Robb Elementary School shooting

 Robb Elementary School shooting (School shooting,  mass shooting,  mass murder,  cover-up)

Date	24 May 2022
Type	• School shooting • mass shooting
Weapon	Daniel Defense AR-15 style rifle-DDM4 V7 handgun
Deaths	22
Injured (non-fatal)	18
Motive	Unknown
Description	First post-Covid-19 US mass school shooting, in 2022.

The Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, United States, was a school shooting by Salavador Ramos, where he killed at least 19 children and two teachers, and wounding 17 others. Earlier that day, he shot and wounded his 66-year-old grandmother. Ramos was eventually shot and killed on school premises by responding law enforcement officers.

The shooting was the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, and the deadliest school shooting in the history of Texas. The shooting was widely condemned nationally, including by President Joe Biden and by gun control advocates, as well as internationally. Interestingly, the failure of the police in these kind of cases and their lack - despite their militarization - and tighter gun control laws, was not discussed widely, both "sides" of the political spectrum called for more dystopian gun laws, that would increase the militarization of society. The response of US Congress was more gun-control.

Drill

CNN discussing the police actively trying to not enter the building and question any parent who tries it instead, up the point of threatening to taser the parents instead.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department hosted an active shooter course at Uvalde High School on March 21, as in other school shooting. It didn't prevent the escape of at least one whole class of students. The Police academy uploaded the drill on its Facebook page on March 1 and encouraged online registrations, the event was said to be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Like with terror attacks, this active shooter "domestic" type of terror drill did not seem to reduce casualties.

"Militarization"

Police in Uvalde have been heavily criticized for their response to the shooting, facing an investigation by the United States Department of Justice. Police officers waited 78 minutes on-site before breaching the classroom to engage Ramos.

FOX News on the other side of the spectrum fuels the stake of the gun enthusiasts, who didn't began to wonder why a corporate entity is backing ideas that increase a future for their children, where they need to be protected by or from a gun 24/7. FOX News pundits came up with 50 ideas from "put your phone down" to introducing the capital punishment, as if a disturbed kid with an assault rifle really is planning to go to Bermuda after killing 20 children cold blooded. After all, the US is not Vietnam.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for an investigation into the lack of action by incident commanders. Police also cordoned off the school grounds, resulting in violent conflicts between police and civilians who were attempting to enter the school to rescue children; after one of the parents gave an interview to CBS who entered the school and saved multiple children, the police contacted her and stated her public criticism could lead to obstruction of justice charges.

Cover up

Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials gave inaccurate reports and engaged in plausible deniability regarding the timeline of police actions, and overstated police actions. Lying about when the shooter was engaged was a key lie. The Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged that it was an error for law enforcement to delay an assault on Ramos's position in the student-filled school, but didn't want to answer why they didn't reassess the situation to "active shooter"-policy, which would've have been possible and enabled them to enter the building, especially after being able to asses the danger after discovering Ramos left 31 magazines in a backpack on the school lot.

The leading police chief Pete Arredondo didn't believe "he was in command at that time", which in the weeks after turned out to be because he chose on site to not take command at all, switching to first line responder, leaving the officers to wait outside the classrooms in the hallway, improvizing what to do for over a hour, 50 minutes after students called the police. Many times the lower ranking officers defended their decisions to wait on janitor keys and ignore calls from teachers and students to enter locked doors on the base that "the ranking officers will be left to determine if we waited too long".

The shooting became a gun control shooting with US Congress trying to curb selling guns to younger buyers.

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