers, it seems, have a big problem confronting a gunned up teenager who is slaughtering children. There are cops in my family, and I know that the vast majority of police are not like this. The police who ran into the Twin Towers knew they weren't coming out. But, still, the Uvalde response is indefensible.
1) Police negotiating for salary increases + early pensions + mega-military equipment: "We're highly trained professionals, we take on risks that no one else does, we deserve: a) super-early retirements; b) higher wages than other local public servants; c) military-type armaments; d.) armored military vehicles; e) pensions that start 10-15 years before any other workers.
2.) Police after screwing up, malfeasance, over-reaction or in case of Uvalde & Parkland mass shootings-- simply not doing their job "We're only human; you don’t understand the stress, sometimes we panic & you can't expect us to confront someone armed with a weapon and endanger our own lives!
Don’t forget to address the question of whyAbbott also signed into law unfettered availability to buy silencers for those weapons. I suppose so the cops can sneak up on the shooter under covering fire. Incidentally, count us not participating in those gun toting stats. I guess we’re just foolish enough to still trust the cops.
Those good guys with their guns were afraid of the shooter with an AR 15! Oh dear! They might have been shot trying to get him! And the NRA won’t let any of those law abiding, gun toting members into their convention with a gun! What hypocrisy and total evil. Makes me just sick!!!!
Sick. Like disgusted. This is what contempt feels like
The coverage of Buffalo was all about the shooter targeting the black community. Uvalde is almost totally Hispanic. The Uvalde shooter was also Hispanic, so it's different. But I find myself wondering whether the armed police would have stood around - as you say, scratching their asses - if the school had been filled with middle-class white kids? Just a thought.
Yup. I had that same thought. And so close to the border too...you know there's some history there.
I've heard speculation along those lines from others, but I still don't know about the composition of the police unit on site. The chief's name is Arredondo and he is said to have grown up in town, which suggests to me that he might have been Hispanic himself. (He was recently elected to the city council.) I haven't seen names for anyone else in the unit, but I'm not discounting the possibility that they were mostly Hispanic and/or from Uvalde so I'm not leaping to any conclusions about why they delayed. Another thing I don't understand: This police unit is sometimes referred to as "tiny" and apparently it was specifically attached to the school district. Did this affect the unit's composition, or its training? No idea. In a town of 16K, it's highly likely that most of the officers knew some of the kids in the school, and their parents.
Let me vent. Certain police officers have no problem shooting unarmed Black men. Other police officers, it seems, have a big problem confronting a gunned up teenager who is slaughtering children. There are cops in my family, and I know that the vast majority of police are not like this. The police who ran into the Twin Towers knew they weren't coming out. But, still, the Uvalde response is indefensible.
Don't get it. If cops cannot deal with AR 15s, why don't they help ban them from sales to the general public? And, since so many of them have now been sold to Just Anybody, why aren't the cops trained in dealing with them?
In defense of the Uvalde police department—Uvalde is a small town. They are not staffed or trained for SWAT operations. What did you want them to do? Run in with guns blazing when the shooter was armed to the teeth with assault rifles? They had to wait for SWAT -trained officers from BORDER PATROL.
BORDER PATROL!!!!
The problem wasn’t with the police—the problem IS WITH US for allowing the right-wing and NRA to twist and distort the meaning of the Second Anendment.
The Pandora’s box of military assault weapons is now open, and even so, look who shows up to the NRA rally. Traitors, insurrectionists—liars and peddlers of misinformation.
They trained for a school shooter twice in the past few months. No excuse other than cowardice.
And notice that Greg Abbott was out front w the cameras to give report—usually that’s the job of the law enforcement official in charge. But Abbott loves to gain the spotlight—and I’m glad that tactic bit him in the ass. He’ll use anything to promote himself….like tRump or DeathSantis.
I was saying the exact same thing to people! That's Abbott's long-established tactic. Claim "credit" he isn't due, always a publicity hog, and cast blame around to scapegoats for what he is directly responsible for (e.g., the Texas power grid failures).
I wish Beto had gone up and punched him in his smiley Orc face.
uvalde does have a SWAT team:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/3NJHnVwCgoDSfF899
and their police station is only 1.4 miles from Robb Elem.
And they have practiced school shooting situations. BUT , you can’t be a coward and take down someone with an AR killing children 😡‼️
Dawna--have you seen the photo of the Uvalde SWAT team? They certainly had all the gear.
NB an nyTimes national correspondent's twitter thread: "I have spent the past few days researching the training of Uvalde officers, including the tactics they were expected to use to halt school shooters. The documents are jarring. Here’s a thread of our findings so far."
https://mobile.twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1530357140191186944
this article is very disturbing.
the author prints out what i think is a set of instructions given to uvalde police officers just 2 months ago in a live training session.
among other pertinent instructions it clearly states that in situations of an active shooter, their MAIN objective is to save lives of victims by taking immediate actions, EVEN IF they are solo.
