Cont: Today's Mass Shooting (2)

[lobosrul5]

Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick says our schools should be firetraps.



https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1529819857394483200

And how much would that cost? Is he willing to increase TX property taxes the amount it would take to harden all Texas schools? Or does he want a federal handout?

ETA: and when I was a student in Texas some schools were still wall to wall windows because they didn't originally have AC... so how do you harden them? Bulldoze them and start over again.

 

[dudalb]

This: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/...ot-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

... but I repeat myself.

RUling seems to be aimed at a specific situation, not a general rule.
Anyway, the heads of any police force that fails to protect it's citiznes won't be around long. Problblyhonly until the next election.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Well, I haven't seen anything here that has made me change my opinion of cops on a large scale. Certainly nothing that would make me want to abolish them, defund them, or disarm them.

There are good cops and bad cops, like any other profession. And we don't know enough about this scenario to demonize these individuals, much less the entire collective Police force of this country.

Good cops that put up with the bad cops are bad cops themselves.

If there had been any good cops at the school they would have tackled the murderer straight away.

 

[Stacyhs]

I knew it wouldn't be long before some were pointing fingers at the cops.

In a way it is a shame that an officer of any kind bothered to kill the shooter. Let's just let these things take their course next time and see how the result might be different.

I VERY RARELY ever agree with you, but on this I do. The amount of venom being spewed against the responding officers when all the facts are not known yet disgusts me. It's a knee jerk reaction by those who despise the police. If there's one thing I've learned about the media, it's that early reporting is so very often wrong; not from intention but just due to the confusion that so often surrounds a situation like this. But instead of allowing for the investigation to gather the interviews of the officers, compare it to the videos, etc, they just go immediately into attacking them.

 

[dudalb]

Great! Agreed! So disarm the little weasels and take their police powers away if they can't employ them at game time. Have them wave little "Meter Maids Lives Matter" banners.

On second thought: no. It doesn't matter if they encounter a mass shooter every day. They are trained to do so. Not everything you are trained to do is done every day. But they had 40 minutes or so to try and remember. 40 too many.



The more I interact with and read about cops, the less I am convinced they are needed for much of anything.

And what. pray tell, would you replace them with?
You can have the police or you can have chaos, with everybody taking the law into their own hands. There is no third option.

 

[Thermal]

Jesus H Christ. What is it with you guys? We don't even have the full facts of what happened yet and you are all just so ready to go full bore on your hatred of the police. Give it a rest, will ya?

With each and every fact coming out, it gets worse and worse.

Active shooter enters full elementary school. There is zero time from that second on to philosophize in the parking lot. It is time to engage.

How am I so sure? 20 body bags are a convincing argument. There is no counter argument except widdle powiceman was ascared.

 

[ponderingturtle]

There are good police and there are bad police as in any profession. Who would you want to respond if you heard someone breaking into your house?

Of course in most professions we have the good people trying to get rid of the bad people instead of lying for them and covering up for them. But you have to expect that with cops.

 

[Meadmaker]

I was making the point that mass shooters generally aren't willing to through a rigorous and tedious process to get ahold of weapons. They get what's easy for them to acquire. If the shooter had been required to go through an FFL, purchase a stamp, wait a few weeks for government bureaucracy to get a weapon then theres a really good chance this never happens.

This is something that I really wish people who were opposed to gun control understood. Murderers, especially the sort of folks who might shoot up an elementary school, are generally impulsive and lazy, as opposed to cold and calculating. For that sort of person, filling out paperwork really is more difficult to them than shooting a 10 year old in the face. Just adding that level of effort would stop some of the murderers. Adding more effort would stop more murderers.

No set of laws would stop all murders, but each little bit would lower the death rate just a little. The question then only becomes, for a given level of proposed restriction, is the death rate worth the burden imposed upon the person attempting to acquire the guns.

