Mass-shooting report aims to help police elsewhere; Uvalde still divided; editor has advice for community journalists

Uvalde County (Wikipedia map)

The Justice Department's Thursday report on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is designed to help avoid the mistakes police made, but seems unlikely to heal the divisions that remain in the town of 15,000 and same-named county of 25,000.

“They’re recomending stuff that we already knew,” but “In a lot of smaller towns like Uvalde, police chiefs have to be questioning, ‘What’s in this report?’ . . . Let’s make sure I don’t become that person,” said John Miller, CNN's law-enforcement analyst and former spokesman for the FBI and the New York Police Department.

Miller said a gunman's killing of 19 students and two teachers, and the physical injury of 17 others, was “an incident that was just too big in a place that was just too small.” He said the incdent commander, the school police chief, should have ceded authority to better-equipped agencies. The investigation was requested by then-Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in Uvalde, said “The report concludes that had law-enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” rather than letting 77 minutes elapse between their first arrival and their killing of the shooter.

The report was the fullest account yet of the tragedy, but some victims' families said it should have named more names. Andrew McCabe, former FBI deputy director, said on CNN that the purpose of such a "critical indicdent review is not to hold people accountable, but to make a complete statement of facts and say how law enforcement can learn from mistakes."

Victims' families continued to demand action from local District Attorney Christina Miller Busbee, who has said she would wait for the report before taking any action. But they said many of their neighbors want to move on and not "be known as the place with a mass shooting," said Brett Cross, who was a guardian of a child killed in the shooting. "Maybe these people will start taking us seriously." UPDATE, Jan. 19: Sources tell the Austin American-Statesman that a judge has empaneled a grand jury "to consider possible criminal charges against law-enforcement officers. . . . It is unclear what charges the grand jury seated in Uvalde County state district court might consider against the officers, but they possibly include child endangerment or injury to a child, the Statesman confirmed." As for civil suits, in Texas they must be filed within two years of the injury.

Cross told CNN that the Uvalde community remains “very divided,” noting that several officers remain in their positions, some of them elected. “They don’t want to believe that the people grew up with failed our children.” Adam Martinez, father of an injured survivor, told CNN, “If we don’t put pressure, nothing is going to happen. . . . It’s uncomfortable when you have to say people didn’t do their job. . . . You have to go against the grain, and more people have to do that.”

Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, the school police chief, lost his job. In November, "Lt. Mariano Pargas of Uvalde police, who was the acting police chief on the day of the shooting, resigned days before the City Council was set to discuss his termination. He had been placed on leave in July; he stepped down following a CNN report that showed he was told that “eight to nine” children were alive in the classrooms but he failed to coordinate action," the Texas Tribune reported. He was re-elected to the county commission. The Washington Post reported one year after the May 24, 2022, shooting, "The first state police officer disciplined after the massacre was given the option to resign and now works for a local sheriff’s office."

Jan. 21 front page; for a larger version, click on it, or right-click to download.

UPDATE, Jan. 20: The Uvalde Leader-News reports, "On Friday, Jan. 19, a dozen people were selected to serve on a special grand jury that is expected to spend at least six months studying the May 24, 2022, Robb school shooting investigation. About 300 people were summoned to appear at 9 a.m. in the 38th Judicial District Court, and 67 people appeared. Juror turnout has been an ongoing issue for the court. Judge Camile DuBose said in some cases, a mailed summons may fail to reach the intended juror, but some people simply choose not to show up. She said for those who fail to appear, she can summon them to a hearing, where a $100 fine may be imposed on those who have no valid excuse for their failure to appear. For those who don’t show for the hearing, the sheriff’s office may be asked to locate the person and summon them to court."

Julye Keeble of The Leader-News explores possible outcomes: "Police officers are largely difficult to prosecute for inaction, and the law does not require police to risk their lives to protect the public. Per a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, police officers do not have a constitutional duty to protect others from harm. Few cases against law enforcement for failure to act are presented, and those that are typically fail." Keeble notes the acquittal last year of a school resource officer on charges for failing to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018.

"An ongoing debate, particularly seen in the wake of the Robb shooting, is whether police have a moral imperative to take action sooner in mass casualty situations, which often see a delay before an attacker is confronted," Keeble writes. "Though medical findings have not been made public, families allege some of those who died after the attack might have lived if bleeding had been staunched and they received medical treatment. Several Uvalde Police officers who were on the scene within minutes charged forward toward the adjoined classrooms where the attacker was, but were repelled after he fired at them. Two officers were wounded by shrapnel, and though one tried again to move forward, no others would follow. Officers told others the attacker had an AR rifle, and the destructive power of the weapon was likely a factor in guiding police decisions."

