The more details that have emerged about the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting, the more awful and tragic the story has become. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell decided now was a good time to score political points, vilely claiming on The Last Word that Republicans were directly responsible for this terrible tragedy.
After highlighting various parts of a report recently released by the Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting, O’Donnell pointed out what he thought the main takeaway was from the report, “The one factor in the report that was the decisive factor in this massive murder is on page 73 of the 77-page report. It says, ‘there was no legal impediment to the attacker buying two AR-15-style rifles, 60 magazines, and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition when he turned 18.’”
O’Donnell then, well and truly, left the reservation:
The Republican governor of Texas and the Republican legislature have made sure that that mass murderer was able to buy those weapons. They've made sure that Texas mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murderers in the world, and the last president from Texas, George W. Bush, willfully made sure that the assault weapons ban legislated by Senator Joe Biden expired after ten years.
And after peddling the long-debunked falsehood that the “assault weapons ban” lowered the number of mass shootings, he made the dishonest and dangerous notion that “Bush, and Republicans in Congress decided it's time to make sure that American mass murderers remain the best-equipped mass murderers in the world.
Constitutional illiteracy may be expected from someone who is a self-proclaimed socialist, and working in a defense of Joe Biden into any topic is expected from MSNBC, but to claim that Republicans are direct facilitators of mass murder is so ludicrously hyperbolic that it doesn’t even merit a response. It’s just an insult that’s in freakishly poor taste.
What makes this even crazier is that O’Donnell provided plenty of other reasons besides Republican opposition to gun control that led to the shooting as he read the report.
According to O’Donnell, this includes, “people who knew the mass murderer and ignored the signs about him, that were so obvious that his online friends and some of his former school classmates, their nickname for him was ‘school shooter,’” and customers in the gun store said that, “the attacker was ‘very nervous looking’ and that he ‘appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters’; another described his all-black clothing as simply giving off ‘bad vibes.’”
Clearly, warning signs abounded that the shooter was not a mentally balanced individual, yet no one reported their concerns, and looking weird isn't a crime. And the police response to the shooting was chaotic, uncoordinated, and violated every known protocol for dealing with an active shooter situation since Columbine.
But of course, every tragedy must be exploited to score cheap political points. Blaming Republicans who support the Second Amendment for the actions of someone who so horribly misused that right is incredibly inflammatory and irresponsible, even for today’s polarized climate.
This exploitation of a national tragedy was made possible by Qunol and ClearChoice. Their contact information is linked.
Click “Expand” to see the relevant transcript.
MSNBC’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell
07/18/22
10:10:09 PM ET(...)
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The report has a long list of factors that led to, contributed in some way to, 19 murdered children, and two murdered teachers, and a gravely wounded teacher who survived. The list of factors includes not keeping all doors locked at all times in the school because, among other reasons, substitute teachers did not have keys to the locked doors.
The report neglects to mention that before AR-15s became easy to purchase over the counter in this country, no one worried about locked doors in American classrooms.
The factors that led to the mass murder included people who knew the mass murderer and ignored the signs about him, that were so obvious that his online friends and some of his former school classmates, their nickname for him was “school shooter.”
In a section about the murderer the report says, “The shooting took place in his former fourth-grade classroom. By 2021, at age seventeen, the attacker had only completed the ninth grade.” He was quoted by a girlfriend as saying, quote, ‘that he wouldn't live past eighteen, either because he would commit suicide or simply because he ‘wouldn't live long.’”
Online, he shared, quote, “gruesome videos and images of” — uh, “suicides, beheadings, accidents, and the like. The attacker became focused on achieving notoriety...the attacker had no real expenses and hoarded money, telling acquaintances that he was ‘saving for something big’ and that they would all see him in the news one day...the attacker developed a fascination with school shootings of which he made no secret...Even those he personally knew in his local chat group began calling him ‘the school shooter’...None of his online behavior was ever reported to law enforcement.”
“As soon as the attacker turned 18, on May 16, 2022 — just one week before the shooting on May 24, 2022 — he was finally able to purchase guns and ammunition. An online retailer shipped 1,740 rounds of 5.56mm, 75-grain boat tail hollow point to his doorstep, at a cost of $1,761.50. He ordered a Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 (an AR-15-style rifle) for shipment to a gun store in Uvalde, at a cost of $2,054.28.”
And “On May 17, 2022, he bought a Smith and Wesson M&P15 (also an AR-15-style rifle) at the same store in Uvalde, at a cost of $1,081.42.”
His uncle drove him to the gun store to pick up his murder weapons. And of course “The owner of the gun store described the attacker as an ‘average customer with no ‘red flags’ or suspicious conditions’... [but] Patrons of the store who saw him told a different story in FBI interviews, saying after the tragedy that the attacker was ‘very nervous looking’ and that he ‘appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters’; another described his all-black clothing as simply giving off ‘bad vibes.’
So, someone who patrons of a gun store think looks like a school shooter has no problem from that gun dealer in Texas buying mass murder weapons.
Tucked in the middle of a long list of factors that contributed to the mass murder, everything from faulty door locks to faulty police work, there is the single factor, the one factor, without which everyone at that school would be alive today. This is not a contributing factor. This is the reason, the reason for the mass murder.
The report makes clear that even if the door that the murderer used to enter the school was locked, he probably still would have been able to find his way into that school. If you change any one of those security factors at the school, the mass murderer might still have happened. If you improve the police response to the mass murder, some of the victims might be alive today because some of the children died on the way to the hospital, 80 minutes later than when they should have been going to the hospital.
But some of those children were murdered instantly, and nothing in the police response would have changed that. The one factor in the report that was the decisive factor in this massive murder is on page 73 of the 77-page report. It says, “there was no legal impediment to the attacker buying two AR-15-style rifles, 60 magazines, and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition when he turned 18.”
The Republican governor of Texas and the Republican legislature have made sure that that mass murderer was able to buy those weapons. They've made sure that Texas mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murderers in the world, and the last president from Texas, George W. Bush, willfully made sure that the assault weapons ban legislated by Senator Joe Biden expired after ten years. And after ten years, when shootings like this were reduced by that assault weapons ban, the Republican President, George W. Bush, and Republicans in Congress decided it's time to make sure that American mass murderers remain the best-equipped mass murderers in the world.
They did that. Government, Republican government, allowed that mass murder in Uvalde to plan his purchase of weapons of war to use for mass murder in his former fourth-grade classroom.
(...)