That's a legitimate question. Reasonable people could differ. For my answer, I would say lowering the death rate even a little bit is worth putting would-be gun owners through an awful lot of hassle, but I'm willing to listen to the other side and I won't call them ogres if I think they have the wrong answer.

On the other hand, anyone who simply denies that any given restriction will do any good at all is just revealing that they aren't really thinking.

 

[lobosrul5]

RUling seems to be aimed at a specific situation, not a general rule.
Anyway, the heads of any police force that fails to protect it's citiznes won't be around long. Problblyhonly until the next election.

The ruling is police must in general protect society, but not any specific individual or individuals. It was affirmed after the Parkland FL shooting that its a pretty damned broad protection for police.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educ...otect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/

Whether the police chief of Uvalde loses his job or not remains to be seen, but IMO isn't enough to compel police in future similar situations to respond differently.

 

[shemp]

Sadly, we can add one more to the death toll:

Husband of teacher killed in Texas school shooting dies from heart attack

UVALDE, Texas - The husband of an elementary school teacher killed during a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas has died of a heart attack.

Family members tell FOX 26 Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, died Thursday - just two days after his wife was tragically killed when a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and opened fire.

 

[ponderingturtle]

RUling seems to be aimed at a specific situation, not a general rule.
Anyway, the heads of any police force that fails to protect it's citiznes won't be around long. Problblyhonly until the next election.

Why would you say that, it isn't like people vote for police chief. Maybe you could get some traction for that position with Sheriffs departments but they don't seem to be any better.

Remember the cop who took the 14 year old back to Jeffrey Dahmer was later elected union president. That shows who cops consider a good cop.

 

[lobosrul5]

This is something that I really wish people who were opposed to gun control understood. Murderers, especially the sort of folks who might shoot up an elementary school, are generally impulsive and lazy, as opposed to cold and calculating. For that sort of person, filling out paperwork really is more difficult to them than shooting a 10 year old in the face. Just adding that level of effort would stop some of the murderers. Adding more effort would stop more murderers.

No set of laws would stop all murders, but each little bit would lower the death rate just a little. The question then only becomes, for a given level of proposed restriction, is the death rate worth the burden imposed upon the person attempting to acquire the guns.

That's a legitimate question. Reasonable people could differ. For my answer, I would say lowering the death rate even a little bit is worth putting would-be gun owners through an awful lot of hassle, but I'm willing to listen to the other side and I won't call them ogres if I think they have the wrong answer.

On the other hand, anyone who simply denies that any given restriction will do any good at all is just revealing that they aren't really thinking.

I am btw a gun owner. Universal background checks, waiting periods, and mandatory safe storage*... yes all pain in the asses. But I don't believe they infringe on my rights, and a little inconvenience is fine with me if it prevents even some mass shootings.

*I mean stored safely where kids can't into guns not actual literal safes

 

[Armitage72]

Yeah, exactly one door and NO windows on ground level. That will show these guys!

Something I saw on another forum:

"It's hard to shake the feeling that all this discussion on what schools should do is pretty much the same as saying she shouldn't have been dressed that way."

 

[ponderingturtle]

And what. pray tell, would you replace them with?
You can have the police or you can have chaos, with everybody taking the law into their own hands. There is no third option.

If that were truly the case why are police a 19th century invention? Clearly there was no civilization before then.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Why does such a small town have 40 Officers?

Is that normal?

Here in Guisborough (population 17,000) we have an office open from 9 am to 5.30 pm with a civilian enquiries desk.
A van with a couple of officers will sit on the Market Place on Friday and Saturday nights and there is a foot patrol on market days.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I VERY RARELY ever agree with you, but on this I do. The amount of venom being spewed against the responding officers when all the facts are not known yet disgusts me. It's a knee jerk reaction by those who despise the police. If there's one thing I've learned about the media, it's that early reporting is so very often wrong; not from intention but just due to the confusion that so often surrounds a situation like this. But instead of allowing for the investigation to gather the interviews of the officers, compare it to the videos, etc, they just go immediately into attacking them.

