The event last month that put Uvalde, Texas on the map was horrific in more ways than one. While Uvalde will join names like Columbine, Parkland and Sandy Hook, it will stand on its own for what I’m going to discuss, and I sincerely hope the failings there will outlast the terror and heal the pain caused by those events.
I try to be consistent in my moral application of events, and this is no different. I explained this in a previous article, “The Why of the 2nd Amendment Part 1”,
“…what is the extent of their [Broward County Deputies] moral, ethical and human duties to those in the school? Undoubtedly to rush in, singly or as a team, find, engage and stop the shooter, even at the expense of their own lives. Those duties apply to LEO and legally armed citizen alike.”
The fact that the police waited an hour to charge in and engage the shooter is not what I’m wanting to talk about. The officers met their legal obligation and secured the scene to prevent the killer from leaving the scene. The officers failed in their human duty, and that’s still not what I’m talking about.
What I do want to talk about is the legal aftermath. While the police are immune from prosecution for not going into the school to engage the shooter in a timely manner, they may be open to civil and criminal prosecution for preventing private citizens from trying to rescue their children from said shooter. I’m no legal eagle, however I have heard this aspect talked about from a couple different sources. Again, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I don’t know the validity of such a claim either way. The fact that at least one of those parents is being harassed by the police seems to lend credence to this position: Police Are Harassing Mom Who Pulled Kids From Uvalde School Shooting, Lawyer Says.
What I do know is every officer involved in that debacle, from the chief to the officers on the scene doesn’t deserve to ever wear a badge again, even if it’s from a box of cereal. There must exist a certain level of trust from the citizens toward the police, in order for the police to perform their duties effectively. I see that trust has evaporated for that community.
Now we come to the title of this article. This happened on June 13th, 2022: Police in Texas kill a man who fired his weapon inside a gym hosting a children's summer camp. I’m going to guess this was a “gun-free zone” as no staff returned fire. That being said, the police were on scene in two minutes and ended the threat. There’s really nothing more to say about that, which is why when everything goes right, it’s a short local story that never goes national.
I am not saying “this is how it should be” either. Someone somewhere should pay attention to events like these, investigate into the “why” it happened, then figure out how they might be prevented from happening at all, so these people don’t start rampaging in the first place. The mechanism for that is way above my pay grade however. I’m smart enough to know I don’t know how to go about it, only that it needs to be done.