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[Discussion] Mass Shooting at Uvalde Elementary School


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1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Counterpoint: imagine the most average, pimple-faced 18 year old.  He can join the Marines, and become a Marine Private.  And the day after his training is completed, he can be ordered to go in and clear a structure of hostiles.  "Human and scared" is irrelevant -- it is an order.  Go in, clear the structure.   That is your job.

If we can expect and demand green Private Pimpleface to put his life on the line and engage the enemy in a structure until they are neutralized, we can goddamn well expect and demand the same from grown-ass adults with a badge, gun, vests, and all kinds of other fucking hardware.

If you are a cop and you are unwilling to engage an active shooter, even if you think you are outgunned or outmatched, or you are "human and scared," turn in your fucking badge.  Because you are just an impediment to those who WOULD go in to save lives, like the kids' parents.  Quit, and GTFO of the way.

Yet none of them will happen.  Because a single party is a complete and total captive of a fringe movement.  So I'm long past giving a shit what people who continue to support them say "but I would support X or Y."  If you won't take the actual ACTION to make sure those things happen -- and the ONLY action that will do so is to kick every GQP politician out of office -- then your words mean NOTHING.

Agree with all of this.  To be clear, I'd be scared shitless.  I have no idea what I do or how I would react when bullets started flying.  I hope that I'd be brave and risk my life for the kids, but really, I have no idea.  I'm just a pencil pusher and everything I've read about combat is that you just don't know what its like until you're there.

That being said...there was a lot of self congratulation, "I'm thankful for the police officers", everyone did a great job!, etc. from the police captains that were all over TV after the shooting, and it sounds like we should really only be thanking the border patrol of all people.  From the WSJ/NYT reporting on this, the cops basically "secured the perimeter", handcuffed some parents trying to get in and stop the shooter, and called it day.

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1 minute ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Do you want cops to go through marine training? Because I sure as hell don't want MORE militarization of police.

You don’t need marine training to tell people on day 1 that under these circumstances, the expectation is that you go in and attempt to neutralize the threat, and at the very least draw their attention and fire away from the kids.  There’s no training involved in that. The parents were willing to do it- the cops prevented them. 
 

in this case, there were several officers so it wasn’t even a question of 1 v 1. If you get shot, it should mean someone else was given time to shoot back.  Windows, doors, this wasn’t a difficult puzzle to solve. Cops just don’t want to do things until and unless they can stack the deck heavily in their favor first. 

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1 minute ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Do you want cops to go through marine training? Because I sure as hell don't want MORE militarization of police.

No.  They don't need to.  They all carry a firearm, and have gone through training to use it (and there are thousands of examples every year of cops using their sidearm to engage an armed suspect, so it's a thing that they are trained to do).  That's enough.  Sure, if facing an active shooter, I'd love it if a trained SWAT team responded.  But that's almost never going to be the case.

So, street cop with a Glock who comes upon an active shooter: engage him.

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31 minutes ago, Handcruser said:


This is a pretty lame and innacurate take. You can do better.

Mandated background checks on private sales through gun stores? In favor.

21+ to buy an AR? In favor.

They’re are other things I’m open to and in favor of.

I don't give a fuck if the operator of the drug house selling heroin to children says he is in favor of the safe use of heroin to adults.  I want the fucking drug house demolished.

It doesn't matter what you say you personally favor.  You're obviously eager to profit off the misery of others.  Not just eager, but seemingly gleeful.  The question of whether you're a trash person has already been answered definitively in the affirmative.

But that's not really the point.  The point is that your business is a public nuisance.  Sure, Congress won't recognize it as a public nuisance.  But it's a public nuisance all the same.  And what do we need to do with public nuisances?  They need to be abated.

18 minutes ago, B00M said:

 

Wow, at least justify potentially burning people to death fighting for laws that might make a difference.

I don't think burning shit down will produce the results you want. The riots during covid produced about 10 million 1st time gun owners.

 

I don't agree.  Yeah, they might sell more guns in the short term.  But in the long term, with a concerted program of burning down all gun stores, it will be uneconomical to operate that as a business.  And as Handcruiser will tell you, he's not doing it as a charity; gun-store owners are in it for the profit.

No profit, no gun store.

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35 minutes ago, Handcruser said:


This is a pretty lame and innacurate take. You can do better.

Mandated background checks on private sales through gun stores? In favor.

21+ to buy an AR? In favor.

They’re are other things I’m open to and in favor of.

