May 28, 2022

Vol. 11, No. 121

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The Shooting Gallery: For an hour while the gunman controlled two classrooms and entrapped children used cellphones calling 911, nineteen police officers stood in hallway of the Uvalde, Texas elementary school waiting for room keys and tactical gear. 

  “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters. “It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that.”

  The universal training for police departments in such situations is to get in there and stop the killing at all risk. But the school police in charge even stopped Border patrol officers from going in after the shooter. The chief of the local school police who made the decision did not appear yesterday at the press conference at which McCraw spoke.

  Eighty minutes passed between the first emergency call and the moment a tactical team entered locked classrooms and killed the gunman. They used keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

  The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, killed 19 children and two teachers, firing as many as 100 rounds. 

  Horrific stories are coming from the survivors. One girl told of smearing herself with another child’s blood and playing dead.

  CNN Producer Norah Neus related what one girl told her. “Miah says it just happened all so fast, he backed the teacher into the classroom and he made eye contact with the teacher again, looked her right in the eye and said, ‘Goodnight,’ and then shot her and killed her,” Neus said. “He said, ‘Goodnight,’ then it happened pretty fast after that, as well. He started open firing in the classroom. He hit the other teacher, a lot of Miah’s friends. At that point Miah was hit by fragments of the bullets.” 

Dodging Bullets: The inevitable political arguments about assault weapons and gun control have followed the school massacre and the market killings in Buffalo. Here are some of the solutions proposed by Republican politicians and publications that refuse to accept any form of gun control.

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: “I’d much rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they can respond when something like this happens because it’s not going to be the last time.”
•  Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: “We have to harden these targets so that no one can get in ever except through one entrance.”
• Sen: Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee: “School officials with prior military of law enforcement experience should be allowed to carry firearms.”
• The Federalist, a right-wing publication: “Tragedies Like The Texas Shooting Make A Somber Case For Homeschooling.” 
• Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “We need to return to God.”

Small Packages: The nation’s only maker of children’s coffins is working overtime to fill an urgent order for 19 boxes.

  “When we had Sandy Hook, that was another crazy day,” Mike Mims, CEO of Cherokee Caskets of Georgia, told The Daily Beast. “So we’re tired. We’re tired of doing these things.”

Gun Culture: Lee Greenwood, singer of the uber-patriot song “God Bless the USA,” pulled out of his appearance at the annual National Rifle Association convention. So did Daniel Defense, the company that made the assault rifle used in the Uvalde massacre.

  The convention in Houston, which is a celebration of guns and gun rights, opened as protesters across the street chanted “N-R-A go a-way.”

  Former president Donald Trump spoke to the gathering saying, “The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”

The War Zone: Russian forces have seized Lyman, the second small city they’ve taken this week and they are moving in on a third, Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city still under Ukrainian control.

  Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russian killing of civilians and reduction of cities “to ashes” amounts to “an obvious policy of genocide pursued by Russia.”

  Russia is now reported to be depopulating occupied territory, processing people through a series of Russian “filtration camps” and sending them into Russia. 

  The war in eastern Ukraine is settling down to a grinding artillery battle and the defenders are now arming up with the latest in American guns. 

  The US is delivering its new M777s, which fire faster and farther while hiding better than conventional artillery. The new guns fire a conventional shell three miles farther than the artillery commonly used by the Russian army, and 10 miles farther when shooting a GPS-guided projectile.

Trump and the Law: As many as 50 witnesses are expected to be called by a special grand jury that will investigate whether former President Donald Trump and his cronies violated Georgia laws while attempting to overturn his loss of that state in the 2020 election. 

  Trump has called the investigation “prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level.” Evidently there’s been some kind of misconduct at the highest level.

  In an earlier defeat in New York this past week, Trump’s federal lawsuit against the New York attorney general claiming violation of his Constitutional rights has been dismissed. The AG is investigating his business practices.

  Earlier in the week Trump’s two adult sons were ordered to testify in the case. 

The Spin Rack: A California parole board has recommended the release of Patricia Krenwinkel, a former member of the Charles Manson “family” that carried out the notorious psychedelic 1969 killing spree, including carving up actress Sharon Tate. Krenwinkel is 74. — Toronto police on Thursday shot and killed a man seen carrying a firearm near three schools. 

New Jersey Man: January 6^th rioter Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Arm reservist  and Nazi sympathizer, was convicted yesterday of all five charges for assaulting the Capitol after his line of  defense completely failed. Hale-Cusanelli had argued that he could not have been guilty of attempting to obstruct Congress because, “I did not realize that Congress met in the Capitol.”

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