Tag Archives: Uvalde

crime news

DOJ report: Police failed miserably in Uvalde

Words fail me at this moment as I ponder the release of a nearly 600-page report chronicling the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told the world Thursday of a systematic failure — from top to bottom — of the police response to the massacre of 19 children and two educators.

For 77 interminable minutes the cops did nothing while an 18-year-old lunatic was holed up in the school … and murdering children and the teachers who sought to protect them.

State troopers were present, along with Uvalde municipal cops, officers of the Uvalde school district, sheriff’s deputies. They were leaderless. They received no instruction to storm the school and take the shooter out.

The officers sat on their hands and allowed the carnage to continue.

I have no words of wisdom to offer. I cannot think of a way to prevent this sort of tragedy from recurring.

All I know is that the men and women who suit up as “leaders” failed to perform the essential tenet of leadership. They failed to issue orders to storm the school and do whatever it took to “neutralize” the moron who had purchased legally an AR-15 rifle and then used it to take the lives of innocent and precious children.

AG Garland took specific note that the AR-15 is intended for “the battlefield.” Its purpose is to kill people as quickly as people. It does not belong in the possession of individuals — such as the Uvalde madman — who then can rein havoc and mayhem on defenseless children.

How do we stop this madness? I have no clue on how one can do so while navigating the rough political water that so far has prevented any meaningful laws to curb such senseless violence.

Were I the King of the World, I might ponder whether there’s a way to amend the Second Amendment, the one that gun-rights advocates use as their political shield against solutions to the gun violence plague.

But I’m not. I am left only to gasp in horror at the findings of the Department of Justice and share the attorney general’s grief over the senselessness of the slaughter that no doubt will continue.

 

national news

A deal on guns … finally

Let me be clear: The deal in principle by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators doesn’t go nearly far enough to curb gun violence.

But … it is a baby-step start.

The Texas Tribune reports on the deal announced today: The tentative deal includes a mix of modest gun control proposals and funding for mental health. It would incentivize states to pass “red flag” laws, which are designed to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others; boost funding for mental health services, telehealth resources and more school security; permit juvenile records to be incorporated into background checks for purchasers under the age of 21 and crack down on the straw purchase and trafficking of guns.

Deal on post-Uvalde shooting gun legislation reached in Senate | The Texas Tribune

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the senior Texas Republican, is part of the senatorial team that hammered out the deal.

My own preference would have been to ban assault rifles, raise the minimum age requirements for purchasing firearms from 18 to 21 years of age and launch comprehensive universal background checks for every purchase.

That won’t come forward. House of Representatives Democrats want more. They’re likely to resist what the Senate is pitching.

I am not going to dig in just yet against this plan, which is good remember is just a deal in principle.

However, it is more than we got after Sandy Hook, after Columbine, after Las Vegas, after Sutherland Hills, Aurora, El Paso or Parkland.

Uvalde and Buffalo proved to be the catalyst to provide something.

It is far from ideal. However, I am going to accept it as possibly the beginning of a march toward more meaningful reform to end the gun violence that is killing too many innocent Americans.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com