Family members of Uvalde school shooting victims also said they're filing lawsuits against dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and Uvalde's school district.
What bothers me most about this is the huge amount of ignorance all sides have on this subject.
The issue IMO, is the fucking AR-15. Police Officers immediately went in when they knew there were problems, but when the subject had an AR-15 that could literally shoot through school walls (ie: Police Officers were outgunned and out-matched), they retreated.
Yes, there was a few hours where they were too scared to do anything, further traumatizing the children / teachers. But this is fucking it. Talk about the firepower and the tactical decision to retreat.
Handguns CANNOT compete against an AR15. The AR15 has superior power, penetration, and accuracy. The officers made the right decision to retreat, regroup, and further come up with a new plan initially. Though their cowardice in the face of the AR15 is what needs to be highlighted most of all.
There’s nothing wrong with being scared of a bigger, more accurate, more powerful gun with more ammunition. If they truly were outgunned, then retreat was the best option (otherwise, officers would have died and that would have forced a retreat while carrying a slain officer around, a much harder task). Shit gets bad to worse in a combat situation if you don’t outgun the opponent.
Dinky handguns won’t do shit against the body armor of the attacker either.
This is literally the case where liberals need to come together, understand the mechanics of the gun involved and push for better gun control laws. If officers in Texas get outgunned and are forced to retreat, then support those officers and push for gun legislation. Everyone knows these bigger guns serve as cop-killers and ultimately fuck our society over. Just quit being dumbass snowflakes about blue-lives-matter or pro-Police stances or whatever.
Being pro-Police here AND anti-gun is the right move in this case. But instead, Liberals fuck over their own politics because they’re too braindead to play their cards right.
Conservatives clearly care more about guns than Police Officers. Punish the Conservative view ya pansies.
The cops had AR15s, body armor, helmets, flash bang grenades, the works. They also outnumbered the shooter 376 to 1. The shooters vest had no armor plating.
Also note: I’m talking about 11:40am. These are the pre-SWAT police officers who rushed into the building almost immediately after the shooter entered the building.
SWAT doesn’t arrive until 12:10pm.
So no. For the time-period between 11:40am to 12:10pm, Police are just armed with whatever they got. Normal officers don’t go around with Flash Bangs, Body Armor, AR15s. Most officers just have a handgun until SWAT arrives.
Standard procedure literally nationwide is that normal officers are expected to go in with what they have. That’s exactly what happened in Nashville less than a year later:
The body cam video is public. Officers responded with what they had. Yes, there’s an officer with an AR. There are also officers clearing rooms with handguns and in plainclothes. And one of the officers that engaged the AR-wielding shooter did so with their duty handgun.
Body Armor, AR15s.
They absolutely wear the former every day and many these days have either an AR or a shotgun in the trunk of their patrol vehicle.
Depends on the department but police vests being carriers with ceramic plates is far from uncommon these days. I know for a fact that’s the case for my local department.
May want to read you own article before posting it…from the article at 11:35, a few minutes after the gunman entered the school…
" Three Uvalde police officers rush to the same door that the gunman used to enter, which was closed. Surveillance footage shows the officers all have pistols, and two of them have rifles. One officer has external armor, and two are wearing concealable armor."
They had armor, pistols and 2/3 had rifles.
This is a tragedy any way you slice it. There is so much gun reform that needs to happen, and police did not handle things well here. People with guns are hard situations to handle, but police handled a bad situation on a way that made it worse.
The officer who actually cornered the gunman, and put in the call for SWAT at 11:40 only had a pistol.
Which is commendable: to go into a situation knowing you are outgunned. The people with pistols in that first group 100% should be commended for going in with inferior weaponry.
Now take that highly-penetrative AR15 and shoot it into a school building, knowing full well that the bullets will penetrate the walls and kill the people on the other side of the school.
Even when everyone has an AR15, the shooter still has the advantage, because he had the children hostage. There were also questions on whether the school was clear before any potential shootout (see the problem with AR15’s huge amount of penetration: shooting through the attacker and hitting children in another room is a serious concern still even as SWAT arrives).
Even when you give everyone the works, the problem at play here was the AR15 in the hands of the shooter, which required the police to take a step back and rework tactics entirely.
Thinking from the perspective of the cops side will 100% give yall a ton of evidence and logical arguments to fuck up the pro-gun AR15 lobby. Just think damn it.
Among the tactical officers who responded were members of the Border Patrol’s elite Bortac team but they couldn’t get into the room because of a steel door and cinder block construction, The Wall Street Journal
Also, most cops carry AR15s or a similar rifle in their cop car.
Also, most cops carry AR15s or a similar rifle in their cop car.
Good job highlighting your ignorance to Uvalde. Did you read the police log yet?
We have him in the room. He’s got an AR-15. He’s shot a lot … we don’t have firepower right now … It’s all pistols … I don’t have a radio … I need you to bring a radio for me, and give me my radio for me … I need to get one rifle … I’m trying to set him up
Read the fucking log. Have you read the log yet? What time was this radio message sent?
The original police officers tussled with a shooter with body-armor and superior AR15 firepower until they cornered him. And that wasn’t good enough for yall dumbasses.
These original officers responding to the call were god damn heroes. And if anyone read the log they’d know.
Blame SWAT for being shitty and taking their time. But… even then… I have the AR15 penetrating walls / killing other people issue for good guy with gun vs bad guy with gun. I don’t think its very easy or clear to figure out the wall strength, which directions are “safe to shoot at”, etc. etc.
There’s a lot to think about here, and that’s not even covering the hostages. Just figuring out how to clear the other rooms and making sure enough of the area is clear enough for heavy weaponry is a big enough deal before you send in SWAT and possibly murder some children in the crossfire.
In any case: my point is clear. The AR15 is the big issue. We seriously should be pushing to ban the AR15 rifle, and any other weapons of similar penetration / muzzle velocity.
I’m not surprised that a rag-tag team of officers without radios was unaware of the firepower on their sides.
In any case, the officers who were chasing down the shooter with only pistols are heroes. The situation would have been much worse without their action.
The radio-call I highlighted there is timestamped at 11:40am. Its a real call from the scene. And that’s only 5 minutes after the shooter entered (and was already after the firefights that happened at 11:38 IIRC). In any case, we’re well within the quick action / quick response of the first team, who were largely fighting an uphill battle with pistols, a lack of tactical radios, and other problems.
This doesn’t change the fact either, that these officers at 11:40 were not a SWAT team. They were just normal officers. Officers don’t get (and shouldn’t get) military style / warrior training.
And I refuse to give officers more military/warrior training. We already are dealing with an overly militarized police force. I am 100% against any discussion where your conclusion is “Police need bigger guns and need to be meaner”.
This is relatively recent in the great scheme of things.
I’d prefer it if we went back before warrior-cop mentality. Cops aren’t soldiers. In fact, any cop that tries to be a soldier becomes worse at doing cop-jobs (and vice versa. Soldiers aren’t cops, we shouldn’t be putting soldiers on the frontlines of “Win the hearts and minds” of foreigners like we did in Afghanistan).
You have spoken in a clear, concise, and convincing manner. Well done! You’ve swayed this person.
And you are of course correct in your implication we need to begin design and production of the AR16 posthaste! A gun that shoot through 3 walls is the clear solution. Well done sir!