Leader-News Publisher Craig Garnett asked Garland at the press conference about the quality of the police response, especially in light of the police response to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. That comparison “is not entirely true, and the response was a failure,” said Hugh Clements Jr., director of the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which prepared the report.

Garnett's advice to community journalists

For his work on the tragedy and its aftermath, and his first 22 years at the paper, Garnett won the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog. He will receive the award Feb. 29 at the University of Texas-Austin, at a symposium, "Courage, Tenacity, Integrity and Innovation in Rural Journalism." For the audience at the Institute's Al Smith Awards Dinner in October, he had a video message for community journalists, published this week by The Daily Yonder. He said in part:

Craig Garnett

"One of the things we’ve taken away from May 24 is that we didn’t do enough before. We have a wall full of plaques from the South Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, but we didn’t do enough. We didn’t ask enough questions. We didn’t hold people running for elected office to account like we should have. We didn’t question people who wanted to run our institutions closely enough. What motivated them? What experience do they have? What would they do in a crisis?

"And we certainly didn’t hold our law enforcement to a high enough standard, the people who swore to protect us. So, we will work harder in the future to do that, to make sure that we know as much as we can about people who intend to lead our community, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy. We want to know how they’ll react. It’s not entirely possible. There are all kinds of things that pop up that you can’t plan for, but you can get a sense of where people’s souls lie and what their commitment is to your community.

"And that’s what I would advise to my fellow publishers in small towns. Pay attention. Pay attention to everything, to those people who run institutions, to the kid who’s slipping between the cracks, who might one day become the same school shooter we had. Be invested beyond what you are now, if that’s possible. I know most of you work your hearts out. But if there’s one thing we would like to do better, it would’ve been that."

Rural journalists 'knit communities together', have answers for problems in journalism, says USA Today's Susan Page

Susan Page listens to a question as moderator Benjy Hamm, director
of the Institute for Rural Journalism, listens. (Photo by Patti Cross)

"Rural journalism has some of the answers for all sorts of journalism, lessons on covering the news, and earning trust from our readers and viewers," Susan Page of USA Today told 175 people gathered Thursday night for the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner in Lexington, Ky.

"Local news is more trusted than national news," Page noted, citing the latest Gallup poll that found only 7 percent of Americans "have a great deal of trust in what we report and write? . . . Why? You are connected to your communities. You cover the news that matters most to your readers. If you get something wrong, you’re going to hear about it from your next-door neighbor. That really increases the pressure to get things right, and to correct them when you don’t. Those are qualities that every news organization ought to aspire to as well. That’s the lesson of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues."

The institute, which publishes The Rural Blog, holds the dinner with the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists to present student scholarships and the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckians, named for the late publisher who co-founded the institute at the University of Kentucky.

"I’m honored to share the stage with the scholarship winners and with Ben Gish and Sam Adams of The Mountain Eagle" in Whitesburg, Ky., said Page, USA Today's Washington Bureau chief. "Congratulations for your coverage, so crucial to your community, of last year’s historic flood in southeastern Kentucky, which cost 45 people their lives."

The dinner also heard video remarks from Craig Garnett, editor-publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News in Texas, winner of the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism. He couldn't attend but will receive the award at an event in Texas this winter. Page praised him for "holding to account officials in the aftermath of that terrible school shooting -- well, it takes your breath away. He stood up for those 19 kids and two teachers" who died in May 2022.

Page cited other recent examples of courage in rural journalism: "This summer in Marion, Kansas, my home state, the police chief was so worried about a story that the Marion County Record was working on -- a story about him -- that he got a subpoena and raided their offices. They seized computers and phones in what was a violation of federal law, not to mention the First Amendment. In the aftermath, the police chief has been suspended, and the Marion County Record has gotten its equipment back. And this spring in Idabel, Oklahoma, the McCurtain Gazette-News recorded top county officials discussing wanting to kill one of the newspaper’s reporters while remembering fondly the days when a sheriff could, quote, take a 'black guy, throw him in a cell and beat him.' The sheriff was suspended; the jail administrator was put on leave; one of the county commissioners resigned, and the state attorney general opened an investigation.

