Texas shooting latest news: Trump speaks at NRA meeting as Abbott ‘livid’ over police errors

Texas Democratic Gov. Beto O’Rourke has called on hundreds of protesters in Houston outside the National Rifle Association’s annual rally, calling for action on gun legislation after a shooting in Uvalde left 21 dead .

“So I ask you for those of you who are in power and are in office at the moment and who were on the road and refuse to act: Please promise me that you will put yourself in the face before another child shot them in the face, “he told protesters.

He has been speaking passionately since the shooting in Uvalde, including interrupting a press conference by the governor to argue his case.

Pretty Graig had the story about this one.

Members of the Uvalde police department temporarily prevented the elite Border Patrol command team that eventually killed Salvador Ramos from entering Robb Elementary School. The New York Times reports, citing anonymous government sources.

Specially trained officers with the Bortac SWAT force team drove from the U.S.-Mexico border to assist officers who responded to Uvalde.

They arrived between noon and 12:10 p.m., nearly 40 minutes before the 18-year-old gunman was killed by law enforcement.

During this time, nine different 911 calls came out of the school and the students were caught and shot.

The group was baffled by local agents telling them to wait temporarily, according to the newspaper, and did not know why the UValde PD SWAT team itself was no longer at the scene.

More details in our report.

Uvalde school police conducted active shooter training just two months before Salvador Ramos massacred 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.

The Texas City Consolidated Independent School District conducted the training session to “prepare as best as possible” exactly for the type of situation that took place earlier this week.

Uvalde’s CISD posted the training session on Facebook on March 22nd.

Graeme Massie studied his training practices.

The day after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott looked almost triumphant as he praised the police action.

“The reality is, no matter how horrible it happened, it could have been worse. The reason it wasn’t worse is because law enforcement did what they did,” Abbott said at the time.

Now, as evidence seems to have made crucial mistakes and they waited more than an hour to get past gunman Salvador Ramos, Abbott has changed his mind.

“It simply came to our notice then. I’m clear about what happened, “he told a news conference in Uvalde on Friday.

Get up to date on the controversy here.

When officers gathered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, they mistakenly believed the mass shooting was over and had become a “barricade subject” scenario.

As a result of this decision, they chose to wait for a backup and additional equipment before loading the classroom where gunman Salvador Ramos was locked up with dozens of terrified students.

The potentially deadly delay may have resulted in 19 students and 2 teachers being massacred inside.

“Of course it wasn’t the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period. There’s no excuse for that,” Steven C McCraw, director and colonel of the Texas Department of Homeland Security, told a news conference. Friday.

Uvalde police have faced scathing criticism that a failure on several levels led them to wait more than an hour before confronting Salvador Ramos and killing him.

It is an ironic echo of what happened the day of the shooting, where police took the very controversial step of waiting for more backups to arrive, even though about 20 officers were outside the classroom where Ramos was barricaded with students.

Speaking at an NRA event on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz reiterated a common Republican discussion point about gun control that only “goodies” with guns can stop active shooters.

“What stops the bad guys is the good guys,” he told the crowd in Houston.

That’s because dozens of officers spent more than an hour waiting to load and arrest Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos earlier in the week.

At this point, we’ve broken down some of the most important questions about the police response.

Just over a week before the Uvalde shooting, a white supremacist killed 10 people in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

Rev. Al Sharpton pointed to the parallel on Friday at a funeral of Geraldine Chapman Talley, one of the victims of the Buffalo shooting.

“Unless we start dealing with this easy access to guns, we are all targets,” the activist said. “It sounds crazy if you went to Texas to buy a beer, you have to prove you’re 18, but you can go buy an automatic rifle. We’re so tired.”

Texas police are receiving strong criticism after it was revealed that it took more than an hour to confront and kill Uvalde gunman Salvador Ramos, despite having a large number of officers at the scene.

In a heated exchange on Friday, CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz asked state officials why the 19 officers parked in a hallway near Ramos did no more.

“You say there were 19 officers gathered in the hallway or somewhere. What efforts were made to try to break down that door? You say it was closed. What efforts were the officers making?” he asked.

“Not at the time,” said Steven McCraw of the state’s public safety agency.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehnerhe said once this Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell “He keeps his feelings, thoughts and emotions in a tightly closed box so that every time one of them leaks, the spectators are silent.” On Thursday, he left everyone in Washington mut when he told CNN he was running the senator John Cornyn of Texas to start working Democratsincluding Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to find a “bipartisan solution.”

For Democrats, Mr. McConnell’s words offer some hope. Before Donald TrumpThe second complaint to incite the attack on the Capitol on January 6, the minority leader never fully ruled in favor of the conviction, although he was not shy about his fury against Trump; such as Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin of the New York Times he wrote in his book This Will Not Pass, the Kentucky Republican had expected an overwhelming bipartisan consensus to oust Trump for his actions, but he soon realized that was not enough. Republicans they were willing to cross the president.

This time, Mr. McConnell shows up at the front, and he probably knows there’s a chance 10 Republicans will come to him.

Read more at Eric Garciathe last column of Washington.