But in all seriousness you are correct. A nation littered with mentally unstable morons and high-powered rifles is a potently and predictably tragic way to be.
It is outrageous that you are getting downvoted for such a well put together set of comments. Thankyou very much for taking the time. I’m embarrassed for the people who downvote because they know you’re right and they dislike the conclusion.
There’s another bullshit thing we need to get rid of. Cops are NOT swat team. And the idea of a “Warrior-cop” is one of the worst fucking things in our culture right now.
Liberals have been asking cops to stand down and be more kind for the last decade and suddenly in this case, yall are asking them to be militant warriors again.
No. Leave the “warriors” to the SWAT team at best, and I’m not even convinced that SWAT is a good idea for all cities to have. Warrior-cop mentality is one of the worst things going on in this country right now, and I want to speak against it.
Cops aren’t soldiers. They’re supposed to be community members. In other countries, cops don’t even carry guns.
Weird, I want cops to not strangle someone because they may have used a fake bill, or shoot someone because they were called there to help with a mental health crisis, or shoot someone because they busted into the wrong apartment, or to flash bang a baby.
But I suppose that means I want them to be kind to someone actively shooting kids.
I don’t believe any cop should get advanced weapon training unless they’re explicitly assigned to SWAT and/or Riot control. And normal beat cops honestly don’t deal with hyperviolent people often enough to deserve the mindshift or the training for violence.
Nice straw-man, but if they can’t take the heat they shouldn’t be in the kitchen cooking. Uvalde cops went AWOL while children died and you’re defending the AWOL cops against arguments that we’re not making while lumping us all in as flip flopping liberals. Surprised some people know how the government works? They weren’t anywhere close to war and guess what, war is worse. They wouldn’t just stand there, they would run away.
The exact reason why the police refused to engage with the uvalde shooter is precisely because they spend every waking moment fantasizing about being Rambo and then they can’t handle the adrenaline when there’s actual lead in the air. They let the kids catch it all instead. These aren’t men we’re talking about anymore.
Oh? And the typical UK Cop doesn’t even have a pistol.
Get your head out of your ass and see how stupidly overmilitarized USA’s cop culture has become. Think about how our expectations here in Uvalde are causing that, and stop pushing for militarized cops.
A chief tactic is knowing cover vs concealment, especially when you have a high powered rifle that can shoot through bodyarmor, doors, and walls.
Now if you’re saying that you support giving the Police regular access to not only higher-powered weapons, but also tactical training so that they start shooting through walls and doors to get what they want done, then… I dunno man. Its an escalation I’m uncomfortable with.
I don’t want Police to be thinking they’re some hero who can breach doors, shoot into positions or suppressive fire (etc. etc.). I’m fine with them having a pistol-level of force, but Police deciding that shooting through a wall was a good idea is exactly what killed Breonna Taylor (one of the unarmed black people that BLM went ballistic about just a few years ago).
We need to consider the tactical training and mindset of cops when we give them these weapons, mindset and training. IMO, the mistake was that military-style thinking. Cops aren’t military, but a bunch of (less-trained) dumbasses on a $50k/year salary is what killed Breonna Taylor IMO. Especially as they escalated far beyond what normal cop behavior should be.
a bunch of (less-trained) dumbasses on a $50k/year salary is what killed Breonna Taylor IMO
This is what needs to change, more training, more and frequent practice. Every cop in my opinion should get 3-4 years of training. It should be like graduation. Plus they should undergo biannual (twice a year) practice and updation of that training every year.
Every trigger happy cop should get demotion till they are fired.
This is one of the dumbest takes i have ever read on this site and that is saying something. I really hope you can go through some introspection and have a paradigm shift. Its not easy to change but goddamn. I sincerely hope youre just an ignorant kid.
The fact that you can’t respond to OPs points speaks volumes. It is fine if you don’t like the conclusion, but you won’t convince anyone of anything if you are unable to form rebuttals to their points.
Yes, I would die trying to save children even if I wasn’t armed at all let alone it being the job I was fucking trained for. You are a disgusting coward. Fuck off with this shit.
Are you unable to comprehend that an emotional reaction like that could result in more children and yourself dying? On a strategic level, are you unable to see that as a possibility?
Maybe it would be a bit clearer if you imagine this in a different situation. Imagine your child has late stage cancer that has spread throughout their body. The doctor says it’s too late to operate, and chemo is the only chance. Do you see how it might be a dangerous idea for you to just emotionally grab a kitchen knife and start going at it yourself? Sometimes people with training actually are superior to random peoples inktial instincts in stressful situations. I generally don’t like cops, and I’m not saying this is 100% the case, but the fact that you are choosing not to acknowledge this as a possibility, and instead you resort to childish name calling tells me that you are unable to processes all the information and even attempt to make an objective decision. Your POV would be much more respectable if you at least demonstrated your ability to weigh all angles before coming to a conclusion.
The way it seems is that you came at this from the other direction. First, you decided every police officer has to be a coward. Then, you looked for evidence to support this and ignored everything else. Finally, you rejected the idea of listening to or responding to any other information and went directly to trying to shame anyone out of even considering anything else. This is exactly how religion works. They tell you start from a point of having a conclusion and then shame anyone who attempts to reason things and weigh all possibilities before making a conclusion. This is a perfect opportunity to exercise your logic and reasoning because it is such an emotionally charged situation. Always be looking for ways to improve yourself. If you see yourself ignoring specific arguments and trying to shame someone out of adebate, then you just may have found a leak in your own personal boat.
If your take away from this is call me more names and ignore what I have said, then go ahead and save yourself the time as I will only continue if you don’t demonstrate a willingness and ability to share genuine ideas. It does me nothing to hear which words you find to be the most insulting.
I understand the arguments you’re making and the logic behind them. I just completely disagree. It’s a really bad take and your anology about cancer is not even a remotely relatable situation. I’m just going to assume you’re trolling and move on.
I admit that the cancer analogy isn’t spot on exactly the same, but the similarities are the aspects that you and so many people are, for some reason unable to discuss or address. Simply saying that you understand everything doesn’t actually cause discussion to develop or ideas to be challenged. I don’t think that you are a troll, I think you are just more comfortable living in a world that you see as simple because complex situations exhaust you, but you still want to feel like you know and understand a complex situation based on your initial hunch or willingness to just go along with the crowd. That’s perfectly fine, I think society may need people who don’t think too deeply and just go along with the group. I do think that you would personally feel more fulfilled as a person if you try to push yourself and venture into a more internally honest mindset.
The gunman enters the school at 11:35am. Pre-SWAT officers charge after the gunman almost immediately afterwards. Initial skirmishes between the Police (with only handguns) immediately show that they were outgunned. Officers ask for SWAT team backup by 11:40am.
Sadly, it’s no use. They try to figure out what your conclusion is, and then they shut down entirely and don’t consider why the facts lead to the conclusion. They can’t respond to specifics, all they can do is call names.
The people defending the police here are literally saying that the children should fend for themselves in situations like this because it’s too dangerous for the police.
Fuck. That. Noise.
The thin yellow line, everyone. Laugh and point whenever you see the blue stripe on the American flag. It’s a joke.
Some of the parents whose children were being slaughtered were willing to try while police stood around scrolling Facebook on their phone, but police arrested them for it.
