78 minutes
By John Cornyn has been outflanked in the “America’s Dumbest Senator” sweepstakes by fierce competition from the likes of Johnson, Blackburn and Tuberville, but let us remember that he is extremely stupid:
4,680 split seconds!
Of the many obvious problems here one if that multiple parents at the scene were second-guessing so hard the authorities who were doing nothing about an ongoing mass murder were assaulting and restraining them. This is because “should law enforcement try to stop an ongoing mass murder of children” is not actually a novel or complicated question, and both virtually all training and basic human decency provide a clear answer.
The detailed reconstruction of the timeline provided by the Times is immediately damning:
11:33 a.m.
The gunman enters the school.
He uses a back door that had been propped open by a teacher six minutes earlier. He walks down a hallway, banging and kicking on at least one locked door before moving toward two connected classrooms, 111 and 112.
Two teachers, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia, had been screening the movie “Lilo & Stitch” for fourth graders in the classrooms.
The gunman would fire more than 100 rounds.
11:35 a.m.
Three Uvalde Police Department officers enter the school through the same door. Two are grazed by shots fired by the gunman.
Four more officers soon enter the building.
For 97% of the time the murderer was in the classroom, 7 members of the Uvalde PD were in the building, and at no point did they do anything to stop to killings or try to save wounded children. I don’t think elaborate argument is required to see that the misconduct here was grotesque.
Let’s go to the next spot on the timeline:
11:37 a.m.
More gunshots. Another 16 rounds are fired.
Officers continue to arrive on the scene.
I know Republicans think they and their allies can never be held accountable for anything, but this is really something.