Enhancing school security measures is not the answer to protecting students from shooters as Republicans have been arguing in the wake of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, former Washington, DC police officer Ron Hampton told Sputnik
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd June, 2022) Enhancing school security measures is not the answer to protecting students from shooters as Republicans have been arguing in the wake of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, former Washington, DC police officer Ron Hampton told Sputnik.
Since an AR-15-wielding gunman killed nineteen students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last week Republican officials have argued that boosting security and improving mental healthcare are the keys to preventing such incidents, as opposed to stricter gun control laws.
"Schools don't need to be hardened... they don't need to put more cops in schools," said Hampton, former executive director of the National Black Police Association. "One officer couldn't stop an AR-15. That's why we don't need school resource officers in schools... this is a solution that doesn't work against assault weapons."
The actions of the police officers on the scene, who waited for more than an hour before storming the classroom, has been under intense scrutiny. At a news conference days after the shooting, Texas Public Safety Director Steven McCraw admitted that the commander's call to have officers wait for a tactical team before entering the classroom was the "wrong decision."
Texas authorities have said the school resource officer was not onsite, contrary to earlier reports that claimed an officer did engage the shooter before he entered the building.
"This was a total and complete failure by the police to stop the massacre. There were 19 police in the hallway for more than 40 minutes," said Hampton, who served as a DC police officer for 23 years. "This illustrates the bankruptcy of the arms race concept. More money, more weapons, Swat teams, all that bulls**t."
Hampton also hammered what he called weak politicians who are beholden to the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby. In some ways, Hampton said, it is imperative that the country needs to see through the lies of the NRA and the GOP. He also said Americans need to understand the destructive power of AR-15s.
"They just ripped through the bodies which left the children unidentifiable. The authorities needed to get DNA samples from parents to identify the children," he said. "It was tough on me. The first thing I thought of was my daughters. I thought about how cold and callous the killer was. He's evil. Evil enough."
On Wednesday, media reported that Republican and Democratic senators were making progress on hammering out "red flag" legislation which would enable law-enforcement officials to seize firearms from those a court deems a threat to themselves or other people.
"My ultimate hope is that they'll agree on red flag laws... and move the age up so that anyone seeking to buy a gun isn't 18 years old. We really need to do something," Hampton said.
The Uvalde massacre was the 27th school shooting in the United States in 2022 and so far, there have been 214 mass shootings in America since the beginning of the year, according to Gun Violence Archive data.
