Active Shooter Uvalde TX Elementary School

[Borderland]

1. Article on arming teachers - note Politico is not a friendly gun place usually:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...texas-00035794

Only 300 TX teachers in the program.

2. Saw Scott Reitz on ABC News, IIRC - some major news show - saying he didn't understand it and would not have listened to the 'incident' commander and instead gone in. That you would be shot at is part of such incidents, not acceptable as an excuse - IIRC again.

We covered this ground after Sandy hook thoroughly. Everyone wanted to do something but nobody could agree on what that was. Another AWB was defeated in the Senate by a few votes. Arming teachers was considered but many school administrators and parents thought is was a bad idea because guns had no place in schools. Same deal with retired vets and LE being used as resource officers. Not going to work because it would require people to have guns on campus.

So all you can do is call 911 and wait for the police to respond. As we just witnessed, sometimes that's a mighty long wait.

[RJ]

Taking some time to reflect on this whole incident.

What a shit show. I'm not LE, or ex .mil, and my son is 26. It's been many years since I dropped off my kid in the car line at 8.

But if I was a parent of a school kid these days, I would be hopping up and down for a no shit Come to Jesus meeting with parents, teachers, and outside experts about school security. Parents need to get involved, and determine what they want for their kids, in terms of safety. They are the ones who put their loved ones on the bus each day, or send them out the door, to spend 8+ hours away from home. If that takes me being assigned as part of a school "security team" or "watch", then fine. I for damn sure would want to have more involvement of how they are protected, so they come home the same way they left.

Like I said, I'm no great thinker when it comes to these kinds of problems. The whole thing just pisses me off. Making the decision in 2014 I wasn't going to be a fucking victim, and picking up a gun for the first time in my life, changed a lot about me. Maybe if there is any good at all to come from this whole crap filled incident, it could be that parents across the country are having the same thought process, and do something for their kids.

Sorry for rant.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

There are more nuances.

1. Finding folks to be an armed teacher or staff member. Not in the paradigm or abilities of most.

2. Liability - I went to a seminar on school shootings at the American Psychological Association annual meeting a few years ago. One expert discussed the risks of lawsuits to the school. The issue is what will cost you more.

a. One risk is tossing a kid for some hypothetical behavior. Will the parents sue if they disagree? Schools are horrified of this. They will try to avoid taking actions against students, even those who pose threats.

b. If the armed teacher or staff member accidentally shoots an innocent - will the school be responsible? That depends. If the school explicitly gives permission or training to the teacher/staff member then the school is liable. Now, if the state voids the ability of a school to ban carry - as TX did for state schools, then there is little liability. The teacher/staff member is a free agent.

There is an issue that a locale should ban if it has the ability and if it doesn't it is liable for carrier bad behavior or actions. This was presented to businesses as a reason they should ban carry. But not as strong a risk as officially having someone as a carrier.

c. You might say you will sue because the school denied you of the right to defend yourself. This seems not to fly because they are not responsible for the actions of a third party. There's law for that in other domains, or so we were told. This is also brought up if a store bans and you get killed but could have defended yourself, blah, blah. The lawyer types said this doesn't work but sounds good to some gun folks.

d. The cost of a suit over not allowing you to carry will be far less than an ND by 'approved' teacher/staff member, shooting an innocent or if the carrier decides to go nuts and shoot up the joint with his or her approved gun. This point was a big deal in what liability folks tell administrations.

e. The school defender has his or her own set of liabilities. You probably won't have a job if this goes badly, you pull a gun in an ambiguous situation or whatever. Even if it is the classic good shoot, your social situation will probably be untenable - of course, you argue that you saved lives but ...

f. Does the approved carrier have the responsibility to run to the sound of cannons? As a privately armed citizen, you might just flee as recommended. You might just defend your locale. BUT - are you now expected to act? Take your Taurus and trot towards the maniac, guns a blazing? What liabilities accrue for not acting?

All these make it hard for schools to build official and pseudo first responders out of faculty and staff.

[TGS]

But if I was a parent of a school kid these days, I would be hopping up and down for a no shit Come to Jesus meeting with parents, teachers, and outside experts about school security.

I've seen a lot of hopeless reactions among people, as if this is some conundrum that can't be figured out. Now, I'm not saying that's what you said here but it made me think of it, so I wanted to say this: There's no secret sauce that still needs to be figured out about how to protect school campuses.

If you gave my agency carte-blanche to write security protocols for schools, we could literally give you a security plan in less than a day that would not only secure schools but also maintain some semblance of normalcy so you don't have the psychological impacts of feeling like you're in a prison; that last part being something we worked hard on for new designs in the last decade.

As much as mommy and daddy say they love their kids, the truth of the matter is simple: nobody wants to spend the money, so they stick their head in the sand and say, "Nah, can't happen here". There needs to be a legislative change that mandates XYZ and provides funding for it, which means more taxes. As long as the problem is left to hack-job school security "experts" and school administrators who are trying to squeeze water out of rocks (in terms of funding), nothing will change.

[LittleLebowski]

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaki...deral-marshals

After it was revealed on Thursday that not only did police delay their response to sending tactical teams into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. amid a school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead but prevented parents from entering, the Wall Street Journal reported that one mother sprinted into the school to get her children, over objections from law enforcement.

Angeli Rose Gomez drove 40 miles to the school upon hearing of the shooting, and she arrived, said "The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren't going in there or running anywhere."

Gomez said that she was only one of several parents at the school demanding that officers stop waiting around and go into the school. It was then that "federal marshals approached her and put her in handcuffs," the Journal reports.

The marshals told her she was being arrested for "intervening in an active investigation." Gomez was able to convince local law enforcement to free her, but said she also saw a father pepper-sprayed, and another tackled and thrown to the ground by law enforcement as he tried to go to the school. His 10-year-old daughter was massacred in the slaughter.

Once freed, Gomez moved away from the crowd, broke into a run, jumped a fence, and ran inside to rescue her children. "She sprinted out of the school with them," the Journal reports.

[Wake27]

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaki...deral-marshals

The more I read shit like that (the father that was tased and lost his daughter), the more I’m waiting for the entire police station to be burnt to the ground with guns covering the exits…

ETA - not that I'm advocating it, just can't imagine the parents' pain.

I am surprised (based on previous reporting) that federal agents were the ones that reportedly put her in cuffs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[willie]

A rural school in the deep South might be more likely to arm teachers than would a northern school in the Middle Atlantic states. Ultimately school boards decide such issues. Liability looms as a major risk in either location, and then there are cultural views that become determinants. In my school the head janitor was a retired Army guy who served two years as a grunt in Vietnam. He was smart, alert, and sober. He would have been a good choice for an armed employee.

[JodyH]

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaki...deral-marshals

^^^^
Drove 40 miles, argued with the LE, got arrested, released and still retrieved her own kids from the school....

BORTAC BP drove 40 miles, was told to stand down for 30 minutes, knew it was still an active shooter, disobeyed command by saying the equivalent of "let's roll" and ended the carnage.

Yea, i'm going to go ahead and say this was a complete clusterfuck of epic proportions and there should be mass terminations (at a minimum) of many, many people involved.

[HCM]

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaki...deral-marshals

Gomez’s claim has been investigated and it was determined US marshals did not arrest or handcuff anyone at the scene. The US Marshalls here in the western district Texas are wearing body cameras now whenever they are wearing body armor so….

There are claims that one father was pepper sprayed and taken down and another was tased. Don’t know the status of those two.

[JodyH]

The inevitable cell phone videos from bystanders should start going viral soon.
That should start filling in some of the info gaps.