Ted Cruz attended a vigil for the murder victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas and was confronted by Sky News reporter Mark Stone, who grilled the senator on why frequent mass shootings only happen in America. Cruz tried to spin the mass shooting in Uvalde as having nothing to do with gun laws and cut the interview short because of what he viewed as Stone’s “political agenda.” Twenty one people died at Robb Elementary after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire. Nineteen of the victims were children.
“There are 19 sets of parents who are never going to get to kiss their child goodnight again,” Cruz said.
“Is this the moment to reform gun laws?” asked Stone.
“It’s easy to go to politics,” Cruz answered. “I get that’s where the media likes to go….The proposals from Democrats and the media inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people.”
Cruz was cut off by Stone, who noted the “violent psychopath” Cruz was referring to was “able to get a weapon so easily…an 18 year old with two AR-15s.”
“If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrat have…none of them would have stopped this,” Cruz said.
“Why does this only happen in your country?” Stone fired back. “Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?”
That’s when Cruz had enough, walking away from Stone and saying, “I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is so awful. You know what? You have your political agenda. God love you.”
Stone proceeded to follow Cruz and repeatedly state that mass shootings are “just an American problem.”
“Why is it that people come from all over the world to America?” Cruz then asked. “Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on earth. Stop being a propagandist.”
..now confirmed, the monster baracaded himself into an empty classroom that was attached to another, which was full of children and two teachers, celebrating attendance and honor roll, as they were 48 hours from summer vacation.
in specific words and context, let me repeat, SPECIFIC WORDS AND CONTEXT, the monster approached the full classroom, and said “You’re going to die.” He then proceeded to successfully massacre, slaughter, and mow down every individual in that classroom, killing every individual in that classroom.
Over 223 rounds were found in that classroom, meaning he also successfully massacred their faces and heads and bodies to the point where all that was left were chunks and pieces. Meaning, parents last night, had to have their DNA sampled, so forensics could properly identify all body pieces appropriately with their appropriate kin.
i don’t want to hear one fucking word about IML, or your summer body, or your conservative values and rights. get your ass up out of your selfish, egotistic life, and get your ass volunteering and educating and doing something. am i the only fucking white person alive who gives a shit and who does things besides share a photo or send my thoughts and prayers?!? (btw i actually send prayers, i did the full rosary 5 times yesterday, which takes just about 5 hours total). so fuck your “prayers.”
i stand with the victims soooo much, and weep for them and their families. the Latino and Latina community is so special and SO DEAR to me. they are a major influence in my life and in my past. i cannot stop weeping for these innocent angels and weep for how they will be forgotten and just another two-week cover story. they were gunned down worse than cattle yesterday. they were gunned down worse than a shotgun board on a shooting range yesterday. it’s time to give these children some fucking respect and some real fucking change.
I come from a long line of conservative farmers. Even now, in my grandparents’ small town, if they called the cops, they’d have to wait 45 minutes or so for one to arrive. They had to defend themselves from rattlesnakes and anything else that might attack them.
Despite this, and despite their otherwise conservative outlook, my family has been anti-gun my entire life. In the 1970s, a teenage uncle of mine was at a friend’s house when that friend got into an argument with another boy. My uncle stepped between them, suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and died six agonizing weeks later.
My family didn’t blame the shooter, who was also a traumatized teenage boy who hadn’t known the rifle was loaded and who didn’t mean to press the trigger as he moved the gun from one hand to the other.
My family recognized that none of this would have happened had there not been a gun in the house when teenaged emotions ran high. My rural family got rid of all guns. They still engaged in deer hunting—using the compound bow and arrows. They weren’t loud about it, but I was taught this from an early age. Nobody should have guns, except maybe the military to defend ourselves from invaders. A gun should never be in a home, not even under lock and key.
Imagine how the politicians might change, had their kids attended Rob Elementary School. They shouldn’t need to have a personal tragedy to care about the rest of us, though.
