tvc184

Since you keep beating your drum, give us your “common sense” (I despise the term but it is like a mantra) gun laws that can even slow down any mass murder attack at churches, stores, concerts…..

That is incorrect in Texas.

And exactly what kind of test do you propose that would stop a person from having a gun? How do you charge someone with a crime for something another person does without proving they knew what law the borrower was going to break?

For about 30 years when people talk about or laugh about people who might be caring a .32 or .22 for self-defense, it sure a beats pointing your finger and going Bang!!

Guns are not the problem. Your only solution is, you gun rights refuse anything. What is your plan that would have stopped this? Limiting gun purchases to once a month? A national computer system that tracks individual purchases of bullets?

A bartender breaks the law when he sells to intoxicated person. A licensed dealer such as this case, broke no law unless he knew the purchaser’s intent. Talk about a slippery slope. Sorry sir, you complied with all of the laws that we gave you but we’re going to have to charge you with a crime anyway. What crime? Well, you should have been a pre-cog and know that the guy intended to kill children at a school. If you can’t read a mind, you are a criminal.

Yes, schools are not only soft targets but they are filled with hundreds of helpless individuals. While 800 adults (or even 10 in a diner) might eventually attack and overcome a shooter, small children will not.

But they don’t have to go through extensive training. That is to be part of a specific state program to give certain teachers police like authority only on campus and only during critical incidents. Unless something has changed fairly recently, the school principal can give someone written permission to carry on campus. I have read about some school districts in Texas where teachers are armed and not in the School Marshal program. Kind of like the old days, Texas law in three or four situations allows a police officer to deputize a citizen on the spot. They don’t swear them in like in the cowboy movies but the law says a police officer can call any number of citizens of his county to his aid and they must by law come to the officer’s aid. The Texas school marshal program is basically the same thing but the request for aid is given beforehand. If an incident happens, the teachers have already been given lawful authority to act as a peace officer. A teacher/person not in that program, has the authority to use deadly force in defense of another person and to make arrests. So the marshal program in a way doesn’t really do much legally EXCEPT… it mandates training including the best way to respond and is way better than simply telling some teachers, you have my permission to carry. So training is not mandated but why wouldn’t a district want to? I do not know the answer to this but the school marshal program might also give qualified immunity to a teacher acting during such an incident the same way as it generally protects officers individually. As long as the teacher acted within policy and within the law, he/she cannot be sued individually. The school district can be sued for failing to train or having a bad policy but the teacher who complied with everything, just like police officers in the same situation, might be covered against individual lawsuits.

Yes it could have, a teacher could have (probably) followed school policy and not propped a door open for the shooter to make entry. But I get what you’re talking about, gun laws.

Another Brandon Tatum response. I think it is 39 minutes but about the first 15 pretty much describing the incident. [Hidden Content]

Take away the AR15, what would have changed?

It seems that emotional issues take away some people’s reasoning ability. The Texas DPS commander threw the on scene commander, his employee, under the bus. He’s probably trying to protect his own job but that is a different issue. He said In hindsight it should have been done differently, then added, But I wasn’t there on scene having to face those decisions. Okay, we have his opinion on record. What he did not address that I saw was this question. Would breaching that steel door a few minutes earlier have changed the outcome? The tactical team was able to get in with a key. How could they have gotten through that steel door without the key? There are now reports that children inside the room, who are killed, were making 911 phone calls right before the police entered. The shooter on saying that the police were going to breach the door, then apparently killed the other children. So why did he not kill all of the children immediately? Was he going to maybe use them for a bargaining chip? Did he not know they were alive until the police entered? We will likely never know those answers however….. it appears that once the police started to go in, the shooter used his last effort to kill the remaining children. Had the police gone in earlier, would that have changed his decision? To think otherwise is really stretching the what if question beyond reasonableness.

Did you see his mother’s comments??

