“Please send the police now.” That was the desperate call to 911 from a fourth-grade girl inside a classroom at the Robb Elementary School, where a gunman had opened fire. It was one of more than half a dozen calls, at least two from students, made to 911 over 78 minutes. They described the unfolding horror and begged for help. As many as 19 police officers were gathered in the school’s hallway, but for more than 45 minutes no effort was made to breach the classroom door. The incident commander believed the gunman had barricaded himself in the room and that no more children were at risk.
Police mistakes in Uvalde should not take focus off the real issue: guns
“It was the wrong decision, period,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw. On Friday, the state’s top law enforcement official provided the most detailed — and damning — account of police response to this past Tuesday’s massacre in Uvalde, Tex., in which 19 children and two teachers were killed. The new timeline confirmed doubts that had grown about the actions of police as it became clear that their initial accounts were riddled with discrepancies. It also exploded the trope, so frequently offered by opponents to stricter firearm laws, that the best protection from mass shootings is “a good guy with a gun.”
There are still questions to be answered. Foremost: Did children die who could have been saved if police had acted differently?
But outrage over police actions — or, in this case, inaction — should not take the focus off the fact that the central issue this country must confront, if it is to prevent these kinds of atrocities, is guns. Too many and too often in the hands of the wrong people. Yes, it appears that people in Uvalde made mistakes. The incident commander who misjudged the situation, the teacher who propped open the door that the gunman used to enter the school, the school resource officer who drove right by the suspect in pursuit of the wrong person will all no doubt wish they had acted differently. But they are human and — despite the myth — training or preparation can never eliminate the possibility of human judgment errors in a life-or-death situation.
We have come to view mass shootings as inevitable, drilling our children to look for the best place to hide and expecting our teachers to be the last line of defense. The gunman who shot up the school bought two AR-15-style rifles shortly after turning 18. He had 1,657 rounds of ammunition on him before he was killed. That’s madness, and that’s something we can try to fix with common-sense gun law reform. Like strengthened background checks. Like banning assault weapons. Like raising the age to purchase a rifle to 21, the same that now exists for handguns.
A small group of Republican and Democratic senators are working over this holiday weekend in an effort, seemingly blessed by Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to try to hammer out a compromise on new gun laws. They owe the children and teachers of Uvalde more than their thoughts and prayers.
Source: WP
