So, what does the general public expect?
Police jumping on grenades, storming buildings filled with unknown variables, ending up with a larger death toll including police officers dying from friendly fire?
Life doesn't play out like a choreographed Die Hard or Rambo movie where only the bad guys die.
Cops are not cannon fodder to be expected to charge down the guns with no coordinated effort.
Police jumping on grenades, storming buildings filled with unknown variables, ending up with a larger death toll including police officers dying from friendly fire?
Life doesn't play out like a choreographed Die Hard or Rambo movie where only the bad guys die.
Cops are not cannon fodder to be expected to charge down the guns with no coordinated effort.
Within hours of the school shooting in Uvalde that left 19 students and two teachers dead, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said armed police need to be stationed in elementary schools. Former President Donald Trump advocated for armed teachers and metal detectors days later in a speech at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dismissed the idea of stronger gun laws in lieu of arming and training citizens.
The political talking point of increasing the presence of police and armed teachers to deter mass shootings traces its origins to 2012—having been famously proposed by NRA head Wayne LaPierre following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six staff members were killed. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said, as the nation debated tougher gun control measures.
But in the 10 years since, “good guys with guns” have been present or quickly arrived at the scene of nearly every major mass shooting and failed to stop the gunman before he was able to take multiple lives. “Good guys with guns don’t always win gunfights,” says David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center.
In the May 14 mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York supermarket, Aaron Salter—an armed security guard and former police officer—was hailed for his efforts at trying to protect others. At least one of his bullets hit the shooter, but the gunman was protected by an armor-plated vest and he fatally shot Salter—one of 10 victims.
Armed individuals have also been present at the site of major several mass shootings since Sandy Hook. Police and security guards were present at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in 2017, and in the Mandalay Bay Hotel where the gunman was located. Sixty people were killed, and more than 400 wounded. At the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016, an armed security guard shot at the gunman, who killed 49 people. (Although initially lauded as a hero, some victims’ family members sued the off-duty officer, alleging he remained outside of the establishment to protect himself.)
Armed guards have also failed to stop shooters in schools. In 2018, a shooter killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Texas even though two officers were on site and one was wounded trying to stop the gunman. Earlier that year, a school resource officer was on campus at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.—although he was accused of hiding during the mass shooting, rather than rushing in.
The situation is even more complicated in Uvalde, where conflicting accounts of events have emerged and the police response is being widely criticized. Local police waited for more than an hour before a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team arrived and stormed the classrooms where the gunman barricaded himself—killing him. Texas Department of Public Safety head Steven McCraw said waiting was “the wrong decision, period,” and police conduct is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department.
However, the first police officer responded to Robb Elementary School within one minute of the initial reports of a gunman with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle—before the shooter had even entered the school.
“Sometimes having a gun is useful but a lot of times it makes things worse, even when there’s a clear bad guy,” says Hemenway. Perpetrators of mass shootings are more likely to be armed with semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, which make them capable of firing dozens of rounds. Some—like the gunman in Buffalo—also wear body armor. “Bad guys get such military-style weapons, and now wear protection so that even if you shoot them, they may not get hurt,” Hemenway adds.
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