As a business owner, can’t you enact the 21+ age limit on your own (ie, right to refuse service to anyone)?

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Just now, Pato del Muerto said:

You don’t need marine training to tell people on day 1 that under these circumstances, the expectation is that you go in and attempt to neutralize the threat, and at the very least draw their attention and fire away from the kids.  There’s no training involved in that. The parents were willing to do it- the cops prevented them. 
 

in this case, there were several officers so it wasn’t even a question of 1 v 1. If you get shot, it should mean someone else was given time to shoot back.  Windows, doors, this wasn’t a difficult puzzle to solve. Cops just don’t want to do things until and unless they can stack the deck heavily in their favor first. 

I agree 100% that you can tell people "on day 1 that under these circumstances, the expectation is that you go in and attempt to neutralize the threat, and at the very least draw their attention and fire away from the kids." I can also look at cops behavior or Parkland, at Uvalde, and at other non-school shootings. They don't do what they're supposed to. That's bad - full stop.

Yes they should go in. But they don't, not with actual training. I am not arguing with you or @Brisketexan about what cops SHOULD do. I am arguing about what I think realistic expectations are for poorly-trained bullies who aren't used to actually being fired upon. The cops here weren't exceptionally bad - this should be viewed as just the baseline shitty behavior that should be expected, which is why the solution isn't more cops at more schools. It won't work.

Anyway, I've said my piece on this - can agree to disagree.

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44 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

This is my main point - cops aren't the answer because, regardless of right vs wrong, they aren't likely to make the right decision because they're human and scared. This isn't being said as a defense of cops - I think they are almost exclusively power-hungry assholes who get off on abusing people. It's because of this that I have lowered expectations of their behavior when confronted with something like a school shooting.

100%

The problem is very obvious: Guns.

We can lament the cowardice of cops. We can lament the detestable state of mental health. We can blame Satan. We can blame capitalism. That's all fine, but it doesn't matter because those things are unchangeable.

What can be changed is gun laws. We must repeal the 2nd.

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2 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

The cops here weren't exceptionally bad

dude. if standing around doing nothing BUT ARRESTING AND PEPPER SPRAYING PARENTS OF KIDS THAT WERE ACTIVELY GETTING SLAUGHTERED isn't 'exceptionally bad', I have to ask what behavior would warrant that label in your mind?

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9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If you are a cop and you are unwilling to engage an active shooter, even if you think you are outgunned or outmatched, or you are "human and scared," turn in your fucking badge.  Because you are just an impediment to those who WOULD go in to save lives, like the kids' parents.  Quit, and GTFO of the way.

This. If they wanna play military vs the general populace they're supposed to (but under no legal obligation to) protect and serve, they get military consequences. Court martials for everybody! If any of what's coming out is true, these cops need fired, pensions revoked, and they need banned from ever serving in any police force ever again, etc...

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33 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

 

I'm not following your arguments particularly well I think, but I don't think anyone currently participating in this thread is arguing that more militarized police force is going to decrease mass shootings or that evidence supports the idea that there is an effective step we can take that isn't improved gun control. I may just be getting confused myself, but I think there's a distinction to be made between saying that "the armed police officers who represent 40% of the town's budget and have all sorts of GI Joe toys to play with should have done something instead of fucking around outside and preventing parents from saving their children" and saying "we need swarms of cops ready to go guns a blazing in situations like this in order to solve the problem".  Different things.

I'm not intimate with the town of Uvalde, but I understand it is small, rural and potentially with a decreasing population. I imagine that a motivated cop that takes his job serious and everything and is in that town is looking elsewhere to work. I imagine highly effective cops would seek employment in a big city - San Antonio - or with the CBP.  Paychecks may be a reason to leave and maybe even the idea that Uvalde is boring and real police work is limited (all assumptions on my part). My point is that Uvalde cops are potentially the bottom of the barrel - and there are lots of town like Uvalde.

I have no reason to suspect that other similar small towns across the US would not respond in a similar way - in a way that potentially was ineffective to a mass shooting event.

How do we address the mass shooting pandemic by making small towns across the US more effective at responding to mass shooter events?  IMO that answer leans obviously into militarization reform - more warrior police in greater numbers, etc.

 

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Maybe we could also shift some of that police funding to teachers.  If we expect them, on top of teaching overcrowded classes with limited resources, navigating all the testing bureaucracy, etc. to risk their lives to protect their students (including by being armed and exchanging gunfire with shooters!), maybe we should pay them more than $40k/yr.  

