Others have commented on the police response in Uvalde, but I have not. I have been waiting for facts, but there have been so few up to this point. We know a few things. First, we know that the shooter went in through a back door, we know parents begged officers to go in, and we know they did not go in for over an hour. We should probably take each of those points one at a time because each has been a huge part of this story. It was initially reported that the shooter went through a door that had been propped open by a rock. As it turned out, she closed the door and naturally assumed it was locked to those outside. Apparently, it wasn’t.

As an aside, I went through this exercise with our daughter. We had her mentally track how many doors students could legally enter at her school and settled on four. We then asked her how many total points of entry there were and settled on fourteen. Keep in mind that there are around 130,000 documented schools in the United States. That’s not counting universities and community colleges. Could you imagine the expense and manpower it would take to guard each of those doors (even just the legal ones) and to secure the rest?

Let’s pretend that your junior highs and high schools have two points of entry and exit and all the rest are successfully locked down. Let’s go with what Ted Cruz suggested and have one point of entry at the elementary schools. Mind you, this would violate fire code and present other possible dangers, but can you imagine the manpower we are talking to have an armed guard at each of those doors? We are talking about over 200,000 people.

The second fact we know is that parents begged to save their children and cops refused. Did they do the right thing? I obviously wasn’t there, haven’t had any combat training, and certainly haven’t game played through any hostage negotiations. Would there have been more dead had the police breached the school and engaged the shooter sooner? Would they have saved more lives doing that? We will never know on both counts.

What is true in this light is how absurd an idea it is to arm teachers. I can count far too many reasons why this is an absolutely horrible idea. Let’s assume that the teacher is trained to fire their weapon as those on the right have suggested. That alleviates only one concern. The second concern would be storage of the weapon. Do you want them to store it on their person or keep it secured somewhere in their classroom? What happens if they or that location is compromised?

Then we move onto the actual gaming of the mass shooter scenario. They may be trained to shoot, but are they trained in that specific scenario? What does SWAT do when they see an armed intruder AND armed teachers? What happens if a teacher has a mental breakdown and become the shooter themselves? Even in the best of cases we encountered a situation where trained police felt powerless to do anything. Whether they were negligent or justified is important but also very telling when you consider what you are asking untrained teachers to do.

There is always a non-zero chance the worst will occur and there always will be a non-zero chance no matter what we do. We start with the most obvious thing and move are way down from there. Restricting the gun is the most obvious thing. Door control, armed teachers, and armed soldiers sounds lovely but ultimately ineffective without doing the obvious thing.

In true form in a world where rules and laws don’t apply to him, Cheeto Jesus has decided to keep his private security detail in addition to the Secret Service.  It’s pretty much consensus that having divided security is stupid, and only increases the risks for him and his family.  However, since the laws of physics and common sense don’t apply to CJ, he’ll go his own way.

Maybe the MSM will begin reporting on all these abnormalities, when he closes the White House briefing room and turns it back into a swimming pool for his Miss Teen USA parties.

The NYT has a good opinion piece today about how we are entering uncharted waters with the ascendency of Cheeto Jesus to the (….urp) Presidency.  His conflicts are so extensive that the security and the US will be constantly and deeply threatened every minute of every day of every month of every year this dangerous demagogue infests the WH.

One of the most infuriating features of Cheeto Jesus’ shameful campaign was the “Make America Great Again” motto that he coined that was actually code for “Make America White Again”.  He shouted it from every podium and plastered it across the front of those weird made-in-china trucker caps that he wore on the days his combover just wasn’t working. His top two goals if he won (sigh; I can’t believe I just said that) was to destroy our healthcare system and somehow bring “jobs, jobs, jobs”.

Since the election, with few exceptions, Cheeto Jesus and his merry band of bigots have been holed up in his gold plated headquarters in New York City plotting to destroy not only our healthcare system, but also medicare, social security, aid to the poor, the environment, and, oh, yeah, peace.  His presence in the heart of New York City, though, has had an immediate effect – it has choked traffic to a standstill due to security and the large anti-Cheeto demonstrations.  Up until yesterday, the City of New York had parked sand-filled snow plow trucks nose to tail around the block to keep people away.  At one point this last weekend, traffic was backed up beyond 112th St. on Fifth Avenue, which is at the top of Central Park, over 50 blocks away.

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