Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are… — 22 Comments
The mask?
Oh, man. How sad.
Wow, that is so sad because even if the man did not hit the gunman he could have slowed him down and perhaps those seconds saved would have locked the school down better. In Texas anyone who is not a felon or otherwise prohibited from owning a gun can carry a loaded in a vehicle. For years I have usually had a .45 close at hand in my pickup however in the past year, not so much. After watching this today I will not leave home without it. One more piece of stuff about the Uvalde killer and his actions.
The killer was an 18 year old Texas boy who did not know how to drive which indicates to me there might have been some sort of mental situation in his makeup since that is very unusual. However it appears he could spend thousands of dollars purchasing rifles, a sidearm and lots of magazines and ammunition I am thinking between four and five thousand dollars. The magazines and ammunition he had with him at the school, if the magazines were 30 round mags and loaded would have been between 50 and 60 pounds along with his weapons would have added around 11 or 12 pounds. That is a lot of stuff to move around between two houses and keep hidden from the occupants of each house. Lots of organization and planning for a man who does not know how to drive.
OldTexan…you’re not saying he had help are you? ‘Cos that sounds like a conspiracy theory…?
And that’s my suspicion.
I have no idea however, I would like to know the whole story. I do a fair amount of shooting, compete first Saturday of the month in Steel Challenge where we are timed shooting round steel plates that are about the size of pie plates at various distances being timed. I shoot pistol and an AR style rifle, and at 77 years old I am not as fast as the younger men and women but I do have an idea about being organized and trained to shoot guns. I don’t want to believe in a conspiracy theory and have no evidence of one however . . . . It appears that two plus two do not equal four, kind of some new math or something might be going on.
@ OldTexan > “The magazines and ammunition he had with him at the school, if the magazines were 30 round mags and loaded would have been between 50 and 60 pounds along with his weapons would have added around 11 or 12 pounds. That is a lot of stuff …”
… to climb over an 8 foot fence* with.
Any of you sports fans or veterans want to weigh in on that feat?
Somewhat related, via the Instapundit, here is a program in Ohio and Colorado, expanding to other states, which trains volunteer teachers who have carry permits on how to stop a school shooter, and on how to treat gunshot victims to keep them alive until EMT arrives.
As has been the case a lot with the Uvalde shooting, the information is a bit difficult to evaluate because it’s complicated (and some of it keeps changing).
I haven’t heard any change in the description of the height of the fence. But here’s the information on the ammunition:
The Uvalde mass shooting suspect bought more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition before opening fire and killing 22 people at Robb Elementary School, a law enforcement official said during a news conference on Friday. A U.S. soldier would take 210 rounds into combat.
The suspect had purchased 1,657 total rounds of ammunition – 315 rounds were found inside the school, said Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
A law enforcement source told CBS News that the amount of ammunition that the suspect brought with him is more than what an average U.S. soldier would go into basic combat with, apparently planning on a massive gun battle…
[McCraw] also said 922 rounds were outside the school, but on school property…
Investigators found 60 magazines total – 58 in and around the school and at the site where the suspect crashed his car, and two at his residence.
So this is the situation: he purchased 1657 rounds. Some were left at home, and he brought about 1272 with him that day (350 plus 922). Some were left at the crash site and some were left on school property. I wonder if some of those he didn’t take into the building were on the outside of the fence, and if he left them there because he was having trouble carrying them all and climbing the fence?
He carried 315 rounds into the school. That’s only about a fifth of what he owned, and about a quarter of what he brought with him that day.
As far as we know, this was a physically healthy 18 year old teenager. He was probably quite strong and agile, although I haven’t heard that discussed very much. I don’t think he’d have trouble climbing the fence carrying some extra weight.
How much would 315 rounds, plus magazines, weigh?
Old Texan; AesopFan:
By the way, I will go on record here as saying I do not think he had help. I very much believe he acted alone. If he saved his money from his Wendy’s job he could have bought all the guns and ammunition himself. He had no other expenses that we know of, so everything he earned could have gone to that. He doesn’t seem to have had close friends although he did have friends. He could buy the guns and ammo legally. I see no indication he had help nor did he need help to commit this act.
The weight issue: Going over the fence he had the 922 rounds found outside the school plus the 315 rounds found in the school. The ammo weighs about 33.5 lbs. and maybe 14.4 lbs. worth of magazines. I used 0.35 lb. for a 30 round mag. which may not be quite correct as it is a shipping weight.