I don’t even understand what people think. Do you seriously think that thr cops there were in on it like a big conspiracy? Do you think the cops knew that the soccer moms could take out the mad man with armor destroying bullets, and they just wanted to save the madman from them?? Just think about it like a strategic video game, what do you genuinely think is the best way to deal with such a situation?
Look, I get it, cops generally suck. So many of them do. This isn’t about that. Think about this situation objectively as a little mental exercise. The world is not so black and white all the time.
Do you not understand that the bullets tear through walls? Running in there with no plan to piss off someone with a gun that tears through walls while there are a bunch of kids behind those walls is stupid. It puts kids in extra danger. How is this a difficult to grasp concept?
You know what else puts kids in extra danger? Standing around for hours doing nothing while the shooter continues to slaughter them. Not only that, but they went in the school and shouted for kids to call out to be rescued, except they didn’t rescue them and the kids who did call out were then shot. Your take is absolutely insane and indefensible. These people are specifically trained and paid to deal with these types of situations not stand around scrolling on their phones while children are being murdered just feet away.
Your poor reading comprehension has completely prevented you from being able to understand what I’ve said. I never said the police made the right choice. I never said cops are generally good. In fact, I’ve repeatedly explicitly said the opposite. OP brought up some interesting points about what they see as the main cause of the catastrophe, and I said they are interesting points that should be considered. As soon as you and other people who are unable to see past the emotions, ego, and the perceived hive mind saw that we were saying something other than “this was definetly 100% preventable, but all the cops in that town are cowards” you flip off your brain and go into mindless attack mode. It is OK to consider things. You don’t need to fly off the handle and instantly resort to petty name calling whenever anyone disagrees with your your initial, unthought-out hunch. The biggest takeaway from this is that, and if you can realize it, then it will absolutely help you when interacting with people in your life.
This is a giant strawman. What names have I called you? You’re the one doing mental gymnastics to defend the lack of action from these people who are paid and trained to handle situations like this.
You claim you “never said the police made the right call” yet you’re sitting here claiming every one of their actions were correct “because AR15 shoot far.” Absolutely absurd.
Go back and reread, you’ve massively misunderstood. The whole discussion is about how this could be prevented if AR15s were not so easy to get, and yet people are focused on the cops.
Specifically AR15 and how this particular gun tears through walls.
The penetrative effects of a bullet traveling at 300% the speed of regular pistol rounds is far deadlier and damaging than just a pistol. And you have all these dumbasses who are like “Yeah but pistols are still deadly”.
Remember that energy is velocity squared. We’re talking about like 900% of the energy per shot. The amount of firepower we’re just casually accepting as “normal” in the USA is ridiculous, and is the real tragedy of the Uvalde situation. And everyone who is using this moment to blame the cop when they should 100% be blaming the gun-culture of AR15 is part of the problem.
We already have examples of what happens when gunowners take matters into their own hands. And that person’s name is Kyle Rittenhouse. I have very little respect for that mindset.
You make really good points. I hadn’t thought about this situation in this light until you brought it up. It is very alarming how difficult it is for people to understand that situations can be nuanced. It’s like they just want everything to be black and white and simple, and they just want to be completely on the side of whatever they detect the majority is thinking. In this case, it really makes a difference as to what policies should be focused on.
And then you get shot. Worst case scenario, you don’t die, but instead scream out in agony in the crossfire, getting 3 or 4 other guys in trouble as they come in to drag your ass away from the firing zone.
Firefights suck. And shitty people thinking they’d be heroes in this situation only make it worse for everyone.
OK, so explain. What would you do? “Something” isnt a plan, talk strategy. You have a gun that can shoot 1 bullet per second, can’t go through the armor that the enemy is wearing, and you can hold about 8 bullets in your gun. The enemy has a gun that goes through your armor and the walls like they are butter, shoots 10 bullets per second, and holds 4x as many bullets as you do. There are kids all around, the walls may slow down your bullets, but not the enemies. Do you wait for bigger guns or do you go in there with terrible chances and high probability of getting even more kids killed?
I generally don’t like cops, but if they charged in there on a suicide mission and got even more kids killed, then people would just be complaining about how stupid and shortsighted they were.
And who gives a fuck about the weapon used. That does not excuse their lack of action.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns. Basic tactics.
And if everyone is using big guns during a hostage situation, the “Good Guys” have a huge disadvantage due to the penetrative effects of powerful guns. Good Guys don’t want to kill children with missed (or even hit) shots. A headshot vs the shooter would not only penetrate the shooter’s skull, but also the wall behind the shooter. A wall that you’re not sure if the children or the teachers of the school were hiding behind yet.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns.
Why is that? Does the AR15 generate a forcefield around the person wielding it making the shooter immune to any “lesser” weapons? Catching a bullet from a pistol will kill you just the same and this shooter was severely outnumbered. What police lacked was the guts to actually put their lives on the line to protect these children, even though they love to talk about how they put their lives on the line every day as they arrest people for weed or hand out tickets for going 5MPH over the speed limit.
The police know it is a machine gun, the police know that many bullets can be fired in a very short period of time. They know the bullets kill. Ban guns. If you want to hunt, use a bow, or don’t hunt.
Does the AR15 generate a forcefield around the person wielding it making the shooter immune to any “lesser” weapons?
Yes. Its called effective firing range.
A typical pistol (ex M1911) has an effective range of 50m and only when you’ve got very good practice. A typical AR15 has an effective range of 550 meters (11x the range).
The effective range is a measurement of the accuracy of the shot. In effect, if you have an AR15 at 100 meters, you’ve got better accuracy than a cop at 10meters. (Effective firing range is mostly about accuracy and bullet placement. Rifles are much, much, much more accurate than pistols)
Learn to tactics bro. Rifle range and accuracy is a real thing. You don’t fight enemies with rifles if you only got a pistol dude. Furthermore, you don’t spray-and-pray with inaccurate pistols when there’s lol hostages in the same room as the shooter.
This isn’t a video game. This isn’t a comic book where “the main character” holding a damn pistol has more accuracy than enemy riflemen. This is real life.
You are talking about a school. Effective range doesn’t much matter past 25 meters.
I guarantee you that an AR15 will shoot quicker, more accurately, and with more penetration even at as short at 10 meters vs a pistol. And probably with a larger magazine to boot (fewer shots on the pistols).
The fact that you’re arguing otherwise is a misunderstanding and/or ignorance of basic gun tactics. At any range, the AR15 is a superior weapon. 500 meters, 50 meters, 10 meters, 5 meters. AR15 always is better. Especially when body-armor is in play so that penetrating effect is even a bigger deal.
Speaking as a combat marksmanship coach for the Marines. I respectfully disagree with you in this instance.
Your facts while mostly true in a void do not account for training, tactics or the situation.
If i was standing next to someone that has an ar15 i would take a pistol or a knife all day. That AR can’t do jack if i grab the barrel and point it away from me.
I appreciate you sharing your experience. And yes, I’m well aware that knives (and batons even), can beat a gun in short ranges. The famous Filipino Eskrima fighters of the early 1900s (the culture my parents came from) taught that lesson. And legend holds that pistols like the M1911 were specifically designed for those close-quarters combat situations (too many US soldiers dying to the Filipino eskrima stick fighters that US paid R&D to figure out a solution back then).
But the hallway of a school can stretch many dozens of meters, far longer than the distance you can close with a knife, and even stretching the effective firing range of a pistol and knife.
