By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Buried better than halfway through a Sky News story about the Justice Department’s long-awaited report on the May 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooting is a not-so-subtle effort to shift focus from the failed police response to gun control.
The story notes the Uvalde County district attorney is conducting a criminal investigation to determine if any charges should be brought against the officers involved. This “remains an open question,” the report states.
“What isn’t in question is what is the question,” writes Sky News’ James Matthews, “what to do about guns, and access to guns in America.”
The story notes how “laws in the US were tightened in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.” Congress “passed legislation to enhance background checks on people under 21 wanting to buy a gun.” The Robb Elementary killer was 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who murdered 19 students and two teachers before he was shot dead by Border Patrol officers more than an hour after starting the rampage.
Sky News said the Department of Justice (DoJ) report “lays bare the depravity of the perpetrator and dysfunction of his pursuers.”
Yet, gun control is brought into the coverage of the Justice Department’s report.
KENS News is reporting how Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents the local legislative district, is pushing for gun control. He reportedly has introduced 21 gun control bills, none of which were passed during the 2023 legislative session.
The report also notes Gutierrez is “currently running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to face U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in November.” Cruz is a leading Republican in the U.S. Senate with a pro-Second Amendment track record.
“Support for gun control remains at the top of his campaign platform,” the story says about Gutierrez.
Compare Uvalde with last year’s shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville. The timeline on that incident spans 14 minutes, from the time killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale (who was going by the name Aiden Hale and is identified as a trans male) shot her way into the building to the time responding Nashville officers killed her. It took only four minutes from the time police entered the building to the time they confronted Hale and fired the fatal shots, ending the rampage.
According to the Texas Tribune, what happened in Uvalde was the result of “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training,” as explained in the report. Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters, “Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived.”
According to CNN, there are five takeaways in the 575-page report:
- Failure to recognize active shooter situation
- Failure to take ‘courageous action’
- Failure to secure the crime scene
- Failure to establish standard operating procedures
- Failure to communicate with families
CNN quoted a statement issued by Garland Thursday: “The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better. The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24th, 2022 — and the response by officials in the hours and days after — was a failure.”
But Garland, according to an Opinion column in the Los Angeles Times, also stated, “Our children deserve better than to grow up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a weapon that belongs on a battlefield, not in a classroom. We hope to honor the victims and the survivors by working together to try to prevent anything like it from happening again, here or anywhere.”
