Police Inaction In Texas?

This is the crap popping up in this morning’s news, in regards to the Uvalde school shooting.

Report: Texas Shooter Barricaded Himself for 40 Minutes as Police Waited
The shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday reportedly barricaded himself inside as police waited outside for 40 minutes.

According to people who were present at the scene, terrified parents were yelling at police officers to charge the school for 40 minutes until a Border Patrol team finally took him down.

Should they have gone in sooner? Based on currently available information, I Don’t Know. And neither does almost anyone else. Responders on-scene? Maybe they know.

So far, this doesn’t look like a Parkland “Coward Of Broward” scenario, where the onsite resource officer hid outside without engaging at all. And when other officers from his department showed up, they also failed to do an effing thing. Only when another town’s officers responded and asked, WTF are you doing out here? was action finally taken.

That doesn’t seem to be what happened in Uvalde. Police had engaged. Then there seems to have been a lull while everyone tried to figure details, and plan a further response.

But from past experience with Monday morning second-guessers criticizing cops because they’re cops…

If the police had rushed in instantly, and even a single child was killed by a police bullet in the chaos, the same MFers blaming cops now would be blaming them for not waiting and trying to talk down the poor, confused, it’s-society’s-fault child killer.

Unless/until information comes out that shows the guys on-scene had enough intel to know tey should have gone in sooner, I’m going to trust that the guys did the best they could with what was known at the time.

Show me that they pulled a Peterson, and I’ll revise my thinking.

 

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“Comparable”

Broward County Sheriff’s Office is back in the news.

Texas school shooting once again raising safety concerns across South Florida
“Every single one of our officers now has an M4 platform system which is comparable to the AR 15 and the necessary rounds to make sure that we’re going to be successful eliminating this threat,” said [Broward Sheriff Gregory] Tony.

If the functionality of an AR-15 is what you were looking for, why spring for the additional expense of full-auto M4s? The AR-pattern market is extremely competitive; you could have equipped your officers with those a lot cheaper.

“I’ve heard this narrative for years now that, well, the AR 15 is a sport weapon, it’s a match weapon, you can use it for all of these things. No, it’s a combat ready weapon designed to destroy,” he said.

Name the country that generally issues semi-automatic only AR-pattern rifles to it regular troops.

Heck, name the country that generally equips its regular troops with any semi-automatic only rifle.

Tony pointed out that the sheriff’s office has a full time SWAT team that can respond quickly.

So you’ve got a team that can go in. Now all you need is officers who will go…

…instead of hiding and waiting for some other town’s officers to do the job for them.

 

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Oh, For The Love O’ G…

Even for a Dim, this is stupid.

Dem Rep. Escobar: We Regulate Tobacco, Alcohol, Roadways — ‘Guns Should Be No Different’
Wednesday on MSNBC’s “José Díaz-Balart Reports,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) doubled down on her call for guns to be regulated much like tobacco, alcohol, and roadways in the wake of the shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children dead.

There’s this little known agency called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that regulates alcohol, tobacco, FIREARMS, and explosives, you effin’ ditz.

 

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Get Your Own Damned Press Conference, Punk

Bobby Francis “Beta” O’Rourke crashed Texas Gov. Abbott’s press conference.

Typical report.

BREAKING: Beto O’Rourke disrupts Governor Abbott’s press conference on school shooting, escorted out by police
In the pause, O’Rourke approached the table, and began shouting.

Those on the stage began shouting, “Sir, you are out of line.”

Cops dragged his ass out.

Look, Beta. I know that even as a gubernatorial candidate you can’t draw much of an audience. You figure that, rather than paying a room full of actors to pretend to be Beta supporters, you can save a little money by crashing someone else’s event. Oooh, free attention!

Fuck you, O’Rourke.

 

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Another Mass Shooting, Another Collection Of Oddities

The Uvalde, Texas school shooting is all over the news this morning, as expected. The latest numbers say:

Kids: 19 dead
Adult VICTIMS: 2
Perp: 1

Another victim seems to be the perp’s Schrodinger’s Grandmother, both wounded but alive and dead, depending on what story you read. I’m failry sure I saw one “news” report that managed to claim both states. (Open the damn box and look.)

I’ve seen reports that a couple of families say their two daughters are still missing and unaccounted for, so the numbers my go up. Damn it.