We have to protect this woman. They are going to try and go after her. She’s on probation and was told not to talk to the press. Her Intel is vital to what went down inside. Angeli Gomez, Respect. Watch all of it to the end.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin argued that “we stopped teaching values in so many of our schools” and “we’re teaching wokeness.” It’s a narrative of racist paranoia, but also gendered paranoia. The underlying theory is that the “problem” is letting those college-educated women who teach school have too much control over what happens in classrooms. Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder claimed “public schools are a breeding ground for evil,” because of those majority-female teachers supposedly “browbeating young white boys.” Glenn Beck rolled out the same talking points about “wokeness” in schools, taking a shot at trans students and staff by decrying “bathrooms that anybody can use.”
♀️
You know what the problem is with school shootings?
The VICTIMS
Interesting that both The Bible and other religious writings around the globe AND the GOP have very similar, hateful, destructive takes on being female.
YUP
There’s no hate quite like misogynist hate
She has her attorney and I hope she sues the state. They claimed she left the door open. A public statement at the podium, as though it was her fault the shooter got in. Sue them for very dime that’s left. Still waiting to find out why charges have not been filed against every officer on the the scene for dereliction of duty. If the Parkland shooting officer was charged for failure to act everyone involved in Uvalde should face charges.
that little girl is going to testify in congress about smearing her dying friend’s blood over herself. She had to watch them die and sit there with her friend’s body while covered in their blood and hope she wasn’t next. And now this 10 year old child is going to be put on the pedestal.
I am horrified I am angry I am so fucking sorry. Sorry this ever happened, sorry she will have to speak to those bastards who have no intention to help, sorry she will be a scapegoat for everyone. “This little girl is so brave” she shouldn’t have to be. “This is the start of a child activist” stop expecting children to do what we should be. “She’s so strong” FUCKING STOP IT. SHE IS NOT A PUBLIC FIGURE. THIS NEVER SHOULDVE FUCKING HAPPENED
I am seeing red. I am so furious and so scared for her. And I want to make every single one of them pay
Emmett Till mother had her son casket open to show what society did to her son.
Maybe this needs to happen again to show what society & their voting choices did to these kids.
It’s the same thing over and over again. Why can’t you understand what the problem is? It’s common sense to even fucking realize what’s going on and help but you choose to ignore it and send “thoughts and prayers” but do NOTHING to prevent this from happening again. There has been 212 mass shootings in the USA in 2022 alone. America’s a fucking joke. Theyre literally allowing all of this to happen. Get some common sense before more children have to die like this.
In addition, the “teacher left a door propped open” was debunked by video footage.
In case anyone wants a recap of what happened on Tuesday in regards to the police response (correlated by Brynn Tannehill on Twitter & other sources). Here is the failure we know so far, with more to come out:
- The armed school officer watched him enter the building, didn’t stop him, & just sat & waited for backup. We’ve been told that armed cops assigned to schools were supposed to stop this from ever happening.
- The heavily armed & geared up officers all waited 60 minutes before entering the school while kids bled out, wasting a golden hour. They could have saved the lives of some children who were shot if they had received medical attention in time.
- A child repeatedly called 911 during the hour the gunman was inside, per press briefing. Gunshots could be heard over the line. “Please send the police now,” the child begged. Texas DPS official says the on-scene commander believed the active shooter situation had ended & children were no longer at risk. “It was the wrong decision,” he said.
- The officers tazed, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, & arrested parents who were begging them to go in, all while still hearing shots being fired inside of the school.
- Angeli Rose Gomez, a mother of 2 students, drove 40 miles to the school when she heard about the shooting. After arriving, she was quickly handcuffed for “intervening in an active crime scene” & eventually persuaded law enforcement to release her. She moved away from the crowd, hopped the school fence, sprinted inside the school to grab her children, & made it out of the school with them alive.