And given even the presence of a door: the knowledge that the AR15 on the other side could likely penetrate the door makes breaching operations difficult. And the presence of hostages / kids in the classroom prevents many weapons / breaching techniques from being used.
Besides the department had the choice to make the situation pistol vs rifle (to use your paradigm) instead they left it unarmed vs rifle.
They cornered the shooter, and then waited for SWAT (the actual combat specialists of the police force). SWAT team took too long afterward, but the initial police response was quite heroic as far as I can see. The initial police did what they could with inferior weapons and less knowledge and less training.
This initial skirmish from 11:35am to 11:40am seemed to be fine. The long wait for SWAT after 11:40am is really where things get more ambiguous, but I will not support regular officers charging into these situations without training and armed with mostly pistols at that. If we do that, then we’re accepting a significant escalation of warrior-cop mentality and expecting cops to have far more deadly-arms training than I’m honestly comfortable with.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns. Basic tactics.
This doctrine has been out of standard practice for over two decades. In response to Columbine the new mass adopted doctrine is go towards the gun fire. This is information any officer who has joined in the past ~25 years would have been taught.
There’s nothing wrong with being scared of a bigger, more accurate, more powerful gun with more ammunition. If they truly were outgunned, then retreat was the best option (otherwise, officers would have died and that would have forced a retreat while carrying a slain officer around, a much harder task). Shit gets bad to worse in a combat situation if you don’t outgun the opponent.
Go to war? We can’t do that, the other side have guns!
Soldier/Warrior-cop mentality is fucking toxic bro. I don’t accept it from conservatives, and I certainly don’t accept it from the hypocritical liberals who talk both sides on this issue.
At least the conservatives are consistent with the warrior-cop mentality and do what they believe in.
Go to war?
Cops don’t go to war. In most cases, cops deal with rowdy teenagers or people running naked across school property or other such more typical day-to-day cases. They aren’t (and shouldn’t) be equipped to deal with armed shooters.
Cops who study warrior / soldier mentality become too mean, gain the us-vs-them mentality and fuck shit up. Its one of the biggest problems in our country, and I outright refuse anyone who makes war-analogies to cop situations.
At least the conservatives are consistent with the warrior-cop mentality and do what they believe in.
Looks like my comment flew right over your head if you went ahead and posted this unironically — unless you believe the people, and especially the police, of Uvalde, Texas are bleeding-heart liberals.
Doesn’t matter if they’re conservative or liberal. What matters is training, mindset and culture. And warrior-cop mentality goes deeper than just politics. The training, propaganda and expectations play a huge role in it. You’re participating in the warrior-cop mentality as you compare cops to a warzone. Period. And furthermore, expecting them to use lethal force with high efficacy.
Uvalde was a chance for liberals to point out that beat-cops are in fact, just underpaid, undertrained public servants who are only human. Expecting heroic super-soldier like action in the face of the most horrific violence they’ve ever seen in their life is too much. And also further leads to the degeneration of our society. Seriously, talk to most cops, the hyperviolent situations like Uvalde are exceptionally rare. Most of their day-to-day complaints are about bullshit tasks (parents calling in cops to be the “bad guy” and yell at their kids, because parents are too scared to discipline their own kids. Etc. etc).
Yes, I’m saying this unironically. If Liberals really want to push cops away from warrior-cop mentality, they can start here and now. And I really think liberals can capture a pro-Police segment in a way that conservatives cannot if they just thought about how the politics of that would go. Liberals used to have a pro-cop anti-gun argument (powerful guns are cop-killers), but today that argument has been erased by modern short-thinking liberals.
But sure, go pretend that any of these politics here are working out in the liberal’s favor. Its actually a big hypocritical move IMO to anyone following the cop-argument trends.
In any case, I’ll continue to point out the insanity, of both sides, here. Conservatives are extremely anti-union but nominally pro-cop, and thus turn a blind eye to cop-based organizations like the FOP. Its clearly just politics of us vs them being divided up into fully arbitrary delineations. Overall, I think the liberal anti-cop movement is problematic, especially to a political party operating under the theory of strong government, public service, etc. etc.
I regret to inform you that gun control is not a panacea. I live in a country with strict gun control and we still get active shooters (albeit less often than the US). Part of the job of Police is to put themselves in harm’s way to stop those people. If they don’t, who will?
It doesn’t make sense for every municipality to have a SWAT team. Uvalde has a population of 15,000 people. Do they really need a pseudo-army platoon on standby for these once-in-a-century events?
They waited for SWAT anyway before doing anything in this situation.
The main problem is that SWAT took too long after arriving before they did anything. But tiny ass underfunded minimally paid local cops did the best they could until SWAT arrived. I posit that cops are not supposed to go in vs threats that are armed to the level of assault rifles and body armor. The shooter in Uvalde qualified, its more firepower than cops are honestly equipped to deal with and that’s perfectly fine.
I mean, cops getting outgunned by “somebody”. The real issue is the proliferation of high-power AR15 rifles in our society. But I don’t want cops marching around with full sized loaded rifles on a day-to-day basis. Nor do I want to pay for (or pay the psychological costs associated with) the training to use those weapons.
No they don’t and Cops shouldn’t have those tools.
I’d be far more comfortable if in these cases of national emergency, the National Guard showed up with actual heavy weapon experience and training. SWAT is a decent compromise (a few units of specialized / highly trained cops). But we should not make the “typical” cop go down the journey towards warrior / soldier.
If the typical cop can’t be expected to uphold their duty to protect and serve then they don’t need to be a cop. I do not care if American courts have suddenly decided that the oath and slogan used my police for decades is not binding.
They don’t need bigger or better weapons, they need brains. They had access to cameras in the building. They knew and could have tracked the gunman using those. Set up around two corners near them, team 1 supresses to distract then team two takes out the gunman. Deploying the national guard would take too long, and not all cities have a swat team.
If “typical” cops aren’t expected to risk their safety, then I expect them to take a “typical” paycut. Actually maybe that’s what should happen. Separate real police and law enforcement. Real police get firearms and responsibilities, law enforcement can worry about tickets and fines.
“There has been much debate of the allegedly poor performance of the bullet on target in regard to stopping power, lethality, and range. Some of this criticism has been used to advocate an intermediate-sized cartridge between the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO sizes.”
The AR15 is typically chambered in .556, a medium sized cartridge typically pretty lacking in stopping power especially when compared to other popular firearms like the M1 Garand chambered in 30-06 much actually does penetrate much further that .556
What bothers me most about this is the huge amount of ignorance all sides have on this subject.
The issue IMO, is the fucking AR-15. Police Officers immediately went in when they knew there were problems, but when the subject had an AR-15 that could literally shoot through school walls (ie: Police Officers were outgunned and out-matched), they retreated.
Yes, there was a few hours where they were too scared to do anything, further traumatizing the children / teachers. But this is fucking it. Talk about the firepower and the tactical decision to retreat.
Handguns CANNOT compete against an AR15. The AR15 has superior power, penetration, and accuracy. The officers made the right decision to retreat, regroup, and further come up with a new plan initially. Though their cowardice in the face of the AR15 is what needs to be highlighted most of all.
There’s nothing wrong with being scared of a bigger, more accurate, more powerful gun with more ammunition. If they truly were outgunned, then retreat was the best option (otherwise, officers would have died and that would have forced a retreat while carrying a slain officer around, a much harder task). Shit gets bad to worse in a combat situation if you don’t outgun the opponent.
