A new narrative about the Uvalde school shooting is emerging: the police were scared of the AR-15.

What a bunch of cowards.

The first responding officers told investigators that entering the classroom would get them killed, repeatedly referencing the fact that the rifle's bullets could penetrate their body armor, our investigation found. pic.twitter.com/YdfiGkyrOT

— Zach Despart (@zachdespart) March 20, 2023

There were 400 officers facing a lone gunman. They left him alone with the children for 75 minutes. And their excuse?

“I was scared. He had a big gun.”

No sh!t, Sherlock. I would be scared too. Any sane person would be. Who wants to be shot? Precisely nobody.

Now go do your job. Protect and serve. There were children in the room and you let them bleed out. You prevented parents from going in, and you let everybody down.

What a bunch of cowards.

Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.

But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.

Cowards. It was a big scary gun.

All guns are scary when they are pointed at you. There is no magic to this particular gun.

Children were killed. In what society would we not condemn hundreds of armed law enforcement officers who are unwilling to risk their own lives to save children?

Of course it was dangerous. Nobody disputes that. But amongst those hundreds of men, you couldn’t find 5 willing to risk their lives to save schoolchildren? If not, why not? Don’t tell me it was an AR-15 that made them hold back. It wasn’t a grenade launcher.

We are taught to respect law enforcement officers because they do a dangerous job, and we should. But you can’t have it both ways: I deserve respect because I risk my life every day for you, but…not if it is scary. We don’t give cops guns to shoot unarmed people, you know. It is for those scary situations when lives are in danger.

This is a story about a gun.
How it was made for military use & later surged in popularity among civilians & mass shooters.
How it stopped Uvalde police in their tracks.
And how its lethality meant even a flawless response would've made little difference.https://t.co/XfUd7SSj0z

— Zach Despart (@zachdespart) March 20, 2023

It’s not to make you a bully, but a protector.

The cops weren’t facing a suicide bomber. They were facing a young boy with a gun who turned it on children. It wasn’t a hostage situation; it was an active shooting scene, where officers are taught to intervene–to save lives. That is the standard procedure. They are trained to know that and act upon that training.

You wait if you can save lives by waiting, and go in if by going in you save lives. There was no talking this kid down. He was a killer. He needed to be killed, immediately.

They chose the coward’s way out, and now the media wants to excuse it by claiming that AR-15s are somehow magical. They aren’t, you know. They are powerful rifles, but so are other hunting guns. Bulletproof vests aren’t magic, either. Two officers got grazed on the head before they turned back. No vest would protect you from a head shot.

The cops had the same rifle. Hundreds of them. They chose not to use them.

Pathetic. And now they blame the gun. It was big and scary.

“You knew that it was definitely an AR,” Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page said in an interview with investigators after the school shooting. “There was no way of going in. … We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”

What did they shoot him with? Probably an AR-15. Certainly, they could have. They had plenty of them right there.

See those guns? See that SWAT team? Nine officers. They refused to fight a teenager in order to save kids’ lives. The Uvalde SWAT team.

Shame.

That hesitation to confront the gun allowed the gunman to terrorize students and teachers in two classrooms for more than an hour without interference from police. It delayed medical care for more than two dozen gunshot victims, including three who were still alive when the Border Patrol team finally ended the shooting but who later died.

Mass shooting protocols adopted by law enforcement nationwide call on officers to stop the attacker as soon as possible. But police in other mass shootings — including at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida — also hesitated to confront gunmen armed with AR-15-style rifles.

Cowards. It wasn’t the gun that stopped them. It was fear.

I don’t say that in the firm knowledge that I would have done better, because who could possibly know until confronted with the situation? Perhaps I, too, would be a coward. I certainly am not trained for the situation. If I failed in their spot, though, I would at least be honest enough to blame myself. Not a gun.

Those SWAT officers were blameworthy. That is their job. They have been trained to do it, in the full knowledge of what that means. They refused to protect the children.

Now the officers are hiding behind the media, who are willing to claim that it wasn’t cowardice, but a gun that prevented them from saving lives.

That’s absurd. Absurd on its face. Any number of the citizens on the scene would happily have taken a vest and a gun and taken on the shooter, but the police insisted they were the professionals. It was their job.

Then they should have done it.

How many times have you heard that citizens should be disarmed and that the police should be the only ones armed?

Well, these are the police in Uvalde. Would you put your child’s life in their hands?

Hiding behind the skirts of the MSM. For shame.