I Can't Even...

It's way too common. But that's been true with the first one, years ago, and each since. None are acceptable. They should never have targeted kids, much less in schools, but I guess those are the easy victims, the ones who "give shooters their 'names' ". We almost are getting numbed to them, just taking a mental note that this time it wasn't us, wasn't our dead and injured, unless we weren't lucky this time. We shake our heads that schools these days have to have active shooter drills the same way we grew up with duck-and-cover drills to "protect" against atom bombs, but still believe that at least the shooter drills will offer something more than imaginary protection.

Wrong again.

But this time was particularly egregious. All those good guys with gun, the ones we hire and put into uniforms to protect and serve, failed us spectacularly. They protected themselves, served nobody. Somebody, somewhere, "decided" that the shooter was barricaded, the kids were OK, and they could wait to go get him until reinforcements arrived, because the 20 cops or so on the scene "might get shot".

Yeah, that comes with the badge, doncha know. You might get shot. You have guns, vests, adult know-how (supposedly), and a job to do. But somebody might get shot, something so many cops are afraid of these days that they shoot first, killing people armed with a candy bar or a cell phone, or maybe for just not respecting them they way they "should" and turning away.

The kids inside have none of that equipment and training, though some of them seem to have been smarter than you. There was the girl who kept calling 911, asking for the cops to come, why won't they come, the shooter's still there? There was the girl huddling next to her best friends bloody body, smearing herself all over in her friend's blood so the shooter might think he'd already killed her too. There were the boys hiding under a table with a cloth over it, keeping silent, only to hear one of the cops in the hall, once they'd finally come in, call out to the kids to call back to him if they need help, and when one child did answer instead of keeping silent she was targeted by the shooter and killed.

Uvalde Texas is a town with not only regular cops, but an 11 person SWAT team. There is no mention of the latter turning out. Instead there was a Border Patrol squad who took an hour to get there from wherever they had been. There was a mother who implored the cops to go in who got handcuffed, a father who tried to enter the school who got tased instead. And there are reports of cops who went in and got their own children out during that hour delay. To be fair, some did go in and clear kids out of rooms the shooter was in, but meanwhile kids were bleeding out in the two adjoining classrooms where he and his victims still remained. Some of them might have survived.

Don't forget, there is an NRA convention this weekend not to far away from this town. The manufacturers of the specific weapon the shooter used pulled out of it, informing media that their product had been "misused", when of course the shooter used it exactly how it was intended, by shooting the most people possible in the shortest amount of time with the least danger to himself. It is a weapon of war. Sold to anybody. Because this is 'Murica. We're all at war, or so we're told by certain TV networks and media outlets, and all who aren't "us" are the "they" you're fighting. The NRA takes advantage, a long ways from its original purpose of promoting gun safety, instead protecting the safety of gun manufacturer's bottom lines, and spouting nonsense like "a good guy with a gun...." 

They even want teachers to become those "good guys with guns" because somehow a teacher is the ideal role model for that position. Because, you know, a trained person for educating our children who has been denigrated for years, had their budgets all but removed and their salaries frozen or at least made to cover basic school supplies for their classes, is somehow now also supposed to be armed and capable enough to blow away a shooter before one can get to our kids without accidentally shooting our kids as well. You can bet they'll make the teachers pay for those guns themselves too, don't you think?

Well, plenty of supposedly "good guys with guns" were just as scared of that AR-15 as an elementary school full of kids who were trapped inside with the evil person wielding it. They failed to respond properly, failed to own up to their mistakes for two days. Apparently the phrase so many people believe in is a failure too.

I can't even watch the coverage of these shootings any more. But it seems I just can't escape it either.