Dinky handguns won’t do shit against the body armor of the attacker either.
This is literally the case where liberals need to come together, understand the mechanics of the gun involved and push for better gun control laws. If officers in Texas get outgunned and are forced to retreat, then support those officers and push for gun legislation. Everyone knows these bigger guns serve as cop-killers and ultimately fuck our society over. Just quit being dumbass snowflakes about blue-lives-matter or pro-Police stances or whatever.
Being pro-Police here AND anti-gun is the right move in this case. But instead, Liberals fuck over their own politics because they’re too braindead to play their cards right.
Conservatives clearly care more about guns than Police Officers. Punish the Conservative view ya pansies.
The cops had AR15s, body armor, helmets, flash bang grenades, the works. They also outnumbered the shooter 376 to 1. The shooters vest had no armor plating.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/27/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-timeline/
Also note: I’m talking about 11:40am. These are the pre-SWAT police officers who rushed into the building almost immediately after the shooter entered the building.
SWAT doesn’t arrive until 12:10pm.
So no. For the time-period between 11:40am to 12:10pm, Police are just armed with whatever they got. Normal officers don’t go around with Flash Bangs, Body Armor, AR15s. Most officers just have a handgun until SWAT arrives.
Standard procedure literally nationwide is that normal officers are expected to go in with what they have. That’s exactly what happened in Nashville less than a year later:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting
The body cam video is public. Officers responded with what they had. Yes, there’s an officer with an AR. There are also officers clearing rooms with handguns and in plainclothes. And one of the officers that engaged the AR-wielding shooter did so with their duty handgun.
They absolutely wear the former every day and many these days have either an AR or a shotgun in the trunk of their patrol vehicle.
I agree otherwise, but the armor a cop wears on patrol is completely useless against even soft-core 5.56, you need plates
Depends on the department but police vests being carriers with ceramic plates is far from uncommon these days. I know for a fact that’s the case for my local department.
Wow, that’s something I’ve never seen before
It’s part of why you’re seeing many departments move from internal (under the uniform) vests to external vests.
It also helps get gear off their very heavy duty belts.
May want to read you own article before posting it…from the article at 11:35, a few minutes after the gunman entered the school…
" Three Uvalde police officers rush to the same door that the gunman used to enter, which was closed. Surveillance footage shows the officers all have pistols, and two of them have rifles. One officer has external armor, and two are wearing concealable armor."
They had armor, pistols and 2/3 had rifles.
This is a tragedy any way you slice it. There is so much gun reform that needs to happen, and police did not handle things well here. People with guns are hard situations to handle, but police handled a bad situation on a way that made it worse.
The officer who actually cornered the gunman, and put in the call for SWAT at 11:40 only had a pistol.
Which is commendable: to go into a situation knowing you are outgunned. The people with pistols in that first group 100% should be commended for going in with inferior weaponry.
Cool.
Now take that highly-penetrative AR15 and shoot it into a school building, knowing full well that the bullets will penetrate the walls and kill the people on the other side of the school.
Even when everyone has an AR15, the shooter still has the advantage, because he had the children hostage. There were also questions on whether the school was clear before any potential shootout (see the problem with AR15’s huge amount of penetration: shooting through the attacker and hitting children in another room is a serious concern still even as SWAT arrives).
Even when you give everyone the works, the problem at play here was the AR15 in the hands of the shooter, which required the police to take a step back and rework tactics entirely.
Thinking from the perspective of the cops side will 100% give yall a ton of evidence and logical arguments to fuck up the pro-gun AR15 lobby. Just think damn it.
.223/5.56 will not penetrate a cinder block wall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Gp3hbTmXA
Also, most cops carry AR15s or a similar rifle in their cop car.
Good job highlighting your ignorance to Uvalde. Did you read the police log yet?
Read the fucking log. Have you read the log yet? What time was this radio message sent?
Interesting, but they still stood by after SWAT arrived, so your point is moot.
The original police officers tussled with a shooter with body-armor and superior AR15 firepower until they cornered him. And that wasn’t good enough for yall dumbasses.
These original officers responding to the call were god damn heroes. And if anyone read the log they’d know.
Blame SWAT for being shitty and taking their time. But… even then… I have the AR15 penetrating walls / killing other people issue for good guy with gun vs bad guy with gun. I don’t think its very easy or clear to figure out the wall strength, which directions are “safe to shoot at”, etc. etc.
There’s a lot to think about here, and that’s not even covering the hostages. Just figuring out how to clear the other rooms and making sure enough of the area is clear enough for heavy weaponry is a big enough deal before you send in SWAT and possibly murder some children in the crossfire.
In any case: my point is clear. The AR15 is the big issue. We seriously should be pushing to ban the AR15 rifle, and any other weapons of similar penetration / muzzle velocity.
I just watched the video, there are two officers in the hallway with rifles at 11:40am.
I’m not surprised that a rag-tag team of officers without radios was unaware of the firepower on their sides.
In any case, the officers who were chasing down the shooter with only pistols are heroes. The situation would have been much worse without their action.
The radio-call I highlighted there is timestamped at 11:40am. Its a real call from the scene. And that’s only 5 minutes after the shooter entered (and was already after the firefights that happened at 11:38 IIRC). In any case, we’re well within the quick action / quick response of the first team, who were largely fighting an uphill battle with pistols, a lack of tactical radios, and other problems.
This doesn’t change the fact either, that these officers at 11:40 were not a SWAT team. They were just normal officers. Officers don’t get (and shouldn’t get) military style / warrior training.
And I refuse to give officers more military/warrior training. We already are dealing with an overly militarized police force. I am 100% against any discussion where your conclusion is “Police need bigger guns and need to be meaner”.
Don’t they though? https://www.koin.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/614684716/congressional-police-reform-must-include-ban-on-warrior-style-police-training-human-rights-group-says/
This is relatively recent in the great scheme of things.
I’d prefer it if we went back before warrior-cop mentality. Cops aren’t soldiers. In fact, any cop that tries to be a soldier becomes worse at doing cop-jobs (and vice versa. Soldiers aren’t cops, we shouldn’t be putting soldiers on the frontlines of “Win the hearts and minds” of foreigners like we did in Afghanistan).
I think most people would agree with that statement.
The inaction afterwards, when the police chief arrived, is the issue.
That is fair.
You have spoken in a clear, concise, and convincing manner. Well done! You’ve swayed this person.
And you are of course correct in your implication we need to begin design and production of the AR16 posthaste! A gun that shoot through 3 walls is the clear solution. Well done sir!
But in all seriousness you are correct. A nation littered with mentally unstable morons and high-powered rifles is a potently and predictably tragic way to be.
It is outrageous that you are getting downvoted for such a well put together set of comments. Thankyou very much for taking the time. I’m embarrassed for the people who downvote because they know you’re right and they dislike the conclusion.
If the cops can’t figure out how to suppress and flank one guy they should resign.
Cops aren’t warriors.
There’s another bullshit thing we need to get rid of. Cops are NOT swat team. And the idea of a “Warrior-cop” is one of the worst fucking things in our culture right now.
Liberals have been asking cops to stand down and be more kind for the last decade and suddenly in this case, yall are asking them to be militant warriors again.
