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Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Uvalde, Texas: Turning Point on America's Conversation About Guns?



June 14, 2022


On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old troubled teen, shot his grandmother,  crashed a family truck near a school, took a large cache of weapons, and killed 19 precious kids, and two heroic teachers in the third most deadly mass school shooting. Is now the turning point for a serious discussion between effective and pragmatic gun laws, while threading the needle of the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution?

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With the images of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012 fading from memory, another horrible and tragic mass casualty event at an elementary school has brought the contentious gun debate into the American consciousness front and center again. This tragedy took place at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  These types of shootings happen in America with troublesome regularity. The sad part is that Americans have become numb and it doesn't shock our country anymore. Before Uvalde, the nation absorbed the shooting outside of Buffalo, New York at a supermarket patronized predominately by African-Americans, which killed 10 people. Will this shooting be the episode that forces entrenched members of Congress into a serious, bipartisan movement that brings about change?  If there is change, what does it look like?

The shooting in Uvalde, Texas was made all the more jarring after the initial shock wore off, because of intense scrutiny of how law enforcement officials behaved, and it was not good.  

It appeared that Mr. Ramos started shooting after he crashed the pick-up truck, across the street from a funeral home and when staff attempted to come to his aid, he opened fire on them with his AR-15.  One of the employees contacted 911 about an active shooter.  After that incident, Salvador Ramos found a way to enter the school through a malfunctioning door that would not close.  Eventually, he locked himself inside two-adjoining classrooms and proceeded to kill 19 students in those classrooms, along with their beloved teachers.

Texas Governor Greg Abbot, after initially praising law enforcement, was angry when the timeline was exposed since it appeared that local law enforcement, including the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) police department, told the responding police officers to stand down once a perimeter was set-up.  The school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, who had tactical authority, believed the shooting had moved from an "active shooter" to a "barricaded suspect," and law enforcement officers did not breach the 4th-grade classrooms where the carnage took place until roughly 78 minutes later.  

Mr. Arredondo later stated through his attorney that he didn't bring his police radio with him so he could apparently use both hands for this weapon.  His actions will be continued to be scrutinized and hopefully, the truth will come out after a comprehensive investigation. It was gut-wrenching to hear that wounded students were trying to get the police to enter the classrooms as they were bleeding out but to no avail.  

One of the teachers, Arnulfo Reyes, who was part of the 18 people wounded heard his students pleading to get the police to enter the classroom, which never materialized, only to have the shooter come back and shoot additional students. Mr. Reyes said that law enforcement outside the classroom was trying to negotiate with the shooter that if he gave up and came out that he would not be hurt if he did that. Finally, a decision was made to engage Mr. Ramos.  Among the many branches of responding law enforcement to the crisis, the U.S. Border Patrol's tactical special response unit (BORTAC) decided on their own to enter the school grounds, locate the shooter and end his life.

The aftermath of this heartbreaking event brought intense scrutiny to how this tragedy was handled by local and state authorities.  Some questions to ponder:

1) Despite the overwhelming law enforcement response and numerical superiority over the lone gunman, why was there no serious attempt to locate the shooter, breach the classroom, and eliminate the threat in a shorter time frame?  

2) Why did Pete Arredondo arrive at the school and not use his police radio/scanner, which prevented him from making decisions (including coordinating with other law enforcement agencies) in real-time that could have saved more kids from death?

3) Numerous police officers, at different intervals, had opportunities to engage the shooter and save lives but waited for backup, and then still did nothing?

4) Why was the troubled young man at the center of the tragedy not given the mental health support he obviously needed?  I know it is hard to know everything about a family member or peer, but there were signs (harming cats and small animals, self-inflicted facial wounds, being bullied) that were known by residents of Uvalde, and a school official, police officer, or mental health person should have reached out to him and got him to receive mental health care.

Where do we go from here? What are the steps that members of Congress and school officials around the country can do?  While politicians, media personalities, and self-interested activists argue about who or what is at fault, for clicks, viewership, and their own sanctimony, I offer some suggestions that could improve protection for kids while trying to minimize these incidents to happen in the future.