This horror show was like one of those historical reenactments where the actors are hanging around waiting for the parade to start. Forty, fifty, or more guys walking around, hanging tough, with the only downside the sweat they're accumulating under their helmets and tactical gear.
This goes on for a solid hour until the Border Patrol contingent which arrived on scene a half hour after local law enforcement did, decides that they're going to move forward, overriding the On Site Commander. Inbetween, there's a lot of dickering back and forth about who's going to breach the door and save whoever may still be alive. This goes on for fifteen minutes. The rest of them continue to do nothing but look tough in front of the news media and cameramen.
Meantime, the kids who are still alive are crying for help, but you'd never know it from the nonchalance that's going full blast in front of the cameras, pushing parents and concerned citizens around, because that's what these Mayberries do.
The Border Patrol team forms its assault stack, and using a custodial employee's master key, gets through the door. No one has yet explained why it took more than an hour to find that guy and get his door keys. I'd have thought that would have been the first order of business by the first officer on the scene. Nope, that seems to have been overlooked in the rush to get the yellow crime scene tape unrolled in front to the media cameras, and calling the Governor's Office to let them know they have a bodacious photo opportunity brewing, and to get their asses down to Uvalde as fast as their helicopters could get them there. As for the kids trapped in the Robb Elementary School classroom, by now they're all probably dead, and their parents, nearly all of whom are Hispanic, don't vote Republican.
Using their key to gain entry, the Border Patrol breaches the locked door, and the perp shoots off one round before he's shot fifteen times, and he's dead before he hits the floor. One Border Patrol officer receives a scalp wound. I don't know whether the Border Patrol hands out Purple Hearts, but I'm confident he'll be awarded a certificate attesting to his valor, as he should. But you can bet that Team Texas, from Governor Greg Abbott on down will be wanting everybody to know what a wonderful job that he, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and all their minions did to bring justice to Uvalde and its residents. Except that they didn't. From the time the first shots were fired, Governor Abbott and his crew of spinmeisters couldn't get their stories straight. The following day, faced with the enormity of this unnecessary tragedy, Abbott whined before the cameras that he had been 'misled' and for that he was 'livid'! You heard it right and from his own mouth. This was all about HIM being made to look bad. Not one fucking word about the tragedy of nineteen small children under the age of ten whose lives were lost, some of whom might have been saved had things been done differently. Not a word, either, about the two teachers who lost their lives trying to protect their students. No condolences to the families whose children never returned home from school that awful day. But hey, what would you expect from officials who view the dead and injured and their families as expendable props, cardboard cutouts in their stories celebrating their self-glorification. Like every disaster movie, nobody knows who those bit players are when the credits roll on after the audience gets up to leave the theater. We owe those dead children and adults, and the people of Uvalde something better than the obligatory and perfunctory acknowledgements of their heartbreak and loss.
But for Republicans of a certain stripe, it's just another 'thoughts and prayers' tragedy they hope will all fade away in time for the Memorial Day weekend celebrations. That's what Abbott and his scumbag retinue want us to think, because that's the way they think about us and everyone else.
What I don’t understand is if police could break down the door to Brianna Taylor’s apartment with their no-knock warrant, why couldn’t these yahoos break down the schoolroom door? There were enough of them so that the ones breaking down the door could have been guarded by the rest of them.
Those doors are very heavy and set in steel frames.
Thanks for the info.
well said, Arthur. kudos for nailing each point.
You can buy a machine gun and think you are buying a pair. But balls are not on sale in a gun store
Do you know if Joe Biden could write an executive order to buy back all military rifles, etc & then send them to Ukraine? Just a thought.
That makes so much sense. Buy the amunition, too. But, need to ban assault rifles and ammunition sales in USA 1st.
That may be impossible considering the state that the Senate is in. That’s why i thought of an executive order.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I say that many if not most of these good-guy cops armed to the hilt will be decidedly bad guys if civil war were to break out.
TCinLA reports in his Substack column "That's Another Fine Mess" that in the USA we have gone from 40,000 assault weapons in 1994 when the ban was lifted, to 40 MILLION now! Currently the U.S. Army has about 1 million troups. The U.S. National Guard about half a million. Give each soldier 2 AR-15's = 3 million. Folks, we are badly outnumbered in the coming UNcivil war.
We're characters in a dystopian here and now.
😒😶
Professor Heather Cox Richardson reported that when the ban was lifted, the number of assault weapons increased to 20 million, not 40. Her source is an author of a book that is being written about the AK’s in our own midst.