No. Leave the “warriors” to the SWAT team at best, and I’m not even convinced that SWAT is a good idea for all cities to have. Warrior-cop mentality is one of the worst things going on in this country right now, and I want to speak against it.
Cops aren’t soldiers. They’re supposed to be community members. In other countries, cops don’t even carry guns.
Weird, I want cops to not strangle someone because they may have used a fake bill, or shoot someone because they were called there to help with a mental health crisis, or shoot someone because they busted into the wrong apartment, or to flash bang a baby.
But I suppose that means I want them to be kind to someone actively shooting kids.
Cops are NOT anacondas
I’m whooshing on this one :)
But as far as know, nothing in the cop rule book says an anaconda can’t be a cop.
“Sergeant Chokey, you can’t eat all the suspects. Even the union can’t cover for all.”
“Cops are NOT anacondas”. Ummm, source?
The training sets up the mindset of the cops.
I don’t believe any cop should get advanced weapon training unless they’re explicitly assigned to SWAT and/or Riot control. And normal beat cops honestly don’t deal with hyperviolent people often enough to deserve the mindshift or the training for violence.
K
Nice straw-man, but if they can’t take the heat they shouldn’t be in the kitchen cooking. Uvalde cops went AWOL while children died and you’re defending the AWOL cops against arguments that we’re not making while lumping us all in as flip flopping liberals. Surprised some people know how the government works? They weren’t anywhere close to war and guess what, war is worse. They wouldn’t just stand there, they would run away.
The exact reason why the police refused to engage with the uvalde shooter is precisely because they spend every waking moment fantasizing about being Rambo and then they can’t handle the adrenaline when there’s actual lead in the air. They let the kids catch it all instead. These aren’t men we’re talking about anymore.
They aren’t cops either if they dont have regular training in tactics and law and regulations.
Oh? And the typical UK Cop doesn’t even have a pistol.
Get your head out of your ass and see how stupidly overmilitarized USA’s cop culture has become. Think about how our expectations here in Uvalde are causing that, and stop pushing for militarized cops.
Tactics needn’t be militarization, there is no need for military tactics. But general training is necessary.
A chief tactic is knowing cover vs concealment, especially when you have a high powered rifle that can shoot through bodyarmor, doors, and walls.
Now if you’re saying that you support giving the Police regular access to not only higher-powered weapons, but also tactical training so that they start shooting through walls and doors to get what they want done, then… I dunno man. Its an escalation I’m uncomfortable with.
I don’t want Police to be thinking they’re some hero who can breach doors, shoot into positions or suppressive fire (etc. etc.). I’m fine with them having a pistol-level of force, but Police deciding that shooting through a wall was a good idea is exactly what killed Breonna Taylor (one of the unarmed black people that BLM went ballistic about just a few years ago).
We need to consider the tactical training and mindset of cops when we give them these weapons, mindset and training. IMO, the mistake was that military-style thinking. Cops aren’t military, but a bunch of (less-trained) dumbasses on a $50k/year salary is what killed Breonna Taylor IMO. Especially as they escalated far beyond what normal cop behavior should be.
This is what needs to change, more training, more and frequent practice. Every cop in my opinion should get 3-4 years of training. It should be like graduation. Plus they should undergo biannual (twice a year) practice and updation of that training every year.
Every trigger happy cop should get demotion till they are fired.
Tag: Uvalde Tactical Bystander Specialist
This is one of the dumbest takes i have ever read on this site and that is saying something. I really hope you can go through some introspection and have a paradigm shift. Its not easy to change but goddamn. I sincerely hope youre just an ignorant kid.
The fact that you can’t respond to OPs points speaks volumes. It is fine if you don’t like the conclusion, but you won’t convince anyone of anything if you are unable to form rebuttals to their points.
The takes are completely dumbass and abhorrent. They shouldn’t get a response.
If you were massively outgunned, would you willingly die for no benefit?
Yes, I would die trying to save children even if I wasn’t armed at all let alone it being the job I was fucking trained for. You are a disgusting coward. Fuck off with this shit.
Are you unable to comprehend that an emotional reaction like that could result in more children and yourself dying? On a strategic level, are you unable to see that as a possibility?
Maybe it would be a bit clearer if you imagine this in a different situation. Imagine your child has late stage cancer that has spread throughout their body. The doctor says it’s too late to operate, and chemo is the only chance. Do you see how it might be a dangerous idea for you to just emotionally grab a kitchen knife and start going at it yourself? Sometimes people with training actually are superior to random peoples inktial instincts in stressful situations. I generally don’t like cops, and I’m not saying this is 100% the case, but the fact that you are choosing not to acknowledge this as a possibility, and instead you resort to childish name calling tells me that you are unable to processes all the information and even attempt to make an objective decision. Your POV would be much more respectable if you at least demonstrated your ability to weigh all angles before coming to a conclusion.
The way it seems is that you came at this from the other direction. First, you decided every police officer has to be a coward. Then, you looked for evidence to support this and ignored everything else. Finally, you rejected the idea of listening to or responding to any other information and went directly to trying to shame anyone out of even considering anything else. This is exactly how religion works. They tell you start from a point of having a conclusion and then shame anyone who attempts to reason things and weigh all possibilities before making a conclusion. This is a perfect opportunity to exercise your logic and reasoning because it is such an emotionally charged situation. Always be looking for ways to improve yourself. If you see yourself ignoring specific arguments and trying to shame someone out of adebate, then you just may have found a leak in your own personal boat.
If your take away from this is call me more names and ignore what I have said, then go ahead and save yourself the time as I will only continue if you don’t demonstrate a willingness and ability to share genuine ideas. It does me nothing to hear which words you find to be the most insulting.
I understand the arguments you’re making and the logic behind them. I just completely disagree. It’s a really bad take and your anology about cancer is not even a remotely relatable situation. I’m just going to assume you’re trolling and move on.
I admit that the cancer analogy isn’t spot on exactly the same, but the similarities are the aspects that you and so many people are, for some reason unable to discuss or address. Simply saying that you understand everything doesn’t actually cause discussion to develop or ideas to be challenged. I don’t think that you are a troll, I think you are just more comfortable living in a world that you see as simple because complex situations exhaust you, but you still want to feel like you know and understand a complex situation based on your initial hunch or willingness to just go along with the crowd. That’s perfectly fine, I think society may need people who don’t think too deeply and just go along with the group. I do think that you would personally feel more fulfilled as a person if you try to push yourself and venture into a more internally honest mindset.
No you.
The gunman enters the school at 11:35am. Pre-SWAT officers charge after the gunman almost immediately afterwards. Initial skirmishes between the Police (with only handguns) immediately show that they were outgunned. Officers ask for SWAT team backup by 11:40am.
Read the fucking report.
Sadly, it’s no use. They try to figure out what your conclusion is, and then they shut down entirely and don’t consider why the facts lead to the conclusion. They can’t respond to specifics, all they can do is call names.
There is zero reason to be pro-police here.
And who gives a fuck about the weapon used. That does not excuse their lack of action.
Rightists always have such misguided takes.
The people defending the police here are literally saying that the children should fend for themselves in situations like this because it’s too dangerous for the police.
Fuck. That. Noise.
The thin yellow line, everyone. Laugh and point whenever you see the blue stripe on the American flag. It’s a joke.
Would you rush in to suicide yourself if you knew that it wouldn’t help anything?