I believe that all rights have limitations. The problem is what do certain rights mean or what was their intent? Does freedom of religion mean that I can use cocaine because I belong to the Church of the Rock-Cocaine? Does freedom of speech mean that I can make threats against politicians who I think are traitors? But we are discussing gun control. SCOTUS has ruled that well regulated militia is the justification for being armed, not a requirement. So there is no requirement to be in a militia. “Armed” in 1776 meant handguns and long guns yet Washington DC had a city ordinance banning the possession of a handgun “in your home” without a license AND the handgun had to be disassembled. That has to be one of the most ludicrous laws ever yet The Democrats say, we will not try to take your rights away. No one is coming for your guns. So you can have a gun but you can’t even load it in your own homy for self defense? Fortunately SCOTUS tossed that and a similar law in Illinois but only 5-4. How is that even a question? Did the founding fathers intend that you could on a handgun or rifle but you could not even assemble it? That is where the left is going however. Those are actually laws on the books and not some theoretical intempt. Last anyone forget with the people on the left one. They claim that they are not for taking weapons or denying their use but all you have to do is look at the United States Capitol and their absolutely stupid law. That kind of negates the claim of, common sense gun laws.

You will have to ask the lawmakers that. I have never brought up the shall not be infringed argument.

It is completely a gun issue or absolutely not a gun issue at all. It is according to your take on the weapon possession. If you ban all firearms in the United States and confiscate or attempt to confiscate them all and ban any further manufacture, yes it can make a difference. You’ll just have to trim a little fat off of the Constitution. But if you uphold the 2A at all, any firearms laws will likely be useless. I have already mentioned, the deadliest school attack with a firearm in United States history is it Virginia Tech and it was with the small 9mm and .22 pistols. At classroom ranges they are just as deadly as rifles and in some respects, more so. If the same guy got into the same classroom in Uvalde with almost any modern handgun which carries about 20 rounds and had five or six magazines in his front pocket, could he have killed the same number of people? In fact he might have killed more. If you restricted the magazines to 10 rounds, would it have changed anything? No I was a young police officer in 1984 when a man went into a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California and murdered 21 people. It was the largest firearms mass murder in US history up to that point. About six years later I was working a regular off-duty security job on my day off at a bank. I got to know the bank president fairly well. He asked if I would give a presentation at one of the service organization, maybe the Lions Club. He said at their monthly meeting they always had a guest speaker. It would only be for 10 or 15 minutes. I could eat with them since they always had a meal during this time and after the talks and meal, they conduct their business and I could leave. To say that I hated the idea would be an understatement. I had no public speaking skills at that time and I would be in front of probably several businessman from the area. Even the thought of it rattled me pretty good. I hated to tell the guy no however and finally accepted. I asked what I should talk about since they were about 1 million police topics that could last for 10 minutes and he said I had to pick. I absolutely hated that even worse and would rather him just given me a topic. I had no self-confidence whatsoever and was afraid I would look like an idiot. I decided to talk about drunk drivers since I was a certified Intoxilyzer operator. I could easily get a 10 minute talk on that. So I wrote up an outline and practiced my delivery. What did not bother me in most public speaking was me answering questions. I even tried to get it where I would just answer any questions about police work but no, I had to give a talk. After I was introduced at the meeting and scared to death, some business guy in the audience gave me the break that I needed. He said that before I spoke could I answer a question. YES YES YES!!! He said they have been discussing it and what about the mass shooting a few years ago in San Ysidro and should they ban “assault weapons”? In that shooting I think the perpetrator was armed with a couple of handguns but also an Uzi and a shotgun. I think that is he was the big story weapon…. the dreaded 9mm Uzi. Being totally unprepared for that question, I felt perfectly comfortable answering. I said that the weapon was not the issue. I said that I would make a prediction if somebody would take a Glock type weapon (they were extremely new) and kill more people and likely quicker. How? Well a combat rifle or submachinegun like an Uzi is relatively heavy and reasonably hard to lug around when compared to handguns. Also the magazines and ammo are huge in comparison and they are slower to reload unless you’re an expert. On the other hand a guy could have a Glock 9mm with 19 rounds in the magazine and have about four magazines in each front pocket for a total of almost 200 rounds. At typical mass murder shooting distances, a guy with that GLOCK could get off 100 rounds in about 45 seconds. A very short time later like maybe weeks, the Luby’s mass murder in Killeen Texas happened. That guy killed 23 people with……. a Glock and Ruger pistols. He wounded 27 others, all with 9mm handgun bullets. I so wished that I could go back just for 30 second, I told you so comment. So it is a rare instance where a rifle is really a better choice for a mass murder. One of the extremely rare examples is Las Vegas where the guy was a quarter of a mile away and hammered away at a crowd of several thousand people. Much was made about Adam Landsa and Sandy Hook and him having an AR15. He got into the classroom and walked up and shot the kids in the head. Would it really have mattered what firearm heused to shoot kids in the head or even in the heart? So are firearms the problem? If your idea is to take all of them away, then yes. If you’re going to allow people to have semi-automatic handguns however, banning rifles might stop a Mandalay Bay shooting like in Las Vegas but that’s about it.