"This is what journalists do. This is what journalism does. We also do more. We help readers understand how to file for federal disaster aid after their town is flooded. We track high-school sports. (Does anything attract more readers?) We warn readers when a local bridge has been condemned. We tell them where to go to get the best pizza in town. We knit communities together."

Uvalde Leader-News Publisher Craig Garnett wins Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

Uvalde Leader-News Publisher Craig Garnett (OPA photo)

Craig Garnett, publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News in southwest Texas, is the winner of the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award presented by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.

Garnett owns the twice-weekly newspaper that continues to cover, and contend with, the aftermath of the May 2022 school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers died.

“The award recognizes not only Craig’s courageous coverage and commentary about the tragedy, but his longtime willingness to tell hard truths about things that matter in Uvalde County,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute and extension professor of journalism.

Tom and Pat Gish

The award is named for the couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky, for more than 50 years. Their son and successor, Ben Gish, is on the award selection committee. He said of Garnett and the Leader-News, “It’s one thing to read national news accounts about law enforcement not moving quickly enough to save the lives of many of the victims, but it’s entirely something else to read the local newspaper’s far deeper accounts of that continuing controversy. . . . The Leader-News does not hesitate when it comes to letting family members of the victims have their say, nor does it shy away from printing the responses of those whose actions, or lack thereof, are being questioned.”

In a column shortly after the shooting, Garnett wrote that a regional police official "could not answer why it took an hour to end the attack" and quoted him: "It is a complex situation. They are measuring; they are measuring." He wrote, "The question is how much measuring is permissible, while children are being murdered. Or perhaps they were already gone. It pains to write these words of criticism about law enforcement, but parents and the community have the right to know. They must be told why police, whom parents at the scene begged to go in and save their children, failed to act. They have to know, to ever begin to heal."

He concluded, "There is a final question that no one will ever adequately answer. It came on Thursday in the form of a text message from our reporter, Kimberly Rubio, whose fourth-grader Lexi did not come home that day: 'Why would someone hurt my baby, Craig?'"

Rubio, now in the newspaper’s advertising department, praised Garnett for the paper’s family atmosphere and encouraging environment: “He is gifted in seeing a person’s potential. He is a teacher, able to guide us as we harness that potential. He believes in us, and we learn to believe in ourselves. I have the same faith in him and his writing staff.”

Garnett spent hours “sitting with families who lost children, siblings, friends; interviewing survivors, teachers and students, about their experience,” Leader-News Managing Editor Meghann Garcia said in nominating him. She said he has made a “dogged pursuit to learn how so many things went wrong that day, how every single fail-safe failed. . . . He has done all of this without a break from the office, from the work.”

In an editorial a month after the shooting, Garnett named names and was blunt: “No mass school shooting in the United States has ended with such glaring failures in both the law enforcement response and school district security. . . . Neither [school] Police Chief Pete Arredondo, acting city chief Mariano Pargas, Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco nor any state or federal officer among the 376 responders to the scene was willing to take the helm of what was clearly a rudderless ship cast into a hurricane.”

A week later, another Garnett piece endorsing more gun control concluded: “I am not about to surrender my guns, and they are many, but I challenge you to give me one good reason (and please not the “slippery slope” argument that did not come to pass when assault weapons were banned) why a teenager should have the firepower to stand down 376 lawmen. If disturbed young men are going to commit horrific crimes with firearms, why not take the most devastating amplifier out of the mass shooting equation?”

Uvalde County (Wikipedia map)

Criticism of local law enforcement and support for more gun control didn’t sit well with some people in the town of 15,000 and county of 25,000. Garnett said at a meeting of the newspaper association in Oklahoma, his native state, that by the end of the day of the shooting, “The school and police agencies that the newspaper had a good relationship with all clammed up. A year later we still can’t get answers. We have filed about 10 to 15 requests with the school district and still can’t get any answers.”

Garcia began her nomination of Garnett with the story of a call from a reader who objected to a picture of “a local pediatrician, outspoken in the shooting aftermath, at the White House, in a commanding photo with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” The caller said Garnett had “better not acknowledge Biden's presidency again if he wanted to keep the caller's subscription,” Garcia wrote. “The call was mild compared to what the newspaper staff had fielded over previous weeks . . . . Craig immediately turned to his typewriter to work on a subscription refund check and your-wish-is-now-granted letter.”