The fancy Daniel Defense rifle only weighs 6 or 7 lbs. Plus there was a handgun? 1.5 lbs.?
Definitely very hefty.
I was thinking; is the shooter an organized criminal or disorganized. Was this thing very well thought out or more indicative of someone who snapped?
Fifty eight magazines is kind of wow. What was this guy thinking? Many were 30-round mags. but not all I believe.
I’ve never owned an AR-15 so I was not familiar with the expense of things like magazines. Most of the mags. I’ve purchased were something like $25 to $45 per unit. Turns out that popular 30-round mags. for the AR-15 are only about $10 each.
This brings up another point. Things like mags are so cheap because the AR-15 is a wildly popular rifle. As are 9mm handguns. What does Joe Biden want to ban? AR-15’s and 9mm handguns. OK, he is only demonizing 9mm handguns so far.
Lots more detail at the Daily Mail via an interview with Uvalde teacher Nicole Ogburn who was working in the very classroom that the perp first shot at from the location of the school parking lot.
Ogburn said the west door, from which the shooter would eventually gain entry, is supposed to remained locked at all times but the exit is often used by faculty members when they need to make a quick run outdoors.
‘It’s a locked door,’ but, she explained, ‘It’s not uncommon for someone to use a rock and put inside the doorframe so the door can’t shut all of the way, when they run out to their car to get something.’
She said the door can only be locked from the inside, so if someone goes out of it, they have to keep it ajar and reach inside to turn the key.
This tedious process, she said, is why several of faculty members instead opt for using a rock to temporarily keep the door ajar and prevent it from closing.
That day, Ogburn said, the staff member, who she declined to name, had gone out to retrieve a cellphone from her car which was ‘just outside the door.’
Ogburn said she was told the employee, during her quick foray outside, had spotted the gunman shooting toward a funeral home across the street and then approaching the fence onto school property.
‘She ran back inside the same door she came out of in fear for her life. She must have panicked,’ she said.
Salvador Ramos, 18, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 kids and two teachers before being shot dead by police
Salvador Ramos, 18, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 kids and two teachers before being shot dead by police
‘I’m sure she was in fear of her life. Or the door may have had sort of malfunction. I know this employee and she would have never left the door open. She cares about those students, all of us care about those students.’
Ogburn admitted that at that time she doesn’t know if the rock was still in the doorframe propping the door open or if the door hadn’t shut properly from the force the teacher opened it with.
It looks as though the windows in Ogburn’s classroom were not huge, and the base of windows was high enough that the kids sitting on the floor were protected from the bullets by the walls.
… they have to keep it [the door] ajar and reach inside to turn the key.
Makes no sense to me. Am I missing something?
TommyJay:
We don’t know whether the shooter took the ammunition over the fence or not. A lot of it was found on school grounds, but there may have been “school grounds” outside the fence and yet still school property.
TommyJay:
I think that means that to leave the door closed and yet unlocked, they have to go outside, stand near the door, open it slightly, and while remaining outside reach in and turn a key on the inside of the door.
“A U.S. soldier would take 210 rounds into combat”
I don’t believe this is true. According to my brother, who was a DOD contractor in A-Stan, the guys going out on patrol would take 7×30 round mags (i. e. 210) rounds and two (!) 420 round ammo cans with the ammo on 10 round stripper clips for a total of 950 rounds. Lots of privately owned magazines too as the issue ones were worn out. Private body armor too.
Once during the Yugo civil war, I got a call from my brother asking if there was any way to send him body armor. His had been stolen and he was stuck in Sarajevo. The airport was under sniper fire, and he was not allowed to fly out without body armor.
TommyJay: Thanks for the Daily Mail link. Their stories and pictures seem to put the USA MSM to shame.
I don’t want to blame anyone in this horrific event (unless it is more than a single psycho acting alone). But just a couple points:
1. The lawyer for the teacher who propped the door open said she kicked the rock away. The (different) teacher in the Daily Mail article said she didn’t know if this was the case.
2. (I think) the lawyer said the first teacher was getting her lunch. The second teacher said the first teacher was getting her cell phone.
There may be good explanations, but I just wonder why Teacher One would leave her cell phone or her lunch in her car, on a sweltering day.
