Why not both?
Tag: mass shootings
Cowards…
Uvalde Gunman Threatened to Shoot up a School Four Years Ago, Rep. Claims
U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) claimed that Uvalde gunman Salvador Ramos had previously threatened to shoot up a school when he was 14. The now deceased gunman allegedly threatened to carry out a school massacre when he turned 18 and was arrested for it, placing him on law enforcement’s radar.
“The shooter was arrested years ago, four years ago, for having this plan for basically saying, you know, when I’m a senior in 2022, I am going to shoot up a school,” Gonzales claimed on Fox News.
“Something fell between the cracks between then and now to allow this to happen. We need to shake out all the facts. We need to figure out what happened,” he continued.
“Where the holes and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But if law enforcement, you know, identified him four years ago as a threat, we need to figure out why he wasn’t – you know, how he got removed from that,” Gonzales added.
Bill Melugin of Fox News later reported that Uvalde police officials are denying the claim. Two teens were arrested for threatening to carry out a massacre in 2014, but the department says the Uvalde gunman was not one of them. “There were two juveniles arrested on conspiracy charges for a shooting plot several years back, but the Uvalde shooter was not involved in that incident and was not arrested,” Melugin was reportedly told by Uvalde law enforcement.
Uvalde law enforcement officials have previously claimed that Ramos had no criminal record and was not on their radar. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said he isn’t sure whether he had a juvenile record, which are often sealed.
“He may have had a juvenile record, but that is yet to be determined,” Abbott said at a press conference earlier this week.
Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez reported that a 14-year-old Morales Junior High School student and a 13-year-old former Morales student planned to perform a “mass casualty event against the school,” according to KENS 5 in 2018.
The two students were reportedly inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre while one described himself as feeling “god-like.”
Authorities investigating if retired federal agent knew of Buffalo mass shooting plans in advance
Law enforcement officers are investigating whether a retired federal agent had about 30 minutes advance notice of a white supremacist’s plans to murder Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, two law enforcement officials told The Buffalo News.
Authorities believe the former agent – believed to be from Texas – was one of at least six individuals who regularly communicated with accused gunman Payton Gendron in an online chat room where racist hatred was discussed, the two officials said.
The two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation stated these individuals were invited by Gendron to read about his mass shooting plans and the target location about 30 minutes before Gendron killed 10 people at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue on May 14.
Officers Waited to Engage Texas School Shooter Because ‘They Could Have Been Shot’: Official
A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) official has said officers “could have been shot” if they engaged the gunman holed up with his victims in a classroom at Robb Elementary School before a specialist tactical team arrived.
Authorities on Thursday sketched out a timeline of events from when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos crashed his vehicle to when he entered the Texas school at around 11.40 a.m. and slaughtered 19 students and two teachers.
But it wasn’t until almost 1 p.m. that Ramos had been killed and the siege was over, around 90 minutes later.
Questions have been raised amid mounting public anger and scrutiny about the response of law enforcement as more details emerge about the timeline of events.
Texas DPS spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez said the first priority for officers in an active shooter situation is to stop the killing and preserve life.
“But also one thing that, of course, the American people need to understand, is that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where the gunman is,” Oliverez told CNN.
Mother trying to save children at Uvalde was handcuffed by federal marshals
After it was revealed on Thursday that not only did police delay their response to sending tactical teams into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. amid a school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead but prevented parents from entering, the Wall Street Journal reported that one mother sprinted into the school to get her children, over objections from law enforcement.
Angeli Rose Gomez drove 40 miles to the school upon hearing of the shooting, and she arrived, said “The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”
While state officials said that police were at the school mere moments after the teen gunman entered the school, barricading himself in a classroom and opening fire on young students, they also said that officers were unable to gain access to the classroom.
Gomez said that she was only one of several parents at the school demanding that officers stop waiting around and go into the school. It was then that “federal marshals approached her and put her in handcuffs,” the Journal reports.
The marshals told her she was being arrested for “intervening in an active investigation.” Gomez was able to convince local law enforcement to free her, but said she also saw a father pepper-sprayed, and another tackled and thrown to the ground by law enforcement as he tried to go to the school. His 10-year-old daughter was massacred in the slaughter.
Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school
Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
“Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house, across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde. Carranza said the officers did not go in.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
“They were unprepared,” he added.
Texas officials launch investigation into Uvalde police response to school shooting: Conflicting statements over gunfight with the shooter and videos show parents being held down by cops outside while kids were trapped with the gunman
Texas officials have launched an investigation into the Uvalde police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday after conflicting statements over whether cops fired at the gunman as he made his way inside.
Salvador Ramos, 18, arrived at the school in Uvalde at 11.30am, crashing his car into a ditch.
A school resource officer was at the scene but he failed to stop him from making his way inside.
Two other cops also rushed to the school at that time – Ramos had just shot his grandmother in the face at their home less than five miles away. She survived and called the police.
It was first reported that those cops exchanged gunfire with Ramos, but police now say they cannot confirm that.
Ramos went on to barricade himself inside the classroom, killing 19 kids and two teachers, before a SWAT team breached the door and shot him around an hour later.
Sources say police were struggling to get into the classroom and needed a key to open the door.
Eventually, a border patrol agent was able to get inside and the shooting was declared over at 1.06pm.
But it questions remain over why it took police so long to get into the classroom where the kids were trapped with the gunman.
Frustrated parents were standing outside the school begging cops to go inside when the shooting was unfolding.
Javier Cazares, whose nine-year-old daughter was murdered, says cops were ‘just standing there’ and waiting for protective shields to arrive at the scene before they went in.
‘They said they rushed in and all that, we didn’t see that,’ he told The New York Times, adding that many were ‘just standing there.’
‘There were plenty of men out there armed to the teeth that could have gone in faster. This could have been over in a couple minutes,’ he said.
He added that police were faster to escort Beto O’Rourke out of the press conference yesterday when he started heckling the governor than they were to get into the school.
Angel Garza, whose daughter was killed, was handcuffed after trying to run into the school when he heard that a ‘girl called Amerie’ had been shot. He later found out that she was among those who died while giving medical aid to other children who escaped.
Derek Sotelo, 26, who works in a tire shop nearby, said parents were begging to be let into the school.
‘They were just angry, especially the dads. We were wondering, “What the heck is going on? Are they going in?” ‘The dads were saying, “Give me the vest, I’ll go in there!’
Choose wisely…
Horrifying School Shootings Should Not Be Surprising in a Nation That Celebrates Mass Murder
An utterly horrifying tragedy unfolded this week in Uvalde, Texas as yet another deranged psychopath entered a school full of children and began indiscriminately killing. This 18-year-old monster barricaded himself in a single classroom where he had his way with two teachers and 19 students, executing all of them in cold blood. The security force paid for by taxpayer dollars did nothing to stop him and only after he murdered the entire classroom was a SWAT team sent in to take him out.
Predictably, political blowhards didn’t even wait for the bodies to cool before they began exploiting the deaths of innocent children to score political points. Rabid partisan hacks have been frothing at the mouths for 48 hours now as they put forth their “solutions” to the problem of mass shootings that involve about as much depth and nuance as a kiddie pool full of piss.
“Guns are the problem!” screams the rabid anti-gun left. “We need more teachers with guns!” screams the pro-gun right. Yet neither of the two sides have been able to do a damn thing to stop or prevent these horrific events.
If it is a gun problem, why is it that other countries with well armed citizens don’t see the same frequency of mass shootings? If it’s solely a mental health issue, why don’t other countries with higher rates of mental disorders see the same mass murders?
The United States spends roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars every year on mental health care but none of that money goes to psychological research. Instead, psychological research is funded by the nation’s $66 billion annual research fund and and a portion, 1.5 percent, goes to actual psychological research.
Nevertheless, billions of taxpayer dollars flow into the mental health industry’s coffers and most mental health issues go untreated as the country’s mental health problem gets worse. Hundreds of billions of tax dollars are making lots of industry insiders and big pharma players rich yet we’re nowhere close to figuring out what triggers these lunatics to carry out such horrors.
Perhaps we need to look deeper than the two talking points offered up by politicians every time this happens. Perhaps we need to look at the ones offering up the solutions in the first place.
Hellbound and Down 
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