The horror of what happened in Uvalde continues to get worse with each new detail, but what is clear is that the fictions Texans relied on to “harden” their schools while still allowing guns to flow freely were just that: fictions. None of it appeared to even hinder the gunman armed with an AR-15 assault rifle as he locked a classroom door behind him and began shooting children, and police were incapable of stopping him until federal, not state, officers showed up to take matters into their own hands.
Mass resignations are the bare minimum required in a state government that proved utterly incompetent when faced with a would-be mass murderer targeting an American school—a situation now so commonplace that every school in America holds regular drills in preparation for it. It is now something that is expected to happen. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, whose actions not only set the stage for this mass murder, but who has also spent his entire governorship bragging about it, may bear the most responsibility of all.
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