- When officers did enter the school, they went to rescue their own kids rather than deal with the shooter & promptly went back out of the building to resume hanging out with the other officers.
- At one point, a few fathers got fed up, broke a classroom window, & started pulling children out themselves.
- Officers lied & said that the shooter barricaded the door when it was just locked. They said that they were incapable of knocking down or opening the locked door to the classroom where the shooter was, so they had a school employee come do it for them with a key, putting that employee’s life in extreme danger.
- Uvalde SWAT team had done a walkthrough of the school in February to prepare for a situation like this.
- Outside observers say Uvalde police ignored every lesson learned since Columbine.
- When the police did enter the classroom, they failed to neutralize the shooter first. As a result, another child died due to their incompetence because one of the cops hollered out, “Yell if you need help!” A girl called out “Help!” The shooter instantly shot her.
- It was an off-duty border patrol officer who went in & took down the shooter without any backup while the local police were outside handcuffing & tazing parents & claiming they were waiting for more & more & more backup. (This has been updated to say the individual mentioned removed children from the school, not taken down the shooter)
- Initially lied about the timeline, lied about what the shooter was wearing, lied about their response, lied about a “barricade,” lied about multiple details.
- Police is 40% of Uvalde’s budget.
- Initial reports by police that they pursued & pinned down the shooter in a classroom were false. In reality, the shooter had plenty of time & locked himself in a classroom.
*And the best part, because of the Supreme Court decision in Castle Rock v. Gonzales, a 2005 decision delivered by Scalia, no matter how incompetent, cowardly, or negligent officers are, they cannot be held accountable.*
Edit: all this info can be found at Washington Post, NPR, Huffington Post, the Associated Press, NBC, New York Times, & many more, as well as cell phone videos released by the parents at the scene.
They’re also threatening at least one mother with legal action if she keeps on talking
While she was 100% threatened, local judges came forward in support of her and said they would prevent any charges being pressed btw! however, she was not the only parent threatened into silence. police are trying to bully parents into covering their asses
“The chicken soup in her thermos stayed hot all day while her body grew cold.
She never had a chance to eat the baloney and cheese sandwich. I got up 10 minutes early to cut the crust off a sandwich that will never be eaten.
Should I call and cancel her dental appointment next Wednesday? Will the office automatically know?
Should I still take her brother to the appointment since I already took the day off work? Last time Carlos had one cavity and Amerie asked him what having a cavity feels like.
She will never experience having a cavity.
She will never experience having a cavity filled.
The cavities in her body now are from bullets, and they can never be filled.
What if she had asked to use the bathroom in the hall a few minutes prior to the gunman entering the room, locking the door, and slaughtering all inside?
Was she one of the first kids in the room to die or one of the last?
These are the things they don’t tell us.
Which of her friends did she see die before her?
Hannah?
Emily?
Both?
Did their blood and brains splatter across her Girl Scout uniform?
She just earned a Fire Safety patch.
What if it got ruined?
There are no patches for school shootings.
Was she practicing writing GIRAFFE the moment he walked in her classroom, barricaded the door and opened fire?
She keeps forgetting the silent “e” at the end.
We studied this past weekend, and now she doesn’t need to take the spelling test on Friday.
None of them will take the spelling test on Friday.
There will be no spelling test on Friday.
Because there is no one to give it.
And no one to take it.
These are the things I will never know:
I will never know at what age she would have started her period.
I will never know if she had wisdom teeth.
(Or if they would have come in crooked.)
I will never know who she spoke to last. Was it the teacher? Was it her table partner, George? She says George is always talking, even during silent reading.
Did she even scream?
She screamed the lyrics to We Don’t Talk About Bruno at 7:58 AM as she hopped out of my car in the circle drive.
She always sings the Dolores part, her sister sings Mirabel and I’m Bruno.
“And I wanted you to know that your bro loves you so
Let it in, let it out, let it rain, let it snow, let it goooooo……..”
Did the killer ever see Encanto?