@ Chases Eagles:
Good morning. There is no black-and-white, no deviation allowed answer. 210 rounds would be the doctrinally correct loadout for an infantry rifleman and is a fair statement for the purpose used here. More (typically) or less can be carried based on mission, unit Standard Operating Procedure, and other operational factors.
@ Wesson:
Good morning. You bring up a point I’ve been bouncing around in my head over the last few days. Somebody else in another post alluded to it and I ask it again here:
Do we expect too much from people nowaways?
Observation: I’ve been employed in military service and law enforcement for over 18 years. I’ve been in situations where trained armed professionals have frozen, made a tactically unsound or legally inappropriate decision, or otherwise royally screwed up a situation they were trained for.
Are we training elementary school teachers to perform immediate action drills such as react to contact, shelter in place, timed door lock drills, etc?
I can’t speak for every school jurisdiction in the U.S. so if there’s a place that is, great. If not, why not, and why would we expect untrained schoolteachers to perform with the coolness of combat veterans when under direct fire?
Final point: I dabble a bit in root cause analysis. There seems to be a focus on the end act, the teacher who propped the door open. My question is this: who designed such a door, that apparently opened to a commonly trafficked area yet was so cumbersome to use? Why not put a keyhole on the outside? Or a proximity sensor for a badge unlock.
Systems that are cumbersome, difficult to use, or that don’t work will be bypassed by the people who are supposed to use them. Unfortunately it is human nature for this to occur. Ease of use / transparency of use is a compliance measure in itself, and I’m boggled why a better design wasn’t used here. The cost would have been minimal.
Grunt,
I disagree that it is fair use. I think it is an irrelevant factoid that is misleading and if is intended to mislead, is a type of lie. Most people (including me) would hear “combat” and (only) 210 rounds which is not true. It could be more (much more, 1050 rounds for those who noticed I can’t add), which personally I had no idea (I thought 210 was THE number).
Grunt:
Re the door design —
I think they designed it that way with the idea that it would make it fail-safe. Obviously, that made it more amenable to being propped open, because it was a cumbersome situation. If someone went out that way they apparently could not come back in that way, if I understand the arrangement correctly, unless they somehow made the lock inoperative by propping the door open or something like that. I imagine that the idea of the designers and architects was that the door always lock to anyone from the outside. They didn’t want it to be opened by someone even with a key. That design would supposedly make things safer. What it actually did – as you point out – was create a motive for people to override it and that made the situation less safe (although it’s not clear that’s why the system failed, if indeed the teacher closed the door as she said she did).
And yes, I believe it is quite commonplace for teachers and students to train for lockdowns and practice that training periodically. This apparently had been done at Robb Elementary.
A few years ago I worked in a plant where employees had key cards which they were required to use to go inside. They were told they would be written up if they propped a door open. They still propped the door open, because they didn’t bring their cards or didn’t want to take the time to use them.
PS Also, where I worked, as I recall the door would lock most of the time but would occasionally not lock when closed and you wouldn’t notice unless you checked it. The plant manager could enable or disable the locks remotely.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
The mask?
Oh, man. How sad.
Wow, that is so sad because even if the man did not hit the gunman he could have slowed him down and perhaps those seconds saved would have locked the school down better. In Texas anyone who is not a felon or otherwise prohibited from owning a gun can carry a loaded in a vehicle. For years I have usually had a .45 close at hand in my pickup however in the past year, not so much. After watching this today I will not leave home without it. One more piece of stuff about the Uvalde killer and his actions.
The killer was an 18 year old Texas boy who did not know how to drive which indicates to me there might have been some sort of mental situation in his makeup since that is very unusual. However it appears he could spend thousands of dollars purchasing rifles, a sidearm and lots of magazines and ammunition I am thinking between four and five thousand dollars. The magazines and ammunition he had with him at the school, if the magazines were 30 round mags and loaded would have been between 50 and 60 pounds along with his weapons would have added around 11 or 12 pounds. That is a lot of stuff to move around between two houses and keep hidden from the occupants of each house. Lots of organization and planning for a man who does not know how to drive.
OldTexan…you’re not saying he had help are you? ‘Cos that sounds like a conspiracy theory…?
And that’s my suspicion.