Here is a comment by J.S. on Heather's Herd (political actuvist group):
"If you are so inclined and able, you may want to donate to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety. Mike Bloomberg is matching donations 3-to-1 for the rest of May.
Consider joining a local group.
TRIPLE Your Impact: Give Now to End Gun Violence
Donate before Tuesday, May 31st at 11:59pm ET to triple your impact. Every dollar you give before the deadline will be matched by Mike Bloomberg. Your contribution will help us:
Defeat the gun lobby's guns everywhere agenda
Oppose armed extremism
Pressure lawmakers to improve our gun laws
Educate the public about common-sense gun laws and responsible gun ownership
Mobilize grassroots supporters
Amplify the voices of survivors of gun violence
Moms Demand Action is a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence. We pass stronger gun laws and work to close the loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our families. We also work in our own communities and with business leaders to encourage a culture of responsible gun ownership. We know that gun violence is preventable, and we’re committed to doing what it takes to keep families safe.
Just found 2 other sources that say 20 million assault weapons in USA.
MaryPat, that was in HRC’s letter.
Lucien, your column left me with one awful conclusion. After all these years of arming the police like the military and spending millions to up armor police forces to resemble crack military units we have the best police in the world at crowd control and the worst at gun control.
What we now have resembles third world dictatorships and not a democracy. Just recently we had a former SecDef tell us a sitting President was all in on having DC police "shoot demonstrators outside the White House in the legs" so it would appear it might now be government policy to actually do that?
Evidently, police leadership in Uvalde had all the weapons they needed but little of the training for such a situation. To be fair the situation and scene was chaotic but should not some of the money we have spent as a nation over the years to "equip" our police for such situations gone to preparing the police for what to do when a crisis like this arises?
But, not to worry because yesterday Abbot signaled where the next wave of spending must come. Since all our police have more than enough guns we need to spend a lot more on "mental health" to , literally, stop the bleeding. So , look soon for a new mantra from the right. "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure we put everyone on a 48 hour psyche hold when we think you are a threat." Then we can look for a lot of BLM activists locked up by all the good guys with their good guns. Problem solved.
"Much has been made of the fact that he was not old enough to buy a beer, but he was old enough to buy a rifle capable of firing two to three bullets per second."
Will Texas answer to this be to reduce the legal age for drinking?
Yeah, probably....
Wayne LaPierre gave his disciples catchy slogans…Donald Trump taught those disciples how to lie when the catchy slogans didn’t work.
I wish this column would appear on every media platform nationwide. We are told Uvalde is a very Hispanic community. Is the police force representative of that community? How many Hispanic officers are there? Does the town government look like the community? How many Hispanics are in town government? I haven’t seen any reporting on that rather important data. Perhaps if we knew the lack of a successful intervention to stop this atrocity would become clearer. Perhaps, when all the “good guys with gun” realize who the bad guys really are something will change. Perhaps when an well-armed minority group takes out a White supremacist attack, something will change. Perhaps when the children of some of the NRA’s bought and paid for politicians are murdered something will change. I’m not implying that the ‘change’ will be positive.
More likely to accelerate the degeneration into even worse civil unrest and tribalistic hatreds.
i believe the police ?chief? who held back the SWATteams was hispanic
he was a former dispatcher with the police force, and had recently announced his candidacy for the town council.
I have the distinct feeling he will not be running for that post, because people are rightfully and righteously pissed off at him and his 'Law Men':
https://www.thedailybeast.com/uvalde-school-districts-police-chief-pedro-arredondo-must-resign-after-robb-elementary-massacre?ref=home
In fact, he should definitely consider resigning, because he's an incompetent coward.
Let me vent. Certain police officers have no problem shooting unarmed Black men. Other police officers, it seems, have a big problem confronting a gunned up teenager who is slaughtering children. There are cops in my family, and I know that the vast majority of police are not like this. The police who ran into the Twin Towers knew they weren't coming out. But, still, the Uvalde response is indefensible.
1) Police negotiating for salary increases + early pensions + mega-military equipment: "We're highly trained professionals, we take on risks that no one else does, we deserve: a) super-early retirements; b) higher wages than other local public servants; c) military-type armaments; d.) armored military vehicles; e) pensions that start 10-15 years before any other workers.
2.) Police after screwing up, malfeasance, over-reaction or in case of Uvalde & Parkland mass shootings-- simply not doing their job "We're only human; you don’t understand the stress, sometimes we panic & you can't expect us to confront someone armed with a weapon and endanger our own lives!
Don’t forget to address the question of whyAbbott also signed into law unfettered availability to buy silencers for those weapons. I suppose so the cops can sneak up on the shooter under covering fire. Incidentally, count us not participating in those gun toting stats. I guess we’re just foolish enough to still trust the cops.