Garcia continued, “It wasn't the first time our coverage, or Craig's politics, went against the grain.” Garnett had editorialized against the Iraq War, and opposed “a water pipeline that would take local water, dearly needed for agriculture, a mainstay of the area economy, and funnel it to San Antonio,” she wrote. And four years before the shooting, he opposed the idea of a separate school police force, which botched the response to the shooting. The next year, the paper a guest-written series of stories about the local Ku Klux Klan chapter of 100 years before.

“Craig has never been afraid of taking a stand or telling the news, despite how unpopular it might be with subscribers and advertisers, who are also often his friends,” Garcia wrote. And he has used his own family’s troubling experience as an example to give hope to others.

His wife, Melissa Garnett, told the Gish Award selection committee, “One of his best columns was about our son’s process of recovery from drugs and alcohol. That took courage. He must have hit all the right notes, as the response was great – he had taken the bold step of using his pain of an addicted child to remove the stigma of talking about addiction.”

The column celebrated their son’s year-plus of sobriety and concluded, “Far too many addicts today, especially those in thrall to opioids, don’t get Logan’s chance at recovery. The steps that will lead them from a world of pain and failure remain stubbornly distant and daily receding until hope is lost. We should do all we can to help them discover a path because inside every addict lives someone’s treasured child, father, husband, brother or friend.”

Garnett “and his paper have been a continuing source of strength in that community and beyond,” said selection committee member Bill Bishop, founding editor of The Daily Yonder, a national rural-news publication and a former weekly editor in Bastrop, Texas, and columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.

Garnett, who earned an economics degree from Southern Methodist University, joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1977, moved to the Kansas City Star in 1978, became general manager of the Leader-News in 1982 and owner and publisher in 1989. Under his ownership, the newspaper has won many awards.

“I am extremely honored to receive the Gish Award,” Garnett said. “And I am deeply humbled by the support from coworkers and friends in the industry who thought my work worthy of such recognition.”

The Institute for Rural Journalism (publisher of The Rural Blog) will present the Gish Award to Craig Garnett in Texas, at a time and place to be determined. UPDATE, Dec. 17: The award will be presented Feb. 29 at the University of Texas during a symposium, "Courage, Tenacity, Integrity and Innovation in Rural Journalism," sponsored by the Institute, the Texas Center for Community Journalism at Tarleton State University and The Center for Ethical Leadership in Media in the UT School of Journalism and Media.

Garnett will be recognized Oct. 26 in Lexington, Ky., at the Institute’s annual Al Smith Awards Dinner, with USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page as the keynote speaker. At that event, Ben Gish and Mountain Eagle reporter Sam Adams will receive the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckians.

Cop in charge at Uvalde quits after CNN reveals he knew 8 or 9 kids needed saving, and after re-election to county post

Top half of the twice-weekly's latest front page; click on it to enlarge

The acting police chief during the elementary-school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, "will no longer serve on the force, following release of a phone call showing he knew that 'eight to nine' victims were still alive inside two interconnected classrooms" at Robb Elementary School, Publisher Craig Garnett reports for the Uvalde Leader-News. Mayor Don McLaughlin told Garnett that Lt. Mariano Pargas "will be gone by this week, whether he chooses to retire or he's fired."

“If we’d had those videos that he (CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz) showed on Pargas, then we would have done something two months ago,” McLaughin told Garnett. The Associated Press reports that Pargas left the agency "voluntarily but it was not immediately clear whether he retired or resigned, according to city spokeswoman Gina Eisenberg."

Pargas is a member of the Uvalde County Commissioner's Court but was absent Wednesday when "six community members called for Pargas to resign the post he was re-elected to on Nov. 8," Julye Keeble reports for the Leader-News. Two people who lost relatives in the May 24 shootings "expressed disappointment that Pargas did not attend the meeting and called on him to resign," Keeble reports. "Diana Olvedo-Karau, one of three write-in candidates against Pargas in the general election, which he won with slightly over 45 percent of the fewer than 1,300 votes cast, said she does not dispute the election results but she is disappointed in the low voter turnout."

"Olvedo-Karau implored commissioners to remove Pargas from office," Keeble reports. "They do not have the authority to remove a sitting commissioner. . . . She said she is convinced of his failure to act at Robb Elementary School on May 24, where 19 students and two teachers died after law enforcement waited 77 minutes to breach the adjoining classrooms where survivors waited."