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6 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

How do we address the mass shooting pandemic by making small towns across the US more effective at responding to mass shooter events IMO that answer leans obviously into militarization reform - more warrior police in greater numbers, etc.

I don't think that this is possible. And I probably generally agree (using my words not yours) that while cops in general are often dullards who reached their low peak in high school this is particularly true for small town America. They are not the solution to this problem. They are just another problem. Of course our stupidity around cops stems from the same stupid western creation mythos that our gun problem is rooted in. They are not Wyatt Earp and neither are you.

 

multiple edits, sorry

an obvious idea is to have SWAT teams with actual training and discipline (maybe in a separate organization from the toxic PDs or at least in some way where we make this different than GI Joe time for high school drop outs) prepared to react to such events. Of course, this has the obvious problem in small town America (and particularly small town Texas) where it's either too expensive to do or they cover too wide a territory to be effectively quick.

Edited by Celery Man
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9 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

We must repeal the 2nd.

I disagree but at least you're willing to see the argument through to its logical conclusion. Background checks and banning a firearm that meets particular criteria will do absolutely nothing. Gun designers excel at adapting to and optimizing for new laws.

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3 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:


This should be fun.

NRA/GOP: you can’t decide who not to serve as a private business! 

Because you know that would be the argument, irony is dead 

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1 hour ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Here's a graph.  Sandy Hook was in 2012.  Also a black man got re-elected in 2012 and was gonna take away all the guns, again.  So yeah, after that, you can see what happened.

spacer.png

i think the primary takeaway here is that the added regulations and safety standards that have been enacted on the motor vehicle industry (and the advancing technology that stems directly from them), as well as enforceable laws on driver safety have had absolutely no material effect on child mortality due to motor vehicle crashes over the last 20 years as one can observe in this graph (only a 40-50% reduction)...so how could anyone possibly think doing the same thing in the context of transacting weapons of death and war could have any positive effect?  i mean that's just crazy.

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10 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

I agree 100% that you can tell people "on day 1 that under these circumstances, the expectation is that you go in and attempt to neutralize the threat, and at the very least draw their attention and fire away from the kids." I can also look at cops behavior or Parkland, at Uvalde, and at other non-school shootings. They don't do what they're supposed to. That's bad - full stop.

Yes they should go in. But they don't, not with actual training. I am not arguing with you or @Brisketexan about what cops SHOULD do. I am arguing about what I think realistic expectations are for poorly-trained bullies who aren't used to actually being fired upon. The cops here weren't exceptionally bad - this should be viewed as just the baseline shitty behavior that should be expected, which is why the solution isn't more cops at more schools. It won't work.

Anyway, I've said my piece on this - can agree to disagree.

No, agreed. 
 

predicting or changing peoples’ behavior is difficult, be it cops or mentally ill killers.  What is easy is changing laws such that the mentally ill have a tougher time performing a bad act, and thereby limiting the times the police are required to respond to such an act. 
 

this kid could have easily stabbed his grandmother and then ran into a classroom and started stabbing. But how many wounded would there be, how many would be fatal, and how long before the cops run in there and kill him?

There are several avenues that would have made this and other mass killings less likely to occur or be as deadly as they were. 
 

 

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9 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

dude. if standing around doing nothing BUT ARRESTING AND PEPPER SPRAYING PARENTS OF KIDS THAT WERE ACTIVELY GETTING SLAUGHTERED isn't 'exceptionally bad', I have to ask what behavior would warrant that label in your mind?

Just to clarify, I meant that there behavior wasn't an exception against what other cops in other situations have done. Obviously it is morally repugnant and led to more kids being murdered. In that sense yeah it was super duper bad. I should have worded that a bit differently.

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3 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I don't think that this is possible. And I probably generally agree (using my words not yours) that while cops in general are often dullards who reached their low peak in high school this is particularly true for small town America. They are not the solution to this problem. They are just another problem. Of course our stupidity around cops stems from the same stupid western creation mythos that our gun problem is rooted in. They are not Wyatt Earp and neither are you.

I agree.  That is why I generally equate the gun-rights narrative of "good guys with guns" as a similar idea of "small town cops should get good" or that we need more militarized police.  

Relying on police as a solution to firearm violence and mass shootings is the same in my mind as the solution of "we just need more guns."  