You can own a fully automatic weapon if you wish. There are no laws against it unless you are a convicted felon, not convicted of domestic violence, are currently under indictment or have been adjudicated as mentally ill.

And that is absolutely the problem with gun control and the people who are conservative who are generally against it. It is the foot in the door or the slippery slope. Oh, you have OCD, you have a mental issue? Oh, you have anxiety attacks? Oh, you have insomnia? Anytime someone says, can we all agree…. they are probably setting up a trap.

What is mental issues?

You will have to ask law enforcement in Uvalde. Typically not commenting has to do with hindering an investigation and the rules of evidence. I wish that I had seen exactly what was said in the “confirmation”. Many times they will use phrases like…. the information we have at this time….. what we have been told by witnesses……

[Hidden Content]

Because the media and people want immediate answers and that was what had been reported at that time. Maybe a year before I retired, we had an officer involved shooting where a suspect was killed. I arrived on scene within a couple of minutes. I quickly spoke to an officer who had spoken with a witness. The information that I received was it a man approached the officer and put his hand near his back pocket like he might have been going for something. No weapon was ever displayed but the officer shot him. So I approached the chief and another commanding officer with that information. I was told practically immediately that that is not what happened. I was simply relaying the information but that information was so far from the truth. I later watched the car camera video and the officer’s body camera video and the story I was told at the actual crime scene was so far from the truth. That video was later released to the public. The point is that I was on scene within a couple of minutes and was given what appeared to be good information from an eye witness, through another officer, and it was complete nonsense. Had I spoken to the media at that time however, I might have repeated that completely bogus story. On occasion I have been the on scene spokesman and fortunately, not for officer involved incidents. That is why we do “investigations”. Remember Michael Brown and “hands up, don’t shoot”. The FBI under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had a year long investigation costing millions of dollars which concluded that the hands up don’t shoot, never happened. Not so strangely, the DA and local and state police came to the conclusion within a couple of days.

On the KFDM Facebook page, a guy is reporting that officers entered the school 40 minutes before the shooter arrived and took their children out. 1. where does such nonsense come from? 2. How many people will now report that as “fact”?

I heard that on the news report a few minutes ago. Assuming this information is now correct, that just negated about 50% of the millions of posts about this incident. Gee…. The original reports were wrong, who would’ve ever thought……

This is my two cents on teachers with guns. We all know that the protocol is such a situation in almost every school is a lockdown. Shelter in place behind a locked door. If a teacher is in a room with 20 students and the door is locked but the bad guy forces his way in, the incident stops right there at the door. As it is now, if a shooter forces his way into a room, the only defense is throwing books at him. I am certainly not against a teacher who sees a gunman walk by that classroom and peaks out to see the gunman’s back turned, stepping out and bringing the fight to him. Swift and aggressive force is how you can turn the tables on an ambush but I just not “expecting” teachers to take the offensive. If they wish to do so however, go for it.