Some of the parents whose children were being slaughtered were willing to try while police stood around scrolling Facebook on their phone, but police arrested them for it.
I don’t even understand what people think. Do you seriously think that thr cops there were in on it like a big conspiracy? Do you think the cops knew that the soccer moms could take out the mad man with armor destroying bullets, and they just wanted to save the madman from them?? Just think about it like a strategic video game, what do you genuinely think is the best way to deal with such a situation?
Look, I get it, cops generally suck. So many of them do. This isn’t about that. Think about this situation objectively as a little mental exercise. The world is not so black and white all the time.
Do you not understand that the bullets tear through walls? Running in there with no plan to piss off someone with a gun that tears through walls while there are a bunch of kids behind those walls is stupid. It puts kids in extra danger. How is this a difficult to grasp concept?
You know what else puts kids in extra danger? Standing around for hours doing nothing while the shooter continues to slaughter them. Not only that, but they went in the school and shouted for kids to call out to be rescued, except they didn’t rescue them and the kids who did call out were then shot. Your take is absolutely insane and indefensible. These people are specifically trained and paid to deal with these types of situations not stand around scrolling on their phones while children are being murdered just feet away.
Your poor reading comprehension has completely prevented you from being able to understand what I’ve said. I never said the police made the right choice. I never said cops are generally good. In fact, I’ve repeatedly explicitly said the opposite. OP brought up some interesting points about what they see as the main cause of the catastrophe, and I said they are interesting points that should be considered. As soon as you and other people who are unable to see past the emotions, ego, and the perceived hive mind saw that we were saying something other than “this was definetly 100% preventable, but all the cops in that town are cowards” you flip off your brain and go into mindless attack mode. It is OK to consider things. You don’t need to fly off the handle and instantly resort to petty name calling whenever anyone disagrees with your your initial, unthought-out hunch. The biggest takeaway from this is that, and if you can realize it, then it will absolutely help you when interacting with people in your life.
This is a giant strawman. What names have I called you? You’re the one doing mental gymnastics to defend the lack of action from these people who are paid and trained to handle situations like this.
You claim you “never said the police made the right call” yet you’re sitting here claiming every one of their actions were correct “because AR15 shoot far.” Absolutely absurd.
Go back and reread, you’ve massively misunderstood. The whole discussion is about how this could be prevented if AR15s were not so easy to get, and yet people are focused on the cops.
Specifically AR15 and how this particular gun tears through walls.
The penetrative effects of a bullet traveling at 300% the speed of regular pistol rounds is far deadlier and damaging than just a pistol. And you have all these dumbasses who are like “Yeah but pistols are still deadly”.
Remember that energy is velocity squared. We’re talking about like 900% of the energy per shot. The amount of firepower we’re just casually accepting as “normal” in the USA is ridiculous, and is the real tragedy of the Uvalde situation. And everyone who is using this moment to blame the cop when they should 100% be blaming the gun-culture of AR15 is part of the problem.
We already have examples of what happens when gunowners take matters into their own hands. And that person’s name is Kyle Rittenhouse. I have very little respect for that mindset.
You make really good points. I hadn’t thought about this situation in this light until you brought it up. It is very alarming how difficult it is for people to understand that situations can be nuanced. It’s like they just want everything to be black and white and simple, and they just want to be completely on the side of whatever they detect the majority is thinking. In this case, it really makes a difference as to what policies should be focused on.
Yes.
I would do something, not sit around worrying about my own arse while children are being killed.
And then you get shot. Worst case scenario, you don’t die, but instead scream out in agony in the crossfire, getting 3 or 4 other guys in trouble as they come in to drag your ass away from the firing zone.
Firefights suck. And shitty people thinking they’d be heroes in this situation only make it worse for everyone.
OK, so explain. What would you do? “Something” isnt a plan, talk strategy. You have a gun that can shoot 1 bullet per second, can’t go through the armor that the enemy is wearing, and you can hold about 8 bullets in your gun. The enemy has a gun that goes through your armor and the walls like they are butter, shoots 10 bullets per second, and holds 4x as many bullets as you do. There are kids all around, the walls may slow down your bullets, but not the enemies. Do you wait for bigger guns or do you go in there with terrible chances and high probability of getting even more kids killed?
I generally don’t like cops, but if they charged in there on a suicide mission and got even more kids killed, then people would just be complaining about how stupid and shortsighted they were.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns. Basic tactics.
And if everyone is using big guns during a hostage situation, the “Good Guys” have a huge disadvantage due to the penetrative effects of powerful guns. Good Guys don’t want to kill children with missed (or even hit) shots. A headshot vs the shooter would not only penetrate the shooter’s skull, but also the wall behind the shooter. A wall that you’re not sure if the children or the teachers of the school were hiding behind yet.
Why is that? Does the AR15 generate a forcefield around the person wielding it making the shooter immune to any “lesser” weapons? Catching a bullet from a pistol will kill you just the same and this shooter was severely outnumbered. What police lacked was the guts to actually put their lives on the line to protect these children, even though they love to talk about how they put their lives on the line every day as they arrest people for weed or hand out tickets for going 5MPH over the speed limit.
The police know it is a machine gun, the police know that many bullets can be fired in a very short period of time. They know the bullets kill. Ban guns. If you want to hunt, use a bow, or don’t hunt.
Yes. Its called effective firing range.
A typical pistol (ex M1911) has an effective range of 50m and only when you’ve got very good practice. A typical AR15 has an effective range of 550 meters (11x the range).
The effective range is a measurement of the accuracy of the shot. In effect, if you have an AR15 at 100 meters, you’ve got better accuracy than a cop at 10meters. (Effective firing range is mostly about accuracy and bullet placement. Rifles are much, much, much more accurate than pistols)
Learn to tactics bro. Rifle range and accuracy is a real thing. You don’t fight enemies with rifles if you only got a pistol dude. Furthermore, you don’t spray-and-pray with inaccurate pistols when there’s lol hostages in the same room as the shooter.
This isn’t a video game. This isn’t a comic book where “the main character” holding a damn pistol has more accuracy than enemy riflemen. This is real life.
You are talking about a school. Effective range doesn’t much matter past 25 meters. They are clearing rooms, not football stadiums.
And there is precedent for shorter range weapons being more optimal. Knife vs gun for instance https://youtu.be/Upxfo_jBrDE
I guarantee you that an AR15 will shoot quicker, more accurately, and with more penetration even at as short at 10 meters vs a pistol. And probably with a larger magazine to boot (fewer shots on the pistols).
The fact that you’re arguing otherwise is a misunderstanding and/or ignorance of basic gun tactics. At any range, the AR15 is a superior weapon. 500 meters, 50 meters, 10 meters, 5 meters. AR15 always is better. Especially when body-armor is in play so that penetrating effect is even a bigger deal.
Speaking as a combat marksmanship coach for the Marines. I respectfully disagree with you in this instance.
Your facts while mostly true in a void do not account for training, tactics or the situation.
If i was standing next to someone that has an ar15 i would take a pistol or a knife all day. That AR can’t do jack if i grab the barrel and point it away from me.
I appreciate you sharing your experience. And yes, I’m well aware that knives (and batons even), can beat a gun in short ranges. The famous Filipino Eskrima fighters of the early 1900s (the culture my parents came from) taught that lesson. And legend holds that pistols like the M1911 were specifically designed for those close-quarters combat situations (too many US soldiers dying to the Filipino eskrima stick fighters that US paid R&D to figure out a solution back then).