AP reports, "In the months after the shooting, state officials have focused blame on the school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, saying he made “terrible decisions” as the on-scene commander not to confront the gunman sooner. Arredondo was fired in August but has said he didn’t consider himself the person in charge and assumed someone else had taken control of the police response that eventually swelled to nearly 400 officers." The Leader-News' main headline Wednesday was "Pargas knew children needed saving."

Gun roundup: Rural firearm death rates rose 88% in 2010-2020; a profile of 'good guys with guns' in rural Georgia . . .

Gun homicide rates per 100,000 residents
(Washington Post charts sourced from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data).

Gun death rates rose in urban, suburban and rural areas of the U.S. from 2010 to 2020, and much more in rural areas, the Post reports. The rural rate rose 88 percent; suburban and urban rates rose 67% and 58%, respectively. States with easier access to firearms tend to show steeper increases in gun deaths, the data show. Rural gun deaths are more likely to be due to suicide than homicide.

Stephanie McCrummen of The Washington Post has an interesting and nuanced profile of two cousins in rural Georgia, ages 23 and 18, who worry about gun violence, but believe a "good guy with a gun" can help in emergencies. Read it here.

Marshall County, in rural North Carolina, is stocking its schools with AR-15s to try to prevent a mass shooting, Joe Marusak reports for The Charlotte Observer. The sheriff said the caches will give deputies quick access to more high-powered firearms in such emergencies. County officials welcomed the notion, which county residents paid for with private donations. However, an education professor who has long studied school safety warns that the presence of the firearms increases the likelihood of accidents and violence.

Uvalde paper calls police response 'a rudderless ship cast into a hurricane,' calls for more accountability and training

The Uvalde Leader-News, the twice-weekly newspaper in the town where an 18-year-old used an assault rifle to kill 19 students and two teachers, and wound 17 others on May 24, called in an editorial Sunday for more accountability for the failed police response ("a rudderless ship cast into a hurricane") and more training to prevent further such disasters. Here is the full editorial: 

    The special [state] House report on the mass shooting at Robb Elementary has delivered a devastating blow to public trust in two of our most revered institutions. Law enforcement and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District are singled out in the 77-page document for “multiple systemic failures.” The question that we must all consider and somehow answer is how the community goes about restoring trust.
    It is a profound challenge without precedent. No mass school shooting in the United States has ended with such glaring failures in both the law enforcement response and school district security. That fact alone has been an egregious multiplier of the misery felt by the families of victims and, by extension, the entire community.
    The House committee report, which has been widely accepted as the most credible accounting to date of the May 24 attack, described the law enforcement response as “chaotic” and “uncoordinated.” According to the report, since Columbine in 1999, active shooter training requires all officers to embrace the mantra “stop the killing, stop the dying,” even if it means sacrificing their own lives.
    “At Robb Elementary law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” the report reads.
    Furthermore, the school district’s written active shooter plan (UCISD officers hosted and helped instruct an active shooter training course for area law enforcement last March) directed the school police chief to assume command of the scene.
    As we are all painfully aware, neither UCISD police chief Pete Arredondo, acting city chief Mariano Pargas, Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco nor any state or federal officer among the 376 responders to the scene was willing to take the helm of what was clearly a rudderless ship cast into a hurricane.
    So how do we restore these ailing institutions to something approximating health? The school district took a halting first step on June 22 by placing Arredondo on administrative leave. A special meeting scheduled yesterday to consider terminating the chief was canceled Friday after Arredondo requested a formal hearing. His status is now unpaid administrative leave.
    Assuming Arredondo will soon be gone, the district should not simply add more officers to a force born of a failed culture. Administration needs to start over or disband the department altogether, as is being done by an increasing number of districts across the nation.
   UCISD building security, which received withering criticism, can be enhanced. Doors that lock reliably, lockdown alerts that actually work, and meaningful perimeter fencing could have bought the few minutes necessary to stop the Robb killer.
    For any of that to be effective, school employees will have to shake off a sense of complacency and be willing to follow strict guidelines. No propping open doors, no substitute teachers without keys, and lockdown protocols that distinguish between an active shooter and the ongoing bailouts that plague our region.
    The city of Uvalde has placed Pargas on administrative leave and is preparing for an independent review of the entire department. Following that analysis, some officers may find themselves unemployed. That will be part of the costly but necessary process of restoring trust.
    None of these measures eliminate the need for further accountability. And while spreading it around – especially among the battalion of officers who responded to Robb – is appropriate, it does not change one important fact. If our city is ever again called upon to stop an active shooter, we must have officers in place who can execute the mission without backup or hesitation. That is what the training calls for. And that is what we should demand.