Could we have sat in the same row of seats, on the same day, munching popcorn?
What if Amerie brushed past him in the aisle? Did she politely say, “Excuse me,” to the boy who would someday blow her eye sockets apart?
Was he chomping on bubble gum as he destroyed them all?
If so, what flavor?
Cinnamon?
Wintergreen?
Was the radio on as he drove to massacre them? Or did he drive in silence?
Was the sun in his eyes as he got out of the car in the parking lot?
Did his pockets hold sunglasses or just ammunition?
These are the things I will never know.
There is laundry in the dryer that is Amerie’s.
Clothes I never need to fold again.
Clothes that are right now warmer than her body.
How will I ever be able to take them out of the dryer and where will I put them if not back in her dresser?
I can never wash clothes in that dryer again.
It will stand silent; a tomb for her pajamas and knee socks.
Her cousin’s graduation party is next month and I already signed her name in the card. Should I cross it out?
That will be the last card I ever sign her name to.
The dog will live longer than she will.
The dog will be 12 next month and she will be eternally 10.
What will the school do with her backpack?
It was brand new this year and she attached her collection of keychains like cherished trophies to its zipper.
A beaded 4 leaf clover she made on St. Patty’s Day.
A red heart from a Walk-a-Thon.
A neon ice cream cone from her friend’s birthday party.
Now there will be no more keychains to attach.
No more trophies.
Surely they can’t throw it out?
Would they throw them all out?
19 backpacks, full of stickered assignments and rainboots, all taken to the dumpster behind the school?
Is there even a dumpster big enough to contain all that life?
These are the things someone else knows:
The moment the semiautomatic rifle was put into his hands–was “Bring Me a Higher Love” playing in the gun store? “Get off my Cloud” by the Rolling Stones? Maybe it was Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”
Did the Outback Oasis salesperson hesitate as they slid him 375 rounds of ammunition?
not my problem my kids are grown and out of school
Or I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to worry about their skulls getting blown across the naptime mat 
Or fingers crossed there’s a good guy with an equally powerful gun that will stop this gun if needed
Did they sense any danger or were they more focused on picking that morning’s Raisin Bran out of their teeth?
My Nana used to say, “Pay attention to what whispers, and you won’t have to when it starts screaming.”
But now I know there is a more deafening sound than children screaming.
More horrific even, than automatic rifles on a Tuesday morning.
I beg the world:
Pay attention to what’s screaming today, or be forced to endure the silence that follows.”
The culture of violence around raising children in the US is astounding. Scrapping Roe v Wade to turn unexpected fetuses into unwanted infants. Baby formula shortages to starve the babies already born. And then school shootings to kill them before they’re even grown. Astounding.
Still trying to wrap my head around the cops getting more kids shot because they decided to play school shooting Marco Polo
I mean I think the Supreme Court set a legal precedence that cops don’t have a legal responsibility to actually step in if they fear for their life while a crime is in progress.
And I read that the guy who killed the shooter also got domed himself, but of course it took border patrol swat to actually go in and do something. Apparently a lot of them had kids at that school go figure.
I mean, yes, but they actually played marco polo with the shooter.
Like they told kids to scream “help” WHILE THE SHOOTER WAS STILL INSIDE, ARMED AND ALIVE, and they were not with them, so one hiding girl did it, the shooter heard her, went back and killed her.
One of her schoolmates was close, also hiding, saw the murder and keep very quiet. He told everything to some reporter.
wait what in the fuck that wasn’t a metaphor
100% literal
Also, it’s worth remembering that the cops are constantly revising their story as more unfavorable information comes out. It’s entirely possible that what we learn from here will be even worse.
things i feel the need to clarify when im 100% sure i didnt shoot any innocent bystanders
They def shot at least one kid
I read about some of the parents saying the cops who had kids at that school went and got them out but wouldn’t let the parents in… this whole thing is just getting worse and worse