I saw a photo of a couple of AR-pattern rifle allegedly possessed by the shooter. One is a Daniel Defense (the one scumbag reportedly had at the school); not exactly cheap. I can’t afford one. BigCountryExpat went into that point.

Perp appears to have invested better than $2600 in the DD rifle/sight alone. That’s more than I have in all my firearms, combined. It isn’t as if I was ever made of money, but it does make me wonder where an 18yo (birthdate May 16, 2004) got that money. But it occurred to me that he could have put it on a credit card knowing he’d be gone before the bill showed up in the mail.

According the the ATF, the chumbucket bought the rifles lawfully from a gun store. 4473s are specifically mentioned. For now, I’ll go with that instead of the less credible reports that he amazing bought the two AR-pattern rifles online from Daniel Defense. That scenario seems next to impossible, since one of the rifles doesn’t appear to be a DD model, the rifles were bought no later than May 20 (he would have had to order them online when only 17yo), and he had them in hand by May 24.

Interesting, while brilliant reporters are making unsourced claims that the shooter used both rifles in the attack, Gov Abbott and any official willing to be quoted by name say he had the DD rifle and a handgun, while he had left the other AR- in his wrecked truck. I’ve seen nothing about how the handgun was obtained, nor even which weapon(s) were used.

Sometimes I wish they could take these shooters alive, so we could wring some answers out them (but I’m not about to fault the reported BORTAC agent who took down a killer in action). Then the perp could turned over to victims’ families to let them deal with him as they see fit.

Various reports say the cops were already pursuing this guy after he shot his grandmother. He then wrecked his truck in a drainage ditch near the school, left one rifle behind and headed to the school. I’m inclined to think he planned something, but the school was not a pre-planned target.

At least one report says the cops found the shooter’s pack with his AR- magazines dumped at the school doorway. Again, that doesn’t sound like planning.

 

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IQ By Profession

I deal with reporters on occasion. They rarely strike me as being very bright. So, just for the heck of it, a bit ago I decided to do a web search on “average IQ by profession.”

It took a while to find any list that even included reporters, but eventually I found this one. It doesn’t cite any sources, so take it with a grain of salt.*

Bearing in mind that 100 is the average…

Newspaper Reporter: 94.6

On the one hand “below average” is very credible. On the other hand, 94.6 seems a bit high.

“Publication editor” does slightly better at 101.7. That definitely strikes me as too high. Especially for those billing themselves as “web” or “digital” editors.

Personally, I generally test at 135 or above. You can understand why I get a little impatient with reporters who have trouble grasping that AR-pattern rifles are not “automatic weapons,” that “Stand Your Ground” doesn’t apply when you’re trapped on the ground, or ballistic vests don’t generally weigh 150 pounds. That 40 point communication gap is such fun to bridge.

Semi-Related: 100 is average. By definition, half the population is below average in intelligence. That does much to explain election results even without cheating, and certainly explains the Democrat party.


* Particularly when you see that “234.1” IQ for surgeons.

 

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Cattle Rustlin’?

That’s interesting… Wait.

The top elected official in Texas’ smallest county is charged with cattle theft
Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.

OK, but…

“the judge — who is paid $133,294 annually

Not bad.

“this West Texas county, population 57 as of the last U.S. Census Bureau estimate.”

What? A hundred-thirty-three K with a population — men, women, and children — of 57?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the cattle theft charges are the tip of the iceberg, and largely a foot in the door for a wider investigation.

But he presided over a period of unprecedented growth, as fracking boomed in the Permian Basin, feeding money into the county’s coffers. The parched landscape is dotted with massive gas plants, water plants and salt water disposal systems. Many of the surviving working ranches have “frac pads” for horizontally drilled wells that cut through the caliche and bedrock to free up the lifeblood for Loving County’s economy: oil and gas.

Sounds like plenty of opportunity for graft and bribes. We’ll see.

 

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No, Not “Stand Your Ground”

Idiot reporters. If it’s Florida, and it was a defensive shooting, it must be “Stand Your Ground,” right?

No.

Orlando woman shoots stranger who entered her home; experts say incident may be justified under Stand Your Ground law
Morrison told Torres to get out of her house before hitting him with a broom. When he refused to leave, that was when she grabbed her gun.

Experts said this shooting may be justified under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

7 NEWS WSVN needs better “experts.”

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law is 776.012. That’s all well and good, but this wasn’t out in public. This was in the woman’s home; “Castle Doctrine” applies.

776.013 Home protection; use or threatened use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm.

Legal citations matter.

