If more security and government programs for mental health are pointless in preventing violence, as Democrats and the media say they would be in thwarting another school shooting, let’s just end those things altogether. We can start by dismantling the Capitol Hill police force and stripping Biden’s administration officials of their armed security details, including Biden and his vice president.
The New York Times on Friday ran an article headlined, “School Safety Plans Fail. What Now?” It detailed how the school district that includes Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and 2 teachers were shot dead this week, was the beneficiary of almost $70,000 to beef up security measures expressly for the purpose of preventing such violence.
Despite the investment and the training and hiring of additional police officers, the Times noted, “none of the extensive preparations halted the rampage of an 18-year-old gunman.”
The paper then turned to a reliable “expert” to say that “while emotional supports have improved school climate broadly, those strategies — as well as the presence of campus police officers — have been insufficient to prevent suicidal, deeply troubled young men from carrying out attacks.” I.e., NOW WE HAVE TO BAN THE GUNS!
For a moment, the article would have readers under the impression that safety measures like mandating school doors be locked, hiring on-campus cops, and installing electronic card-activation systems to authorize visitors all seem to do barely anything in reducing the success a would-be gunman might have in shooting up a classroom of third-graders.
But then the Times confesses that it’s possible Robb Elementary wasn’t even properly instituting its own safety protocol. “There are some simple, inexpensive measures that are protective, according to those who have studied school shootings,” the report said. “One of them is keeping classroom doors locked, which was a district requirement in Uvalde. It is not clear whether that practice was being followed at Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting. The shooting occurred after an awards ceremony, when relatives said they had come in and out of the building.”
The report further states that Uvalde schools used a system that screened visitor IDs to block suspicious individuals. But from what we know as of this writing, Salvador Ramos, the shooter, was able to enter the school with relative ease, make his way inside a classroom, and start murdering children and teachers.
The authorities in Uvalde aren’t being so quick to share everything they know about the police response and what school protocols were being adhered to but it’s beginning to look like there was extreme neglect on both ends. To wit, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw said the same day the Times published its article that his department had almost 20 police officers gathered in a Robb Elementary School hall as the gunman rained bullets on children, having been instructed not to breach the entering where Ramos was wreaking havoc. “Of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,” he said.
McCraw further said that Ramos was able to enter the school through a door that had been propped open by a teacher, a door that presumably was intended to be accessible only for the purpose of exiting rather than entering.
But just because funds, resources, and training aren’t properly utilized doesn’t mean they don’t work when they are. If that were the case, we would have ended all of the welfare intended to “lift low-income families out of poverty” a long time ago. But there aren’t enough acrylic nails and cigarillos in the world to get Democrats to admit that one.
If none of this security and mental health stuff works, we need Democrats to say so. And if they do, they can prove it by immediately passing a law that permanently removes the ugly fencing they placed around the Capitol building.