In my last Quick Take I commented that the incident commander at the Robb Elementary School decided to wait for the arrival of a tactical team before going into the classroom where the shooter was holed up. This was not quite correct; apparently what happened was even worse.
The US Border Patrol’s BORTAC team was about 40 miles from Uvalde and responded to the scene. (The Border Patrol has law-enforcement authority in all areas within 100 miles of the America’s international borders; Uvalde is about 80 miles from the border with Mexico.) Once there, however, BORTAC was told to stand by, which they did for about 30 minutes before deciding to disregard the incident commander’s orders and assault the classroom. By then, of course, almost all of the children inside were dead.
I note in passing that radical leftists and progressives have long been agitating for the disbandment of the Border Patrol. Yeah, that would have been a big help…
Yesterday Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas), expressing a decidely minority opinion, denounced the cascade of criticism that has descended on law enforcement in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre. In a pair of tweets he said that “The second guessing and finger pointing among state and local law enforcement is destructive, distracting, and unfair…. Complex scenarios require split-second decisions. Easy to criticize with 20-20 hindsight.” I take the Senator’s point. Though it’s hard to imagine how the actions of the police in Uvalde can possibly be excused, we should all bear in mind that the narrative has changed a couple of times already as fresh facts came to light. It could, I suppose, change again.
Finally, we see that various luminaries of the Left are again calling for repeal of the Second Amendment. I have a hard time believing that they’re serious about this, but perhaps they’ve never bothered actually to read the United States Constitution. Repeal of the Second Amendment would itself require a constitutional amendment. Now the Constitution can be amended in two ways: either by a constitutional convention called with the concurrance of two-thirds of the states, or by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. Either way, the proposed amendment would then have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 of 50).
Repeal the Second Amendment? Seriously? Not going to happen…