On Tuesday, May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old boy shot his grandmother and then drove to an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where he barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom and murdered 19 children and two teachers. Law enforcement were in the building, but, for whatever reason, they waited some forty minutes to enter the room to take out the shooter. During that time, children called 911 and pleaded with the operator to send in the police. The shooter was shot to death when law enforcement finally entered the classroom. More will probably come out about the details of this fiasco, but there are many factors that contributed to this tragedy that are coming to light:
The Shooter
The 18-year-old boy reportedly had a troubled home-life. In middle school and junior high, the boy was bullied for having a stutter and a strong lisp. The bullying occurred both at school and on social media. He also made threats to girls in on-line chat rooms but these were never reported to authorities.
The shooter was never identified as needing mental health services, but that doesn’t mean that he might have needed them.
Law Enforcement in Uvalde
This is from The Daily Beast: “More Guns and Cops at Schools Are Not the Answer” by Tana Ganeva, 5/26/22 - It describes the ineffectiveness of law enforcement in preventing the murders of 19 school children :
“As the horror was unfolding in Uvalde, Texas, law enforcement swarmed the area surrounding the school. Many were outfitted in camouflage. They paced around with semi-automatic weapons strapped to their chests and stood next to a Lenco BearCat, an armored vehicle that’s basically a tank.
“Uvalde—an agricultural community dotted with modest houses, is not drowning in excess wealth—yet the police and border control agents have the tools and weapons more befitting of Seal Team 6—thanks to federal grant programs that pass military grade equipment to local police at no cost.
“Alongside ‘thoughts and prayers,’ pro-gun lawmakers come up with all kinds of explanations to avoid a reckoning on guns in America. It’s violent video games! Rap! Metal! Mental illness! Drugs! Feminists! Fatherlessness! And after the bickering over common sense gun control fades, the solution we seem to settle on is, more cops, more guns, including the ludicrous notion that teachers carry loaded weapons.”
…”Let’s hope this display of law enforcement incompetence nudges Americans towards solutions beyond just simply adding more men with badges and guns into children’s spaces.”
There were a total of 19 officers in the school, before a decision was made to breach the classroom and take out the shooter. Records show the district spent about $200,000 on security and monitoring services in 2017-18 and that figure rose to more than $450,000 in the 2019-20 school year, according to CNN.
The Political response:
This is from ABC News.
"Texas Governor Abbott places shooting blame on mental health, what has Texas done to address it? -The shooter did not have a diagnosed mental health condition, police said."
By Mary Kekatos, May 27, 2022
The Texas Governor Greg Abbot “blamed the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde on mental health issues.”
"'We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,' the Republican governor said Wednesday. 'Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it.'"
The shooter, however, did not have a diagnosed mental health condition. Critics say the state has not done enough to expand mental health services and has in fact recently reduced support for existing services:
“In April, Abbott announced he would be moving nearly $500 million from state agencies to fund Operation Lone Star, a Texas-Mexico border security initiative jointly being conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department.
“Of that amount, $210.7 million was from Texas Health & Human Services, which oversees public mental health programs.”
The state has denied that mental health programs would be negatively affected by the transfer of funds. Nevertheless, in a report from Mental Health America, Texas ranks 51st or last in the nation in access to mental health care. According to the report, “The access measures include access to insurance, access to treatment, quality and cost of insurance, access to special education, and workforce availability.”
There have been efforts to improve services, but overall the state appears to be in bad shape as far as delivering services to the people who need them.
The Weapon:
The shooter, who was later killed by law enforcement, purchased two AR-style rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition just days after he turned 18, the minimum age under federal law for buying a rifle.
I have gleaned that the AK-47 (Automatic Kalashnikov 1947), is the mother of modern day military-style assault weapons. The AR-15 is a comparable civilian version of a semi automatic assault rifle. If you want to know the fine points of the differences and pros and cons of both weapons, see “How the AK-47 became the ‘weapon of the century” from the Military Times, 2017 and “AR-15 Vs. AK-47: Which is the Best Rifle for the Apocalypse?”. The semi-automatic AR-15, the Uvalde shooter’s weapon of choice, appears to be better than the AK-47 in terms of accuracy.
From The Military Times: “The AK has secured its place in firearms history not by its performance as a weapon of the conventional war for which it was designed … but by its position as a purely military weapon that broke free of the fetters of armories and official control” and “The AK-47 and its derivatives deserve the title ‘Weapon of the Century,’ at least in the early days of this epoch, because it is quite simply the most effective machine ever manufactured that allows a man, woman or child to kill another human being with the least possible skill, training, effort or expense.”
The shooter’s weapon of choice, the AR-15, is manufactured by Daniel Defense with corporate offices in Black Creek, Georgia. The company pulled out of promoting its products at the National Rifle Association convention May 27 - 29, 2022 in Houston, Texas. They are sad about the Uvalde massacre and send their thoughts and prayers to the victims of this evil act.
The rifles that the shooter purchased, apparently with a debit card, cost around $2,000 each, according to the Daniel Defense website.
Political donations by the gun maker: According to an article in the Washington Post, “Maker of rifle in Texas massacre is deep-pocketed GOP donor - Political contributions by the owners of Georgia-based Daniel Defense show the financial clout of the gun industry, even as NRA spending declines” by Isaac Stanley-Becker, 5/27/22, “The owners of Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the rifle apparently used in the massacre of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., are deep-pocketed Republican donors, giving to candidates and committees at the federal and state level aligned against limits on access to assault rifles and other semiautomatic weapons.”
“The owners of the Georgia-based company have donated more than $70,000 directly to GOP candidates for federal office this election cycle… Daniel Defense itself gave $100,000 last year to a PAC backing incumbent Republican senators.” The owners put another $20,000 into a PAC “whose largest beneficiaries are Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Steve Scalise (R-La.), the No. 1 and No. 2 House Republicans.”
Beneficiaries of the owners’ contributions include Hershel Walker who won the Republican primary in Georgia for the US Senate race, Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, and Eric Schmitt, the Attorney General of Missouri and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
None of the contributions have gone to Democrats.
Yes, guns are part of the problem and the 2nd amendment does not preclude reasonable regulation of gun sales and ownership:
The right to bear arms is not absolute.
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Justice Antonin Scalia
District of Columbia V. HELLER, 2008