 

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Anniversaries

I’ve been seeing various acknowledgements of anniversaries for blogs. I wish I could do that for myself, but it’s a bit tough.

I was “blogging” before “blog” was even a word. And naturally there was no such thing as a blog content management system in those days.

Back then, what would become known as a blog, I manually drafted in HTML, and posted on my site(s) via FTP. Even now, with the WordPress CMS, I still manually HTML code my posts (which is why I hated WP’s new “block editor”).

And sites… there’s the real rub with picking an anniversary. I’ve migrated from one site host to another to another to Blogger, to WordPress to a WP installation on my own site…

Pick a date, any date.

I originally published a Compuserve (remember that?) web host site back in 1996. I think. It might’ve been ’95 (I was on CS in ’95, but the web site came a bit later). I’ve tried looking through archives for my oldest post, but stuff I know I wrote can’t be found in my files (and they were early enough that archive.org wasn’t going to scrape ’em). I suspect I lost that back in the ’00s when a hard drive started crapping out; I never did recover all the files.

The earliest post I can still find was from March 1997. I wrote about a very strange encounter with the St. Louis PD and the FBI (to this day, I do not know WTF that was all about). I republished it a few years ago

…on an old iteration of my blog naturally. See Para. 4.

So I’ve been at this for at least 25 years. Happy belated, sorta anniversary, me. By now, my blog count must be well into the millions of words.

 

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[Update]A Tenth Amendment Issue?

Midwest Chick has a post regarding abortion as a Tenth Amendment (states’ rights) issue. I left a comment there that I think I’ll share a bit more widely.


While I have a preliminary opinion on abortion itself, I’ve tried to keep that to myself for my adult life.

But I do discuss legal aspects. The Roe v. Wade Court made it a federal issue by invoking the 14th amendment. 10th amendment advocates are simply arguing that the decision should be up to a little state instead of the big state.

I think it should be handled as a NINTH Amendment issue; an individual right to an individual decision about their individual body.

[Aside; And since it would be individual decision, paying for it would be up to the individual.]

And there it should stay unless and until there is an objective (preferably scientific) test of when, from fertilized ovum to fetus to birth, the line is drawn to definitively say, “This is a person.” At that line, homicide/manslaughter statutes would apply.

No; I don’t know where that line is. Am I a person? I think so. But is a live tissue sample from me, living and cultureable, a person (hey, for the pro-life folks, that sample has human DNA; and it theoretically can be cloned into a complete person)? Pending a major scientific breakthrough, I have to say it isn’t.

Unless someone comes up with instrumental detection of “soul” (as opposed to whatever animals use for a “life force”), we may have to settle for something else. Some would use “it can feel pain.”

That’s reaction to external stimuli. Plenty of things most sane people would consider non-living react to external stimuli, including bimetallic strip thermostats.

Heartbeat? Better maybe, but I’m unsure that’s sufficient.

Closer: Dreaming. Is the tissue culture/fetus/baby’s nervous system developed enough for EEG detection of a dream state? But dogs and cats obviously dream, too.

Until we can define and detect “person,” I keep my moral opinions on the subject private.

Added:

Non-Original Rants commenter Matthew W has an issue with my comment.

Your argument fails immediately because you can’t define the terms of abortion without determining what “life” is. Under your idea, a baby can be aborted from day one up until it’s 3 inches away from being out of the birth canal.
All life starts with conception.
Not all conceptions lead to life, but all life starts with conception.

Matthew W, I don’t know what you read, but it clearly wasn’t anything I wrote. My only “argument” was that the subject should be addressed under the 9th amendment rather than the 10th. The remainder was a description of the problem of defining “person,” not an argument, pro or con, for terminating pregnancy.

(Just for fun: You criticize me for failing to define “life,” while the crux of my description of the issue (not an argument) is “person.” That’s what sane people in this reality call a strawman argument. Even better you go on to claim “life” begins at conception, without… defining “life.” You might want to consider live tissue samples like unfertilized ova and sperm; then, with just a little mental effort, you might figure out why I specify “person,” not “life.”)

As for “define the terms of abortion”… Defining “abortion,” or what?

Abortion: deliberate termination of a pregnancy

See? Nothing about life mentioned. But terms of abortion? Which ones? I’ve already addressed “person.”

I think what Matthew really wants is to argument the morality of abortion. He missed the very first line of my comment/post.


 

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