I have no idea however, I would like to know the whole story. I do a fair amount of shooting, compete first Saturday of the month in Steel Challenge where we are timed shooting round steel plates that are about the size of pie plates at various distances being timed. I shoot pistol and an AR style rifle, and at 77 years old I am not as fast as the younger men and women but I do have an idea about being organized and trained to shoot guns. I don’t want to believe in a conspiracy theory and have no evidence of one however . . . . It appears that two plus two do not equal four, kind of some new math or something might be going on.
@ OldTexan > “The magazines and ammunition he had with him at the school, if the magazines were 30 round mags and loaded would have been between 50 and 60 pounds along with his weapons would have added around 11 or 12 pounds. That is a lot of stuff …”
… to climb over an 8 foot fence* with.
Any of you sports fans or veterans want to weigh in on that feat?
*The height was in an early WSJ report; that may have been “corrected” by now, but I would think it was at least 5′ high or the kids could have climbed it (and probably would).
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/05/26/on-that-report-that-police-in-uvalde-were-just-standing-around/#comment-2625192
Somewhat related, via the Instapundit, here is a program in Ohio and Colorado, expanding to other states, which trains volunteer teachers who have carry permits on how to stop a school shooter, and on how to treat gunshot victims to keep them alive until EMT arrives.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/01/faster-teaches-teachers-how-to-save-lives/
Old Texan; AesopFan:
As has been the case a lot with the Uvalde shooting, the information is a bit difficult to evaluate because it’s complicated (and some of it keeps changing).
I haven’t heard any change in the description of the height of the fence. But here’s the information on the ammunition:
So this is the situation: he purchased 1657 rounds. Some were left at home, and he brought about 1272 with him that day (350 plus 922). Some were left at the crash site and some were left on school property. I wonder if some of those he didn’t take into the building were on the outside of the fence, and if he left them there because he was having trouble carrying them all and climbing the fence?
He carried 315 rounds into the school. That’s only about a fifth of what he owned, and about a quarter of what he brought with him that day.
As far as we know, this was a physically healthy 18 year old teenager. He was probably quite strong and agile, although I haven’t heard that discussed very much. I don’t think he’d have trouble climbing the fence carrying some extra weight.
How much would 315 rounds, plus magazines, weigh?
Old Texan; AesopFan:
By the way, I will go on record here as saying I do not think he had help. I very much believe he acted alone. If he saved his money from his Wendy’s job he could have bought all the guns and ammunition himself. He had no other expenses that we know of, so everything he earned could have gone to that. He doesn’t seem to have had close friends although he did have friends. He could buy the guns and ammo legally. I see no indication he had help nor did he need help to commit this act.
The weight issue: Going over the fence he had the 922 rounds found outside the school plus the 315 rounds found in the school. The ammo weighs about 33.5 lbs. and maybe 14.4 lbs. worth of magazines. I used 0.35 lb. for a 30 round mag. which may not be quite correct as it is a shipping weight.
The fancy Daniel Defense rifle only weighs 6 or 7 lbs. Plus there was a handgun? 1.5 lbs.?
Definitely very hefty.
I was thinking; is the shooter an organized criminal or disorganized. Was this thing very well thought out or more indicative of someone who snapped?
Fifty eight magazines is kind of wow. What was this guy thinking? Many were 30-round mags. but not all I believe.
I’ve never owned an AR-15 so I was not familiar with the expense of things like magazines. Most of the mags. I’ve purchased were something like $25 to $45 per unit. Turns out that popular 30-round mags. for the AR-15 are only about $10 each.
This brings up another point. Things like mags are so cheap because the AR-15 is a wildly popular rifle. As are 9mm handguns. What does Joe Biden want to ban? AR-15’s and 9mm handguns. OK, he is only demonizing 9mm handguns so far.
Lots more detail at the Daily Mail via an interview with Uvalde teacher Nicole Ogburn who was working in the very classroom that the perp first shot at from the location of the school parking lot.
It looks as though the windows in Ogburn’s classroom were not huge, and the base of windows was high enough that the kids sitting on the floor were protected from the bullets by the walls.
… they have to keep it [the door] ajar and reach inside to turn the key.
Makes no sense to me. Am I missing something?
TommyJay:
We don’t know whether the shooter took the ammunition over the fence or not. A lot of it was found on school grounds, but there may have been “school grounds” outside the fence and yet still school property.
