Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced today that announced that the state would add dozens of additional officers to the Uvalde school district patrol. In a statement, he said the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
"will be providing more than 30 law enforcement officers to campuses throughout the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) for the new school year."
Is he kidding? Let’s start with the observation that this is a classic case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Far more disturbing is Abbott’s belief that the solution to school shootings is more men with guns. That is asinine.
As the world knows now, armed men stood idle for over an hour, while 19 children and two children were slaughtered by a gunman. By the time the gunman was finally killed, there were 376 law enforcement officers on the scene.
A report outlining the abject failure of the authorities enumerated the responders. They comprised 149 U.S. Border Patrol agents, 91 state cops, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies, and 5 school cops, with neighboring county law enforcement, U.S. marshals, and federal DEA officers rounding out the small army.
Texas can hire all the additional cops it wants. But if they are all cowards, what difference does it make? If the state cannot find and train leaders, what’s the point? it is just more of Wayne LaPierre’s vacuous philosophy, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” And it is hardly pro-life.
Abbott adds other measures, including money to help Uvalde residents and their children from dealing with the PTSD of seeing their community ripped apart. In addition, he offered some boilerplate on beefing up school security, to wit,
Requesting Texas legislative leaders convene special legislative committees to begin examining and developing legislative recommendations on school safety, mental health, social media, police training, firearm safety, and more.
Directing the Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) to begin immediately conducting comprehensive school safety reviews to ensure all Texas public schools are following the appropriate procedures to maximize school safety.
Directing the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to provide strategies to make Texas public schools safer through heightened safety standards.
In fairness, there was one modest gun-control measure, specifically,
Urging the Texas District & County Attorneys Association (TDCAA) to increase lie-and-try prosecutions of people who lie on information provided for gun background checks.
But there was no thought given to raising the age to possess war weapons to 21. Or better yet, instituting the proven strategy of banning "semiautomatic assault weapons." Nor banning large capacity magazines.
Abbott is sticking to the conservative pro-gun playbook:
Say you are going to do something.
Establish committees.
Spend a fortune on cops.
Promise to spend a fortune on armoring schools (you won’t do it — but people forget).
Talk about illegal immigration, drug traffickers, and how the Biden administration is a socialist plot to destroy America
And pray like hell that the next school massacre is in another state.
It is conservtism’’s expedient hypocrisy that they play the “pro-life” card to hurt women — but will bury it in the pack when it comes to protecting the lives of school children, the targets of domestic abuse, and the victims of both mass shootings and the grinding waste of individual gun deaths.
we can only hope Beto wins the race and maybe something good will change in Texas, thank you PItt