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AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Department of Public Safety has decided to terminate a Texas Ranger who responded to the horrific May 24 attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
In a letter Thursday, DPS Director Steve McCraw told Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindell that his actions following the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers “did not conform to department standards.” Kindell has five days to appeal the decision.
“You should have recognized the incident was and remained an active shooter situation which demanded an active shooter response rather than a barricaded subject situation,” McCraw wrote in the letter obtained by The Texas Tribune.
Reached for comment Friday, Kindell would say only that he intends to appeal his firing.
Kindell’s September suspension caused ripple effects through the criminal justice system in South and West Texas where he was the lead investigator on 50 high-profile investigations, including murders, sexual assaults and public corruption.
But police experts and the Uvalde County district attorney had raised questions about whether DPS was retroactively punishing a handful of officers for not following policies that weren’t in place at the time of the shooting. Among their concerns: By firing a few officers, DPS and other law enforcement agencies will avoid serious analysis of how hundreds of police from multiple agencies stood by for more than 70 minutes while children and teachers lay shot in a fourth grade classroom.
Uvalde school district details key failures in its end of year safety report
The report revealed the district was subject to an “intruder detection audit.”
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- Uvalde shooting: City files lawsuit against DA over Robb Elementary records
In response to a request under the Texas Public Information Act, DPS said it does not have a written active-shooter policy. Instead, the agency said at the time of the Uvalde shooting that DPS relied on guidance from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Known as the ALERRT doctrine, it’s considered the premier active-shooter training program in the state.
In July, McCraw sent an agencywide memo telling DPS officers the agency “will continue to embrace the ALERRT doctrine, but with one important addition.”
“DPS Officers responding to an active shooter at a school will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker,” McCraw wrote. “When a subject fires a weapon at a school he remains an active shooter until he is neutralized and is not to be treated as a ‘barricaded subject.’ We will provide proper training and guidelines for recognizing and overcoming poor command decisions at an active shooter scene.”
McCraw and DPS spokesman Travis Considine would not comment on Friday.
In October, McCraw decided to terminate Juan Maldonado, a DPS sergeant who’d also responded to Robb Elementary on May 24. Maldonado opted to retire rather than appeal his firing.
Congressional subcommittee hosts meeting to hear testimony regarding Uvalde school shooting
It’s been nearly seven months since 19 children and two teachers were killed in a classroom at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.
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Reach out & touch someone!
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — With the stroke of his pen, Governor JB Pritzker made Illinois the ninth state to ban assault-style weapons.
The governor and supporters of the measure say the passage is long overdue.
“Today, I couldn’t be prouder to say that, ‘we got it done,’” Pritzker said. “We got this done for all the victims. The spouses, the children, parents, friends, and loved ones who are no longer with us, and for those who have survived mass shootings.”
Passing gun legislation is never easy. After a private battle that lasted for days, Democrats, who control the legislature, moved forward. Pritzker’s signature comes after the Illinois House voted to pass an assault weapon ban. The 68 to 41 vote took place after the Senate approved an amended bill on Monday that bans the sale, delivery, and purchase of assault-style weapons.
Owners of such guns can keep them, but they must register them with state police by Jan 1. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor and then a possible felony for subsequent offenses.
Also, the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines — more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns — are banned.
Illinois State Police will be allowed to update the ban list periodically.
Before the vote, Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch claimed victory.
“It’s time that we protect Illinois communities. It’s time that we protect Illinois families,” he said.
Republicans rallied against the measure calling it unconstitutional.
“Unfortunately, this bill again is not going to stop gun violence. It is not going to protect our most vulnerable neighborhoods or our most vulnerable children,” said Illinois Rep. Toni McCombie.
“We have constitutional rights in our country. They protect our freedoms from the government. They are not rights that are given to us by the government,” added Illinois Rep. Patrick Windhurst.
The lone Republican ‘yes’ came from outgoing House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, who said he hoped his vote would honor the mass shooting victims at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade.
HOLLY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (FOX 2) – A man accidentally shot himself in the leg while cleaning a gun Wednesday afternoon in Holly Township.
Michigan State Police initially were dispatched to the home in the 6200 block of Grange Hall Road for what they thought was a suicidal person. However, while on the way there, they learned it was an accidental shooting.
When troopers arrived, family members told them the man was downstairs. Police found him on the floor next to his bed, along with a spent shell casing and a magazine. A .380 handgun was on the bed.
EMS applied a tourniquet to the man’s leg and took him to Genesys Hospital. His current condition is unknown.
Police said they will be submitting their investigative report to the prosecutor’s office for review.
Q: Who cleans a gun when it’s loaded?
A: A complete fucking idiot who deserves to shoot himself.
TANGIPAHOA PARISH, La. (KLFY) — A Louisiana mother shot and killed a home intruder before dawn Sunday, authorities said.