Provide police presence at schools.  If you cannot assign an on-site police officer to a specific school, then the local police department, sheriff for cities and towns, or even state authorities must find money in their budgets to have a visible police presence, even at random times of the day throughout the week, so that potential gunmen can see that schools are no longer soft targets. Make it national law that any officer, regardless if there is backup, must engage a single shooter, and will be held accountable if they do not.  In the event there are multiple shooters, I  support that even a single police officer must challenge the shooters because there is no one else to protect those kids.

Structural reinforcement of elementary schools and high schools.  There should only be one or at most two main single-person entry points (gates or turnstiles that can lock, for example) for schools.  I know this might not be that popular, but it should be done to eliminate multiple points of entry with easy access for those who wish to cause harm. People must enter and leave through those specific locations because it forces anyone who wants to go inside to be given or granted access by school officials alone.  If it is too difficult to enter any campus, then that becomes a deterrent, albeit a small one.  Having those entry points, along with fencing that is difficult to climb over, is necessary, in my opinion.  It can be done aesthetically, and not have the school look like a prison.  Find smart people who can work together to make this happen.

There must be school programs that provide mandatory mental health for young people (especially boys).  In order to find the root causes of why young men seek gun violence against others, local communities must identify what is causing that pain, which manifests into anger that can lead to grave harm to the most vulnerable, destroying their communities. It could be a lack of positive role models, absent fathers, lack of self-worth, or numerous other reasons, but studies need to unearth the psychological reasons and solve this problem.  This must be done at the earliest stage of a child's development, formulating a plan to monitor troubled youths through cooperation between parents, school districts, and police departments as they matriculate through any school system. This would require the collaboration of the medical profession, the educational system, and lawmakers to find the best possible methods to achieve this.  It can be done.

Volunteer Guardians.  If it is not possible for local police departments to assign either an on-site resource officer or minimal presence of any kind, then I think it might help to have volunteer parents or members of a community who are licensed gun holders, with required certification for special "active shooter" training, to guard schools with the blessing of the community.  However, they must register with the local police department, take part in "ride-along" programs and any other sort of necessary collaborative training with that community's police department, and cede any directive/tactical authority to law enforcement once they engage a hostile gunman of a school shooting.

Increase the legal age to purchase a firearm. Although there will be legal challenges to this idea, I think it is good to raise the age to purchase firearms to 21 years of age.  Advocates for this position say that if you need to be 21 to buy alcohol in public, then you should also need to be 21 to buy a gun.  Since there is a serious problem with young men and violence in this country, in my opinion, I tend to agree. It might be a good idea to run a pilot program in certain states to see what type of empirical data can provide support for long-term solutions and legislation. I feel that this would be a workable first step.  

In a case like the Sandy Hook shooting, the gunman stole guns from his mother, killed her, and then proceeded to enter the school grounds.  I believe what happened with shooter Adam Lanza tends to be rare, and in most recent school shootings the gunman either bought weapons legally or was gifted them by a family member.  Perhaps anyone who wants to give a firearm as a gift to an immediate family member must accept some responsibility?  Just a thought.

In the aftermath of what happened at Robb Elementary School, emotions run high and politics ruins any potential for pragmatic solutions. Americans become too tied to shared ideological opinions and do not think anyone else has a workable solution that can protect kids.  It is possible to support the 2nd amendment and find ways to protect the lives of children in our public schools.  Some of the ideas mentioned in this blog post are just that, ideas.  The best way to find what works best is to gather as many ideas as possible, find which ones might work the best, test them out and evaluate those results.  Until this method is attempted, nothing will change too dramatically, and the declining mental health of our young men and subsequent targeting of vulnerable children in schools will collide with the same effects.

 


2 comments:

  1. Great blog and fantastic perspectives!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have analyzed the catastrophic event with good insight and have also offered excellent suggestions to reforming the process of gun safety and protections for potential victims.

    ReplyDelete

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