It sort of blows up the whole pro gun control argument that citizens shouldn't be expected to have to protect themselves but instead rely on law enforcement :p
The police went in to save their own kids, but detained and chastised parents who went in to do the same. How many more trained experts with guns we do need to stop school shootings? Should townsfolk have enough guns and force on their side to subdue the police so that they can go into classrooms themselves as an impromptu tactical force?
Online publication "The Root" paraphrased this (source: https://www.theroot.com/uvalde-mom-who-saved-her-children-sa...) as: "Angeli Rose Gomez told CBS News that she was informed that if she continues to talk to media about her fearless actions, she would be charged with a probation violation for obstruction of justice."
"But Gomez said the judge overseeing her probation told her she did not face new legal problems and that her bravery would be rewarded with a shortened probation."
https://nypost.com/2022/06/04/angeli-gomez-says-she-was-thre...
Can't find where I saw that right now.
At any given time, yes.
(Generalization of course, but true in many life-and-death situations.)
These kinds of situations are outrageous because people want to believe in superheros, but they don't exist.
You should not go into a profession that entails personal risk if that prevents you from meeting your obligations to the public. I surely wouldn't call actually following the department's policy and training in response this event superhuman in any way, though pretending it is serves to absolve those who failed in their duty.
Perhaps it's not the rest of us who are the problem.
If we could choose our police like our cell service, I'd pay for the police force that required military service or punished officers who did not act when they should
We vote by wallet for our cell service and we vote by ballot for our police budgets. If you can only afford a house in a neighborhood with a Cricket Wireless tax base, then you get Cricket Wireless quality police.
And you're free to start a new wireless company. But try starting a new police force and you'll get arrested. Not the same.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/creating-your-ow...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_police#United_States
In fact, schools are a good example of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police#United_States
Creating a new police force is probably not any harder than making an MVNO and probably much easier than acquiring spectrum to create a real wireless carrier.
Other other take: military bases have very strict gun control, far in excess of the civilian world, despite hopefully being far more reliable, stable, and law-abiding than the general population. It makes them more vulnerable in certain rare cases, but they judge it to make them far safer in general, so the rules stick.
Other other other take: pro-gun people and pro-gun organizations sure are eager to keep gun-toting randos way the hell away from themselves, most of the time. Super weird behavior if they think more guns make them safer. See also: most courthouses even in red states, et c.
When it actually matters, it's pretty clear what is regarded by basically everyone as making a place safer: fewer guns. It's only when people are talking a big game that they absolutely aren't willing to back up, that they claim to believe the opposite is true.
The "good guys with guns" clearly had no investment in a positive outcome, unlike the parents who were fighting the police to save their kids. A "good guy with a gun", by definition, has a personal, moral obligation to save lives...something that those police obviously lacked, so classifying them as such is disingenuous.
[EDIT] My main point is just that we already know how to reduce gun violence. People with power, even if they're publicly extremely pro-gun, don't want people with guns around them unless they're paying them or they're cops. Organizations with the ability to curtail gun possession do so enthusiastically and almost universally, even if their members & leadership claim the solution to shootings is more guns in more places. So we flood the world with more guns and save (let's be extremely generous) 5% of the people who'd have been murdered with guns. Great. Wonderful. Could have done a lot better by doing the opposite, though.
I was responding, originally, to:
> It sort of blows up the whole pro gun control argument that citizens shouldn't be expected to have to protect themselves but instead rely on law enforcement :p
Maybe it was a joke, but it's a bad one when some people actually think that.
I'll reconsider my position when major organizations and government buildings and such start shifting to encouraging gun possession by people who aren't in law enforcement or the security staff. Meanwhile, it doesn't look like it's even controversial in any context other than partisan hacks promoting positions they don't (apparently) believe: keeping guns away is much safer than allowing them. I can tell this is true based on how, again, damn near everyone behaves when they have the choice to ban them or allow them, including the very people promoting more guns as the solution to gun violence. It is only not the obvious solution when the game isn't safety, but politics.
You can believe that people shouldn't want/need guns while also believing they should be able to exercise that right if they want to. I hold that belief. Guns aren't for everyone, but who am I to deny someone of their right to defend themselves, for example, from an abusive ex-partner.
Honestly in a decade they will beg the pro gun control people to save them so maybe we should do this?
If they are "serious" about gun control or not would certainly be up for debate, but I have heard this argument many many times.
There's sufficient consensus on both the stronger/weaker gun control sides to agree that police are the most tactically equipped to deal with an ongoing crime, and that you should not interfere with professionals who are already at the scene.
