One of the omnipresent responses after every new mass shooting is conservative claims that what we need is even more guns in even more places. The circumstances of each shooting don't matter a bit, and the "more guns" response is wheeled out even before the first bodies have gone cold.
The gunman who executed at least 19 grade school children and two teachers was, in fact, confronted by law enforcement before ever entering the building. Shots were exchanged, but the gunman had sufficient firepower to fight off law enforcement and move inside the school to start killing children anyway. (It was federal border agents responding to the emergency who finally killed the gunman, which raises separate questions about supposed Texas self-sufficiency and other sedition-hinting-at burps, but we'll set that aside for the moment.)
So the school had security, law enforcement engaged the shooter, and it didn't help. Just as in Buffalo, where an armed security officer protecting a supermarket engaged the shooter—only to be killed himself.
None of this makes a bit of difference to the bullshitting sociopaths who have led America down this path.
First off, Texas Republicans have now dealt with uncountably many mass murders since first proposing their "more police" solution and—brace yourself—never followed through with it. It's bullshit. It is a lie. If they believed putting more armed guards inside schools is the most effective means of solving the problem, they would have put enough armed guards inside schools to stop these murders.
They haven't. Why? Because murdered American children is a one-news-cycle story, one that can be bullshitted through by dusting off the "here's what we should do" talking points without ever following through by doing those things. Yes, we're now "hardening" schools by putting armed security officers out front. By installing remote-lockable doors. By switching out glass and classroom doors for bullet-resistant versions. By developing bullet-resisting backpacks for elementary schoolers. By staging regular drills in which teachers train students to delay their deaths by hiding in places where the murderer might not look, and so on.
It hasn't stopped the shootings and was never intended to. Have Texas Republicans hired enough armed cops to protect Texas elementary schools? One look at the news says that no, despite all their power and their years of promises, they lied to everyone and did Not That. They did barely enough to pretend to care—but "hardening" schools to the point where they can resist an AR-15-equipped gunman bent on mass murder would require very high taxes. It would require rebuilding schools. It would require paying armed guards in a state and country that resist paying for teachers with every fiber of its decaying being.
While a party bent on turning America into a fascist police state would indeed slobber over the idea of putting militarized security teams in every last school, supermarket, local restaurant, movie theater, playground, and public park, we remain at least somewhat fortunate that Republicanism's fascist bent has so far not been able to outpace its fervor to destroy any part of government that does any good for anybody. Ted Cruz is just a liar, a bullshitter who will always and forever vote against providing the tools he himself claims are necessary to keep American children from being murdered with new claims, during every vote, that it is just another example of big government and the real answer is to, say, simply not have schools at all.
There is another reason we know that Ted Cruz and every other sedition-backing mass murder apologist is simply lying about what would help prevent mass murderers from targeting our schools: We have, in much of the country, been trying it.
Not only does it not work, it leads to ... more shootings in schools. Which everybody who has taken even one bare moment to give a damn about dead American children already damn knows, because we've now been down this bullshit path for long enough to get actual data on it!
Now, I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion that Sen. Ted Cruz, an eternal fuckup who has made the sabotage of government his life's work and who comes to our television sets fresh off his support for a party-backed attempted coup, has never once looked into whether his proposed solution actually "works." Has never asked a single staffer for statistics; has never bothered to read a single news story following up on his proposals; has never paid attention in any of the hearings he scurries to just to perform in front of the cameras. Ted Cruz is truly so anti-intellectual that you could easily believe he has never learned a single damn thing in his life, and you might even get the feeling that if you confronted Cruz with that charge he'd just puff out his chest and proudly say he's learned even less than that.
The actual data shows that the more guns you put in schools, the more children end up shot. Putting professional, trained law enforcement officers on guard inside schools results in more children being shot; one can easily imagine the outcome if the other Republican murder fantasy, in which every school teacher in America keeps a loaded gun on their hip or in their desk, came to pass.
When Ted Cruz and other lying bullshit artists run to the cameras to say that we cannot possibly restrict who is allowed to purchase AR-15 murder weapons but that we can solve the problem by giving gun manufacturers more money to produce more guns, this is what Ted Cruz is advocating for. And he either knows it or is so vapid—no, stupid—that he shouldn't be in office to begin with.
Over, and over, and over. The same story unfolds every day. Putting a loaded gun in a home results in more children dying of gunshot wounds. Putting a loaded gun in a school results in more children dying of gunshot wounds. The less training a parent or security officer has, the more children die of gunshot wounds—while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott brags about his success in making sure his state’s newest gun owners need no training to begin with.
Allowing AR-15s to be handed out to whoever wants them results in the most violence-prone people in the country all flocking to own one just in case. Once you own your murder weapon, the rest of America is not allowed to interfere, and Republican statehouses have gone to great lengths to make sure police have no recourse until the shooting starts happening.
This is due in large part to the rules of American engagement: The murderers get to shoot first. They get to walk into any business, any public place, shouting and fully armed and ready to kill a dozen or a hundred, and police aren’t allowed to interfere with those unencumbered and holy "gun rights" until the man planning to kill those around him has gotten where he wants to be, raised his gun, and moved his finger to the trigger. Whatever security guards Ted Cruz fetishizes as Our American Solution then die, but as "heroes," or are forced to flee, leaving the gunman to his devices until more militarized forces can arrive on the scene.
Meanwhile, the party of insurrection promotes fantasies of good mass murder every day, every hour. They live in a movement that idealizes "good" mass murder and waits, impatiently, for the day when the good murderers can finally stamp out the Americans that oppose them.
Want to stop the mass murder of American children? Stop making mass murder sound like patriotism. Stop raising up gun-obsessed paranoids as ideal Americans, better Americans than the Americans not willing to prepare themselves to commit "good" murders.
Ban the guns. Make an America in which police officers know that someone carrying multiple guns, a hundred rounds of ammunition, body armor, or other military gear is an immediate danger and not just a cosplay murderer out to make a "political" point.
Stop making aspirational mass murder a cornerstone of sedition-premised conservative ideology. Find something else to stand for. Anything else. Anything at all.
And stop pretending you give a flying damn about our dead children following decade after decade of new laws meant to make it easier to kill them in more places, and faster.