Instead you enact one of the many reforms that successfully prevent frequent school shootings in every other country.
Instead you enact one of the many reforms that successfully prevent frequent school shootings in every other country.
https://twitter.com/RealSpikeCohen/status/152967872671538790...
Heavily armed police set up a barrier and let the shooter run wild for nearly an hour. Parents screamed and begged for them to intervene and they refused. When parents tried to push their way past, the police stopped them. You can see them pinning one father to the ground in that video, which is frankly the most upsetting thing I have ever seen. But everyone should watch it. It's important to understand just how indifferent police are to the citizens of this country. They have no legal obligation to protect anyone, but this goes even further than that. There are reports the police called on the children to yell if they needed help. When at least one child yelled "help", they did nothing, and the shooter was able to locate that kid and murder them.
These cops should be tried for aiding and abetting the mass slaughter of children, but I would be surprised if they got so much as a temporary paid suspension.
The shooter makes it into the school under pursuit and enters a classroom with two adjoining classes.
Officers are reported as shot in the process.
At that point, there is an armed gunmen in a classroom barricaded in.
It's now a hostage situation.
The rest of the school is occupied by police and evacuation/threat plans are being followed.
Storming a classroom filled with hostages is not procedure.
Parents and others running into the school when they already know where the shooter is and what the situation does not help anyone.
Although the timeline is 90 minutes or so from entry until he was neutralized that doesn't mean he didn't just shoot everyone in the first minutes.
The idea that they just gave up or were all cowards is a bit irrational.
What does "police procedure" have to do with individual officers going in to save their own children? Do you actually believe this to be the procedure anywhere?
> Although the timeline is 90 minutes or so from entry until he was neutralized that doesn't mean he didn't just shoot everyone in the first minutes.
How could the police possibly have known that all the children in the barricaded classroom were already killed? What if some could have been saved if they hadn't been left shot and bleeding for 90 minutes?
> Storming a classroom filled with hostages is not procedure.
You can't have it both ways. If the kids were killed immediately then there were no hostages to worry about.
> The idea that they just gave up or were all cowards is a bit irrational.
By this point we've all seen pictures of multiple police officers with bulletproof vests and AR-15 style weapons waiting around outside doing nothing -- other than holding back parents who wanted nothing more than to do for their children what the cops did for their own. If this isn't cowardice, what is?
> Officers are reported as shot in the process.
This is the entire story. A couple cops got shot and the rest were understandably frightened. So rather than risk their lives going after the shooter, they rescued their own kids and literally left the rest of them to die.
If they entered the school and found their own children, it was not from within that room.
"Have it both ways"
Merely pointing out an existing unknown, they may have cctv and know what was happening in the room. It's the part that concerns me the most, did they allow a crazed gunmen to slowly mow down children over 90 minutes?
My expectations is that did not occur but is a much larger concern than your whimpers about whether human beings acted parental within the course of their jobs. None had the opportunity to enter that room, the only one that mattered.
Parkland had a coward cop, I'd be very quick to call out more should they exist, we don't know yet, but from what we do know your suppositions do not hold water.
It does seem like the absolute Rambo who busted in and ended it did it while off-duty and perhaps outside of the local PD's control.
It also seems like local PD got at least one child killed through inaction, which should be enough to tar and feather all of them.
But it will be quite awhile before trustworthy details come out.
This was an absolutely insane, extreme situation that should never happen so that we never find out whether police are heroes or not. And it doesn't need to keep happening because we know how to prevent it.
Further major tragedies have happened, both directly with guns (Winnenden, 2009; Munich, 2016) and indirect (Berlin Christmas market attack with lorry, the theft of which was enabled by a murder with a handgun), but are just so much rarer, along with far rarer smaller scale tragedies - I've never heard of a small child playing with a gun and shooting themselves or a sibling in the nearly two decades I've lived here.
Speaking of which, that's going to be an awkward conversation with my dad and brother before bringing my kid to visit his other home country; I know that my dad kept a loaded handgun in his nightstand as of a few years ago due to very overblown fears of a home invasion.
As you might guess, the statistics do not support his decision:
"Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense."
Well good thing I'm an individual adult and, after assessing my lifestyle and level of fire-arm responsibility, feel confident that I have control over these scenarios (not) playing out. I don't have any control over someone breaking into my house at night.
So, it can still be a net benefit to society to pass a law which reduces fatal accidents but increases break-ins. Also, I hope that you would sell your gun if you found yourself suffering from some symptoms of mental illness, or if you had children in the house. No one ever thinks that they will be the careless gun owner whose kid finds their gun, or the drunk gun owner who threatens their spouse.
Yes, I knew this. I have not bothered bringing it up with my dad, but may end up doing so in the course of making it clear that he can either have unsecured firearms or his grandson in his house and truck, but not both.
One cannot say something is regulated without admitting fault and adjusting when needed until the issue appears less and less.
Something tells me that if Texas governor Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz and other Republican luminaries of the Lone Star state attend the NRA meeting later this week, that won't be suggested. Apparently the problem isn't guns, because the problem is never guns (certainly not around gun lobbyists,) it's that buildings have too many exits.