According to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, Robert Rheams, 51, was armed with a shovel and a lug wrench when he allegedly forced his way into the home of the woman and her two young children.
Chief Jimmy Travis said during the incident, a physical altercation took place between Rheams and the homeowner which led to Rheams being shot and killed.
He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Travis said at the time of the incident, Rheams was out on parole after serving approximately 20 years in prison for armed robbery.
He was also tied to a carjacking that happened hours prior to the home invasion, Travis said.
This is an assault rifle. It is already massively regulated in America.
I understand the motivation. I really do. It seems some deranged psychopath is shooting up a school every week. However, despite that sordid reality there are three major reasons why we really shouldn’t try to ban assault weapons.
First, banning assault weapons would be like outlawing foul language or sunburn. Doing so might make us feel good, but it in no way affects reality. We seem incapable of devising a cogent definition for just what an assault weapon even is. “Just because it looks scary” seems dangerously vague in a legal document.
Such a ban might have made a difference half a century ago. Today, there are 440 million guns in America — rifles, pistols, shotguns, et al. If each of those guns was a typical GLOCK pistol it would be 8 inches long. If you stacked those guns muzzle to butt they would stretch from the surface of the earth to the International Space Station and back 109 times.
According to 1994 definitions, there are roughly 25 million assault weapons in circulation. If each of those was an AR15 stacked end to end they would stretch from New York City to Los Angeles and back 2.3 times. Non-gun guys have no idea the true scope of guns in America. They haven’t a clue. No amount of legislating will ever touch firearms in this country. Outlaw assault weapons tomorrow and the bad guys will have assault weapons when the sun burns out. The gun control ship sailed a couple of hundred million guns ago with the election of President Obama. There’s no putting that back in the box now.
This is what the Left would call an assault weapon. In reality, it is simply a
semiautomatic sporting gun owned by tens of millions of law-abiding Americans.
Second, mass shootings are the physical manifestation of the post-modern moral darkness that seems to be engulfing our nation and the world. Such horrors rightfully touch a visceral chord in any parent. I honestly cannot imagine the pain of something like that. However, there is the issue of scale.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group, there were 1,363 people killed in mass shootings in America from 2009 through 2020. That’s 123 deaths per year on average in a nation of 328 million people. During the same time we lost 478,000 people PER YEAR to smoking. We lose 40,000 non-smokers (think little kids with asthma) to secondhand smoke per annum. So, it’s really not about the body count. It’s not about saving children. It’s about virtue signaling. Non-gun people believe themselves more virtuous than gun people.
When something horrible happens you always want something to vilify, someone to hate. We humans are hardwired to want a villain. For gun control types they see that awful stuff and hate the NRA. The NRA isn’t some faceless corporate entity. It’s just several million of their fellow Americans who disagree with them.
Lastly, and this is the big one, an assault weapons ban will actually make things worse. In medicine we call it First Do No Harm. No matter what you do, ensure your actions do not exacerbate the problem.
We are losing 123 Americans a year to mass shootings. There are 25 million assault weapons in America. Without confiscation an assault weapons ban is lyrically ineffective. If those guns are suddenly made illegal who exactly is going to enforce that law? You really can’t make a fresh new law if you don’t have a plan to enforce it. Laws without enforcement make a mockery of the system.
I have any number of good buddies in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A huge percentage of assault weapon owners simply will not comply with a ban. Are we going to send my ATF pals to go knock their doors down? Are we willing to incinerate their families to ensure that Beto O’Rourke’s grandiose confiscation scheme is enforced (“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47…”)?
123 deaths a year are undeniably horrible. Forcibly disarming otherwise law-abiding Americans would create literally millions of new criminals out of thin air and would be Waco on steroids from coast to bleeding coast. There is so much hatred and paranoia online nowadays that if even a tiny percentage of gun guys pushed back it would be a bloodbath.
There are 77.4 million gun owners in America — about one third of the adult population. For comparison purposes, there are nearly three times as many gun owners in America as there are soldiers on the entire planet. That’s every person in all the uniformed armed services in the world.
Guns in America have nothing to do with hunting. Nothing. Guns in private hands, especially the scary sort, have everything to do with a monopoly on power. The reason America has done such amazing things in the past 246 years is our unprecedented levels of personal freedom. Gun ownership is a critical part of that freedom. Real freedom is messy, ugly, bloody, and gross, but that’s the reason we have been the most powerful force for liberty the world has ever seen. You really can’t have one without the other.
Look at our recent crop of professional politicians. All they need is an excuse to forcibly impose their will on the American people. That will never, ever happen here, because 77 million of us own guns. Absent the will of the governed an armed populace is ungovernable. That’s the reason the founders designed it the way they did 246 years ago. And that’s why you really don’t want to try to ban assault weapons in America today.