And yet they stood outside for 40 minutes listening to the shooting and pissing their pants waiting for the big boys to arrive.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Why does such a small town have 40 Officers?

IS that normal?

Here in Guisborough (population 17,000) we have an office open from 9 am to 5.30 pm with a civilian enquiries desk.
A van with a couple of officers will sit on the Market Place on Friday and Saturday nights and there is a foot patrol on market days.

CLearly that is a chaotic lawless place totally lacking in civilization.

 

[lobosrul5]

Why does such a small town have 40 Officers?

IS that normal?

Here in Guisborough (population 17,000) we have an office open from 9 am to 5.30 pm with a civilian enquiries desk.
A van with a couple of officers will sit on the Market Place on Friday and Saturday nights and there is a foot patrol on market days.

TBF west Texas is a little different from England. Its about 80 miles from Uvalde to the nearest big city (San Antonio). So they do need a police force.

That said, I'm working out that they have just over twice as many cops per capita as the city I live in.

 

[Meadmaker]

I get the anger. First it started with anger at the GOP, and now the cops. Meanwhile, there was a psycho who set out to kill these kids, you know. But it is hard to feel satisfaction ranting at dead people.

People get angry because they feel very impotent being a bystander to this sort of thing. So of course you have to understand their rage, whether properly focused or not.

They also get angry at people who do a really bad job and they believe people died as a result.



Are they being fair to the cops by believing they could have saved lives had they acted differently? I don't know the answer to that. However, there will be an investigation, and there will also be independent investigation and discussions in the news media, and people with expertise will chime in and we will put all the information we know together.

And, when it's all said and done, I'll bet the general consensus will be that the cops handled the situation poorly and should have moved in sooner. For the moment, that's just a hunch, based on incomplete data,but it sure seems to me like leaving a gunman alive for 40 minutes in a roomful of dead, dying, and some fully alive and unwounded children was a bad idea.

I'm glad I don't have to make judgement calls like that on my job, because I would be afraid that I might screw up just as badly as they seem to have. It's why I didn't go to medical school. I didn't want the responsibility.

 

[Nessie]

There is a lot of misinformation about gun control in the UK. This from Sky News;

https://news.sky.com/story/texas-sc...untries-reacted-to-similar-incidents-12621704

"UK and Australia succeed in reform after tragedies
By contrast, countries such as the UK and Australia have succeeded in restricting gun laws after suffering their own tragedies."

That makes it sound like there were no gun controls and then after massacres there were. In fact the UK had strict gun control with the 1968 Firearms Act already. I believe Australia also had pretty effective gun control laws.

"Following the Hungerford massacre in Berkshire in 1987, which killed 16 people, semi automatic guns were banned.
Eighteen months after a gunman killed 17 people in the Dunblane school shooting in 1996, the government banned privately-owned handguns and introduced a strict licensing system."

After Hungerford semi-automatic guns were not banned, they were limited to a maximum of three rounds before they had to be reloaded. Same with the supposed ban on handguns, they were limited to single shot only and there are people who are allowed to possess handguns for self defence, such as PSNI police officers.

There already existed a strict licensing system, which was further tightened, primarily by requiring those who wanted to possess a firearm to give a reason why. Shotgun owners did not need to give a reason. All that happened is the police asked some more questions and tightened security requirements for applications and renewals.

The majority of the firearms in the UK, prior to Hungerford and Dunblane, were possessed by people who had been granted a licence by the police and had been checked and assessed as safe to own a gun. The UK was not starting from anything like the situation found in the USA, where no one has any idea who has what gun and there are millions of guns, many of which are in the hands of criminals and others unsuitable to have a gun.

The notion that the USA just needs to do what the UK did, is nonsense, since the UK had significant gun control all across the country prior to any of the mass shootings, whereas the US has many federal and state laws, that often contradict each other and it has a huge pro firearms lobby that has never existed in the UK.