TommyJay:
I think that means that to leave the door closed and yet unlocked, they have to go outside, stand near the door, open it slightly, and while remaining outside reach in and turn a key on the inside of the door.
“A U.S. soldier would take 210 rounds into combat”
I don’t believe this is true. According to my brother, who was a DOD contractor in A-Stan, the guys going out on patrol would take 7×30 round mags (i. e. 210) rounds and two (!) 420 round ammo cans with the ammo on 10 round stripper clips for a total of 950 rounds. Lots of privately owned magazines too as the issue ones were worn out. Private body armor too.
Once during the Yugo civil war, I got a call from my brother asking if there was any way to send him body armor. His had been stolen and he was stuck in Sarajevo. The airport was under sniper fire, and he was not allowed to fly out without body armor.
TommyJay: Thanks for the Daily Mail link. Their stories and pictures seem to put the USA MSM to shame.
I don’t want to blame anyone in this horrific event (unless it is more than a single psycho acting alone). But just a couple points:
1. The lawyer for the teacher who propped the door open said she kicked the rock away. The (different) teacher in the Daily Mail article said she didn’t know if this was the case.
2. (I think) the lawyer said the first teacher was getting her lunch. The second teacher said the first teacher was getting her cell phone.
There may be good explanations, but I just wonder why Teacher One would leave her cell phone or her lunch in her car, on a sweltering day.
@ Chases Eagles:
Good morning. There is no black-and-white, no deviation allowed answer. 210 rounds would be the doctrinally correct loadout for an infantry rifleman and is a fair statement for the purpose used here. More (typically) or less can be carried based on mission, unit Standard Operating Procedure, and other operational factors.
@ Wesson:
Good morning. You bring up a point I’ve been bouncing around in my head over the last few days. Somebody else in another post alluded to it and I ask it again here:
Do we expect too much from people nowaways?
Observation: I’ve been employed in military service and law enforcement for over 18 years. I’ve been in situations where trained armed professionals have frozen, made a tactically unsound or legally inappropriate decision, or otherwise royally screwed up a situation they were trained for.
Are we training elementary school teachers to perform immediate action drills such as react to contact, shelter in place, timed door lock drills, etc?
I can’t speak for every school jurisdiction in the U.S. so if there’s a place that is, great. If not, why not, and why would we expect untrained schoolteachers to perform with the coolness of combat veterans when under direct fire?
Final point: I dabble a bit in root cause analysis. There seems to be a focus on the end act, the teacher who propped the door open. My question is this: who designed such a door, that apparently opened to a commonly trafficked area yet was so cumbersome to use? Why not put a keyhole on the outside? Or a proximity sensor for a badge unlock.
Systems that are cumbersome, difficult to use, or that don’t work will be bypassed by the people who are supposed to use them. Unfortunately it is human nature for this to occur. Ease of use / transparency of use is a compliance measure in itself, and I’m boggled why a better design wasn’t used here. The cost would have been minimal.
Grunt,
I disagree that it is fair use. I think it is an irrelevant factoid that is misleading and if is intended to mislead, is a type of lie. Most people (including me) would hear “combat” and (only) 210 rounds which is not true. It could be more (much more, 1050 rounds for those who noticed I can’t add), which personally I had no idea (I thought 210 was THE number).
Grunt:
Re the door design —
I think they designed it that way with the idea that it would make it fail-safe. Obviously, that made it more amenable to being propped open, because it was a cumbersome situation. If someone went out that way they apparently could not come back in that way, if I understand the arrangement correctly, unless they somehow made the lock inoperative by propping the door open or something like that. I imagine that the idea of the designers and architects was that the door always lock to anyone from the outside. They didn’t want it to be opened by someone even with a key. That design would supposedly make things safer. What it actually did – as you point out – was create a motive for people to override it and that made the situation less safe (although it’s not clear that’s why the system failed, if indeed the teacher closed the door as she said she did).
And yes, I believe it is quite commonplace for teachers and students to train for lockdowns and practice that training periodically. This apparently had been done at Robb Elementary.
A few years ago I worked in a plant where employees had key cards which they were required to use to go inside. They were told they would be written up if they propped a door open. They still propped the door open, because they didn’t bring their cards or didn’t want to take the time to use them.
PS Also, where I worked, as I recall the door would lock most of the time but would occasionally not lock when closed and you wouldn’t notice unless you checked it. The plant manager could enable or disable the locks remotely.