But the hallway of a school can stretch many dozens of meters, far longer than the distance you can close with a knife, and even stretching the effective firing range of a pistol and knife.
And given even the presence of a door: the knowledge that the AR15 on the other side could likely penetrate the door makes breaching operations difficult. And the presence of hostages / kids in the classroom prevents many weapons / breaching techniques from being used.
The Uvalde school shooting occurred in a school.
Not particularly long looking hallways.
Besides the department had the choice to make the situation pistol vs rifle (to use your paradigm) instead they left it unarmed vs rifle.
They cornered the shooter, and then waited for SWAT (the actual combat specialists of the police force). SWAT team took too long afterward, but the initial police response was quite heroic as far as I can see. The initial police did what they could with inferior weapons and less knowledge and less training.
This initial skirmish from 11:35am to 11:40am seemed to be fine. The long wait for SWAT after 11:40am is really where things get more ambiguous, but I will not support regular officers charging into these situations without training and armed with mostly pistols at that. If we do that, then we’re accepting a significant escalation of warrior-cop mentality and expecting cops to have far more deadly-arms training than I’m honestly comfortable with.
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This doctrine has been out of standard practice for over two decades. In response to Columbine the new mass adopted doctrine is go towards the gun fire. This is information any officer who has joined in the past ~25 years would have been taught.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-school-shooting-columbine-lessons/index.html
For all anyone cares every body of a child there should have been the body of a cop trying to rush that room.
Guns aren’t Yu-Gi-Oh where the highest attack power wins.
Go to war? We can’t do that, the other side have guns!
Soldier/Warrior-cop mentality is fucking toxic bro. I don’t accept it from conservatives, and I certainly don’t accept it from the hypocritical liberals who talk both sides on this issue.
At least the conservatives are consistent with the warrior-cop mentality and do what they believe in.
Cops don’t go to war. In most cases, cops deal with rowdy teenagers or people running naked across school property or other such more typical day-to-day cases. They aren’t (and shouldn’t) be equipped to deal with armed shooters.
Cops who study warrior / soldier mentality become too mean, gain the us-vs-them mentality and fuck shit up. Its one of the biggest problems in our country, and I outright refuse anyone who makes war-analogies to cop situations.
Looks like my comment flew right over your head if you went ahead and posted this unironically — unless you believe the people, and especially the police, of Uvalde, Texas are bleeding-heart liberals.
Doesn’t matter if they’re conservative or liberal. What matters is training, mindset and culture. And warrior-cop mentality goes deeper than just politics. The training, propaganda and expectations play a huge role in it. You’re participating in the warrior-cop mentality as you compare cops to a warzone. Period. And furthermore, expecting them to use lethal force with high efficacy.
Uvalde was a chance for liberals to point out that beat-cops are in fact, just underpaid, undertrained public servants who are only human. Expecting heroic super-soldier like action in the face of the most horrific violence they’ve ever seen in their life is too much. And also further leads to the degeneration of our society. Seriously, talk to most cops, the hyperviolent situations like Uvalde are exceptionally rare. Most of their day-to-day complaints are about bullshit tasks (parents calling in cops to be the “bad guy” and yell at their kids, because parents are too scared to discipline their own kids. Etc. etc).
Yes, I’m saying this unironically. If Liberals really want to push cops away from warrior-cop mentality, they can start here and now. And I really think liberals can capture a pro-Police segment in a way that conservatives cannot if they just thought about how the politics of that would go. Liberals used to have a pro-cop anti-gun argument (powerful guns are cop-killers), but today that argument has been erased by modern short-thinking liberals.
But sure, go pretend that any of these politics here are working out in the liberal’s favor. Its actually a big hypocritical move IMO to anyone following the cop-argument trends.
In any case, I’ll continue to point out the insanity, of both sides, here. Conservatives are extremely anti-union but nominally pro-cop, and thus turn a blind eye to cop-based organizations like the FOP. Its clearly just politics of us vs them being divided up into fully arbitrary delineations. Overall, I think the liberal anti-cop movement is problematic, especially to a political party operating under the theory of strong government, public service, etc. etc.
I regret to inform you that gun control is not a panacea. I live in a country with strict gun control and we still get active shooters (albeit less often than the US). Part of the job of Police is to put themselves in harm’s way to stop those people. If they don’t, who will?
SWAT teams. People who are actually trained and specialized in this role.
Regular cops shouldn’t be SWAT trained or that violent.
It doesn’t make sense for every municipality to have a SWAT team. Uvalde has a population of 15,000 people. Do they really need a pseudo-army platoon on standby for these once-in-a-century events?
They waited for SWAT anyway before doing anything in this situation.
The main problem is that SWAT took too long after arriving before they did anything. But tiny ass underfunded minimally paid local cops did the best they could until SWAT arrived. I posit that cops are not supposed to go in vs threats that are armed to the level of assault rifles and body armor. The shooter in Uvalde qualified, its more firepower than cops are honestly equipped to deal with and that’s perfectly fine.
I mean, cops getting outgunned by “somebody”. The real issue is the proliferation of high-power AR15 rifles in our society. But I don’t want cops marching around with full sized loaded rifles on a day-to-day basis. Nor do I want to pay for (or pay the psychological costs associated with) the training to use those weapons.
Cops have been heavily armed since the 90s when they were legitimately outgunned.
TL;DR: ACAB
STFU moron.
Police have all the tools in the world there is no excuse for their lack of action while children are being killed.
No they don’t and Cops shouldn’t have those tools.
I’d be far more comfortable if in these cases of national emergency, the National Guard showed up with actual heavy weapon experience and training. SWAT is a decent compromise (a few units of specialized / highly trained cops). But we should not make the “typical” cop go down the journey towards warrior / soldier.
If the typical cop can’t be expected to uphold their duty to protect and serve then they don’t need to be a cop. I do not care if American courts have suddenly decided that the oath and slogan used my police for decades is not binding.
They don’t need bigger or better weapons, they need brains. They had access to cameras in the building. They knew and could have tracked the gunman using those. Set up around two corners near them, team 1 supresses to distract then team two takes out the gunman. Deploying the national guard would take too long, and not all cities have a swat team.
If “typical” cops aren’t expected to risk their safety, then I expect them to take a “typical” paycut. Actually maybe that’s what should happen. Separate real police and law enforcement. Real police get firearms and responsibilities, law enforcement can worry about tickets and fines.
The police already cornered the guy by 11:40am. The question was the final breaching operation, which was left to the SWAT team.
Uvalde brought in the SWAT team in this instance. The end. They had access to SWAT.
These Uvalde dudes are being paid like $50k/year or some shit. They’d make more as truck drivers than as Police Officers.
You’re not getting brains with these wages. Anyone smarter would have left for far better jobs with far lower stress.
iT wAs JuSt A fEw HoUrS!!!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56×45mm_NATO#
“There has been much debate of the allegedly poor performance of the bullet on target in regard to stopping power, lethality, and range. Some of this criticism has been used to advocate an intermediate-sized cartridge between the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO sizes.”
The AR15 is typically chambered in .556, a medium sized cartridge typically pretty lacking in stopping power especially when compared to other popular firearms like the M1 Garand chambered in 30-06 much actually does penetrate much further that .556