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13 minutes ago, sidis said:

i think the primary takeaway here is that the added regulations and safety standards that have been enacted on the motor vehicle industry (and the advancing technology that stems directly from them), as well as enforceable laws on driver safety have had absolutely no material effect on child mortality due to motor vehicle crashes over the last 20 years as one can observe in this graph (only a 40-50% reduction)...so how could anyone possibly think doing the same thing in the context of transacting weapons of death and war could have any positive effect?  i mean that's just crazy.

Nah man, you just have to focus on mental health.  It's the crazies doing this, not the weapons.  Ugh.  (sarcasm just in case)

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14 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

No, agreed. 
 

predicting or changing peoples’ behavior is difficult, be it cops or mentally ill killers.  What is easy is changing laws such that the mentally ill have a tougher time performing a bad act, and thereby limiting the times the police are required to respond to such an act. 
 

this kid could have easily stabbed his grandmother and then ran into a classroom and started stabbing. But how many wounded would there be, how many would be fatal, and how long before the cops run in there and kill him?

There are several avenues that would have made this and other mass killings less likely to occur or be as deadly as they were. 
 

 

This.  A mentally ill person armed with a pencil might kill one or two people.  Chances are higher though if a family member calls the police, that mentally ill person will be killed before they harm anyone.  It's the high-capacity firearms designed to kill people that are facilitating the wholesale slaughter we are seeing day in and day out.

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Asked over and over to various posters stating such things:

Are you voting for politicians that will pass such laws? If no, why not?

are you a member of the NRA?

As a business owner, can’t you enact the 21+ age limit on your own (ie, right to refuse service to anyone)?



He must be too busy selling guns to answer.
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46 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

I agree 100% that you can tell people "on day 1 that under these circumstances, the expectation is that you go in and attempt to neutralize the threat, and at the very least draw their attention and fire away from the kids." I can also look at cops behavior or Parkland, at Uvalde, and at other non-school shootings. They don't do what they're supposed to. That's bad - full stop.

Yes they should go in. But they don't, not with actual training. I am not arguing with you or @Brisketexan about what cops SHOULD do. I am arguing about what I think realistic expectations are for poorly-trained bullies who aren't used to actually being fired upon. The cops here weren't exceptionally bad - this should be viewed as just the baseline shitty behavior that should be expected, which is why the solution isn't more cops at more schools. It won't work.

Anyway, I've said my piece on this - can agree to disagree.

James Franco Reaction GIF

I mean it hasn't come out that any of the cops actually shot the kids but that's about the only way they could've performed worse.  

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Federal standards for building access and safety protocols. Cinemark locked and alarmed the back doors in their theaters after that shooting, pretty common sense. Public schools that receive federal money should take similar initiatives reinforced by federal law. One of my kids is in private school and it’s locked down. The public school my younger one is in has some things in place but could be much, much better, even with a full time SRO on loan from local PD. This has been the focus of the conversation with my kids, guided by them not me.

Make it harder to get and keep a gun. As others have said no way it should be that easy for a kid in that mental state to purchase a firearm. Their brains aren’t even fully developed until their 20s.

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

No.  They don't need to.  They all carry a firearm, and have gone through training to use it (and there are thousands of examples every year of cops using their sidearm to engage an armed suspect, so it's a thing that they are trained to do).  That's enough.  Sure, if facing an active shooter, I'd love it if a trained SWAT team responded.  But that's almost never going to be the case.

So, street cop with a Glock who comes upon an active shooter: engage him.

 

Screenshot_20220527-091937.png

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50 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Maybe we should harden the school children? It’s probably their fucking fault 

It's you and your suggested grooming that is the problem.  What you fail to understand, is since oh, around 1980 or so, there is one type of American.  White Republican Males.  Everyone else is a commie libtard socialist evil spawn of Satan who is killing babies and gonna kill you.   FEAR!  FEAR!  Fox has made millions.  The NRA has made millions.  

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6 minutes ago, burntorangebongos said:

Why aren't they bringing guns to school and taking care of the problem themselves? We can't expect law enforcement to serve and protect all these lazy children!

Too many beta male libtards having kids. The strong conservative children are born with body armor 

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Man, reading through the timelines that are coming out just add to what a clusterfuck this whole thing was. From the teacher leaving the outside door propped open, to the shooter shooting into the school as he walked up, to officer’s not breaching the door, to the first on scene guys driving right past the suspect, etc. It is just a stack of issues one on top of the next. It will be more interesting to see what the timeline of shots fired is as everything gets pieced together. The cops on scene first could have likely prevented at least some of what happened and the school district police chief’s response to treat it as a barricaded suspect situation led to more death. It’s fucked up.

