To pull back from foreign rabbit holes, it is interesting to see the rush to destroy a crime scene. I get that it is particularly hard for some to look at that building right now.
Unanswered questions remain.
Why was the suspect not engaged through a window with a suitable rifle? Yes, windows deflect trajectories, but finding a way to lure the suspect to the window would reduce the length of that deflected path, increasing the odds of success, as would having multiple shooters take the suspect down, firing together.
Who propped the door open and why?
Why the delays in entering the room and engaging the suspect?
Some of the wounded likely survived for a while before succumbing to their injuries and dying.
Why the delay? Why the assumption that time was not of the essence in getting into the room, subduing the shooter and getting EMS support to the kids? I have previously commented about the "golden hour" for trauma patients, and here it was pissed away through inaction.
Some survived,
A young survivor of the massacre at a Texas elementary school said she covered herself with a friend's blood and pretended to be dead while she waited for help to arrive.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, told CNN that she and a friend called 911 from her dead teacher's phone Tuesday and waited for what felt like, to her, three hours for officers to arrive at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2022/05/27/students-who-survived-texas-school-attack-describe-event...but there is almost no mention of them. (I wouldn't want reporters swarming my kid after surviving something like that, they have been through enough already.) But a number would be nice to see. Others survived, also, in the classrooms where the shooter was active:
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/05/27/uvalde-child-survived-by-playing-dead-after-he-was-shot-then-apologized-to-parents-for-bloody-clothes/ and
https://www.kens5.com/article/news/special-reports/uvalde-school-shooting/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-fourth-grader-student-account-elementary/273-51cc4e26-7a0a-49c0-ba7a-48cdd47fa235.
Once again, actions were taken which thwarted ordinary security protocol, permitted the incident, and intensified the results--actions taken by people who should have known better.
Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, there are far too many (who should be voices of reason) acting to remove Rights from 330,000,000 people which have stood for well over 200 years, Rights which remain essential to our Liberty and ability to defend ourselves against lawlessness like that seen in recent Riots across this country, all because of the actions of a single madman.
The mere open presence of rifles like those currently being reviled quite arguably kept smaller towns from experiencing the sort of destruction wreaked upon larger urban areas where laws are more restrictive. Such a counter-demonstration where I live kept everything peaceful, both sides had their say, not a shot fired, no windows broken, and everyone went home.
Those who should be safeguarding those Rights, despite this horrific incident, are not and should lose their jobs.
Keep in mind that before the victims are buried, there are those who are breaking ground on lucrative construction contracts in their mind, while others bury misdeeds and inaction which made the entire event possible and ensured its worst case outcome.
If the goal is prevention of similar incidents, there are a few aspects of this which need more examination, from the breach of security, the failure to identify the shooter beforehand as a potential problem, the routine burying of the shooter's juvenile actions so they did not show up on any background check, where the shooter got the money for the firearms and ammo (on a part time low end job at 18), failure of social media to trip a flag (when they never failed to flag a mention of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and ill effects from COVID jabs), any psych eval data that may have existed being hidden behind a firewall, etc.
Perhaps the most effective change could be that expunging of a juvenile record only happen after the juvenile offender has demonstrated behaviour that indicates juvenile actions were a learning experience and not the beginnings of a criminal career, through judicial review, instead of automatically clearing the board at 18. Not only might this deter juvenile misbehaviour, knowing the slate would not be automatically wiped clean at adulthood, at least of those violent juvenile crimes not sufficient to warrant being tried as an adult, but it would provide context for any violations of the law made as an adult. That flag would remain in NICS until removed by a judge. Certainly, randomly shooting people with a BB gun would indicate a disturbing tendency for random violence in the future.
This person apparently had a long history of aberrant behaviour, and there is no assurance that mobing the neighborhood with psych people who consider that sort of behaviour within the spectrum of 'normal' (as in
to be celebrated "normal") would ever prevent another such incident in the future, and might only add additional targets to the shooter's list. That the media disguised these tendencies in accounts by muting them as if the shooter was bullied because he could not afford nice clothes instead of wearing miniskirts and posting it on social media distorts the picture as well. There is a point at which nonconformance with culturally ordinaryl behaviour invites derision, especially as a juvenile or child, something which has persisted since the beginning of time, and subsequent claiming to be a victim just doesn't cut it when brandishing behaviour not generally accepted has such a predictable result.
In the end, I see only a grab for more money and more power, not anything that would prevent another incident like this one from happening elsewhere.