The police even threaten parents with obstruction of justice and violating probation for merely talking to the media about running into the school.
Realistically, I think what this situation means is that the police, at least in Uvalde, need to be disbanded and reformed and serious steps need to be taken to ensure their failure is not repeated. I think such serious steps include charging the cowardly officers with murder. Future Uvalde officers should know it is more dangerous to refuse to face the school shooter - and one path for that is if they know they will get the death penalty for being complicit in the mass murder of children if they just cower outside while the massacre happens.
If I were an Uvalde prosecutor (and I'm not even a lawyer so I have limited knowledge of the law) then I would charge the police on the grounds that they protected the murderer from the parents without actually doing anything to arrest or kill the murderer. The police were effectively serving as protection for the murderer. It would be legal for the police to detain the parents in the course of the police doing their duty - for example, the police could hold the parents back while other officers engaged the shooter, but if the police aren't fulfilling their duties then they have no legal reason to detain the parents and are therefore engaging in criminal acts to facilitate the murder of children.
I would take a list of the children who died and charge all of the non-responsive officers with the murder of the first child on the list under this theory. If a jury rejected it then I would charge the officers for the second child on the list, possibly with an updated theory of the crime to account for double jeopardy or to anticipate the police officers defense, and keep going until I found a sympathetic jury or ran out of victims.
If the supreme court, or any superior court, would overturn this case that would have to happen after the case was decided in the lower courts and while the officers languished in jail and I would fight to delay any overturning as long as possible.
Apart from the law, the basic facts of the matter are that nineteen children were murdered and the police are largely responsible for that fact. Of course the murderer is the one who ultimately killed the children, and bears the most culpability, but the police had ample time and opportunity to engage the murderer and save the children and did not. Morally, the police are absolutely responsible and I think a creative and aggressive prosecutor could find a way to present the fact pattern such that a jury would agree.
I disagree because I use a different bar for "sufficient". I never have a conversation with people (or online) within the midwest states without a jab at the ineffectiveness of LEOs. There's been a national consensus for awhile, which has been diminished, for sure. For many, Jan 6 was another event showing that the lack of police action can lead to outrageous events that were previously fantasy. Confidence in police (local or not) has been eroding for decades and this is a tentpole event that will be referenced in the future.
Gun control does not remove your ability to protect yourself. This is a false premise. Even in a world where the US government institutes mandatory buy backs of anything that looks like a gun, you are not completely devoid of options to protect yourself.
Statistically, aside from some very specific places in the US like the bad parts of LA/Chicago/New York, you are far more likely to die of suicide by firearm than you are of homicide by firearm.
Bump stocks were outlawed. What impact did that have on self-defense?
What impact did restricting assault weapons have on self defense?
You are making a claim here. It is necessary for you to back up your claim with evidence. The goal post already moved from the original comment I replied to, which is fine. To avoid further wriggling, though, we need data.
They are suggested. Many people carry mace/pepper spray. Tasers are finicky and require a fortunate prong placement in the attacker, and the attacker to not be wearing thick clothing, or it just doesn't work. Stun guns require you to be upclose and personal with the attacker. If you're a smaller/weaker person, this is extremely risky.
Most non-lethal weapons are for you to get away from an uncommitted attacker as quickly as possible, not to stop a serious threat in its tracks. If someone has a weapon and intent on killing you, a firearm is your best bet in stopping them.
Years ago I once made a joke that Tesla could pivot into that by inventing a "lightning gun." Given Musk's descent into attention-grabbing memelordom, I'm surprised he hasn't suggested such a possibility yet, to unilaterally solve all these controversies in the news, himself.
Sufficient blunt force to some area to stun someone will kill them if it hits elsewhere.
Tolerances for electricity are different between people (Tasers do kill people).
Mace and pepperballs don't fully incapacitate someone.
Lightning guns (or really any directed energy weapon) have problems with exponential decay.
Tranquilizer guns might work, although I don't know how wide the dosing range is.
It's a hard problem. People still die from anesthesia, which is basically trying to keep someone incapacitated in a very controlled setting.
Violence is decreasing everywhere else too (dropping lead gasoline and screen time are the probable drivers).
The US is still an outlier as far as gun deaths go.
This sounds like a "no true scotsman" fallacy. If your definition of someone who is not serious includes people who say "rely on police to help", then it is circular logic.
I think it might be quite a bit easier to confront a shooter when its obvious that doing nothing will result in your death. In this situation in particular I can't imagine how armed teachers would have made it any worse, but can certainly imagine it making it better.
I can also imagine dozens of ways arming teachers makes things worse for that 10 9s of time where there's not an active school shooter.