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3 minutes ago, Brew said:

Man, reading through the timelines that are coming out just add to what a clusterfuck this whole thing was. From the teacher leaving the outside door propped open, to the shooter shooting into the school as he walked up, to officer’s not breaching the door, to the first on scene guys driving right past the suspect, etc. It is just a stack of issues one on top of the next. It will be more interesting to see what the timeline of shots fired is as everything gets pieced together. The cops on scene first could have likely prevented at least some of what happened and the school district police chief’s response to treat it as a barricaded suspect situation led to more death. It’s fucked up.

The teacher leaving the door propped open is so far fucking down the list of what went wrong.   But this is America.

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4 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

The teacher leaving the door propped open is so far fucking down the list of what went wrong.   But this is America.

I meant that more in the randomness of timing, not in blame. 

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They're still lying about shit. This was from two days ago:

 

That's very specific wording: "all children that were shot and killed..." At some point in all of this, the cops likely shot a kid who didn't die. I want to know how that lines up with the timeline they're still inventing.

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2 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Anyone call our elected representatives to let them know that we are wanting change?

I've never done it before in my life, but was considering it.

It falls on deaf ears.   I live Texas in a R district.    None of them care.

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Anyone call our elected representatives to let them know that we are wanting change?
I've never done it before in my life, but was considering it.
I sent this email to my house rep Chip Roy. But he's about as right as they get.so I assume my email will be largely ignored.

Chip. I am a responsible firearm owner. I own shotguns, rifles, and handguns. I have a CHL and I keep my guns locked. I am a firm believer in the 2nd amendment. But more than anything I am parent with a 15 and 12 yr old in public school. We as a country and a state have to makes changes. The NRA does not represent me you do. I want universal background checks. I want the age to buy a firearm increased to 21 or even 25. A 5 day waiting periods on handguns and assault type rifles does not take away anyone's rights nor does it keep them from protecting their property or family. If it saves one persons life its worth the time. Thank you
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why doesn't a devastating event like this spur mass protests demanding change?

is it because not enough of these have happened yet to piss off enough people?

how much would be "enough" for those thinking "ehh, sucks but..." ?

compared to the george floyd aftermath, and multiple instances prior to that of racially motivated police brutality, enough pissed off people and blm said fucckk this! and that's obviously an ongoing cause that will take years of work to make incremental changes.

and i'll answer my own question to suggest it's because there isn't a well-funded organization with wide support that opposes nra - though there's several other interests at play.

so why the fuck can't americans get behind a gun control movement, protest, vote out the complicit politicians? what the fuck are we waiting for?

it was damning and horrific to hear abbot say "it could have been worse" because he's absolutely and unfortunately correct here. it can be worse, so it will be worse, and yet he's using that as a justification of the status quo rather than an impetus for change. he's saying let's let it get worse, let's do nothing and encourage more mass murders, because i don't actually think enough people, give enough of a shit, to change things. and as ridiculous and devastating as that is, he's right. fuck.

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25 minutes ago, midtown said:

I sent this email to my house rep Chip Roy. But he's about as right as they get.so I assume my email will be largely ignored.

Chip. I am a responsible firearm owner. I own shotguns, rifles, and handguns. I have a CHL and I keep my guns locked. I am a firm believer in the 2nd amendment. But more than anything I am parent with a 15 and 12 yr old in public school. We as a country and a state have to makes changes. The NRA does not represent me you do. I want universal background checks. I want the age to buy a firearm increased to 21 or even 25. A 5 day waiting periods on handguns and assault type rifles does not take away anyone's rights nor does it keep them from protecting their property or family. If it saves one persons life its worth the time. Thank you

I think I will do both (e-mail and phone call).  Thanks for the feedback.

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48 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Anyone call our elected representatives to let them know that we are wanting change?

I've never done it before in my life, but was considering it.

Cruz won’t listen. Try Cornyn though, he’s actually allegedly engaging with the other side on this. Cruz DGAF

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11 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

I think I will do both (e-mail and phone call).  Thanks for the feedback.

i did both to roger williams's office in a socially acceptable way while trying to keep needless antagonism to a minimum but providing some perspective on their culpability and unwillingness to actually take steps to do anything tangible about firearm access or access to health care (mental health crocodile tears).

Edited by sidis
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