Quick hits: Many fireworks displays canceled; fewer of us drink milk; rural Texas students fight local book bans

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Communities across the nation are canceling their Independence Day fireworks displays because of wildfire hazards, supply-chain issues and worker shortages. Read more here.

In a town near Uvalde, Texas, teachers have carried weapons since 2013. Parents say they feel safer. Read more here.

An LGBTQ high school student in rural Texas organized students to fight the local school board's book bans. Read more here.

A recent study says that lack of water costs families, communities and the U.S. economy $8.58 billion each year. Read more here.

Bird-flu outbreaks are slowing down, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is urging poultry farmers to be ready for a possible resurgence in the fall. Read more here.

Consumption of fluid cow's milk is continuing a downward trend that is proving difficult to reverse, according to a new USDA report. Read more here.

Journalists and a grieving community can find it hard to coexist, especially if the town's police force is in question

This is not an uncommon sight in Uvalde, Texas, this month. (Associated Press photo by Jae C. Hong)

The Associated Press reports from Uvalde, Texas: "As a knot of journalists stood across from a mortuary witnessing a funeral for a child killed in the Uvalde school massacre, some people passing by didn’t disguise their anger. 'Y’all are the scum of the Earth,' said one woman, surveying the cameras."

"When tragedy comes to town in the 21st century, the media follows, focusing the world’s eyes on a community during its most difficult hours," AP media reporter David Bauder writes. "Journalists are called upon to explain what happened, and sometimes to ask uncomfortable questions in places where many people want to be left alone to grieve. Is it possible to do it better, to co-exist within a moment no one wants to be part of?

"Tempers have flared in Uvalde. One female journalist was told, 'I hope your entire family dies in a massacre.' Some are threatened with arrest for trespassing while on public property. A group called 'Guardians of the Children' blocked camera views, often with the encouragement of police."

That sort of thing has happened at other school-shooting sites, but tensions are higher in Uvalde. Bauder notes, "Questions raised about the police response to the shooting have lengthened the time the shooting has lingered in the news and increased hostility toward journalists." Guillermo Contereras, a senior writer at the nearby San Antonio Express-News, told AP,  “You have people who are supportive of law enforcement,” Contreras said. “It’s a small town; people know each other. All of a sudden people are pointing fingers at the officers you know, so there’s a division.”

Monsignor Robert Weiss of the town’s St. Rose of Lima Parish "said he found the press respectful and has come to understand the importance of its role," Bauder reports, quoting him: “We needed to get the story out there and we needed to keep this story out there. Because in 10 years, what has changed? If anything, it has gotten worse.”

AP journalists Acacia Coronado, Jae C. Hong, Adriana Gomez Licon, Jay Reeves and Eliot Spagat in Uvalde contributed to Bauder's story from Uvalde.

Suggestions for localizing this week's big national story, and a look at how effective gun laws have been or might be

Tom Silvestri of The Relevance Project writes:

There is plenty of reporting to be done localizing the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. And Buffalo, N.Y. Consider initially documenting trends in three areas:
Gun ownership and gun purchases: Lots to consider. Start with what percentage of local households and commercial establishments own guns. If you want one focus, analyze statistics on the type of guns -- "assault rifle," long guns, or those that fire large amounts of bullets in short periods -- that were used in the New York and Texas mass shootings. Another focus: Guns being bought by individuals age 21 and under.
Mental health and treatment: If you want one focus, report how many people have been identified as threats and what happened after the initial inquiry. Explain how local authorities treat reports of dangerous individuals, antisocial behavior, or people in danger. Also: Describe in numbers your community's safety net to treat mental illness.
Deaths and injuries involving guns: Compare and contrast with other causes of death and injury.
If possible, analyze over the last 10 years. A narrower range could be the pandemic years as we are learning the dangers of prolonger isolation.
Added starter: Crime reports involving incidents on school properties.
In all efforts, stick to the facts. Run counter to today's "opinion first, facts later." Godspeed on such important, relevant coverage.

As calls for stricter gun control are debated, maybe we should ask, just how effective are gun laws? "Many proposed laws probably would not have much impact on curbing the mass shootings that dominate the news. But they could lessen their severity, and might also bring down overall gun violence," writes Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler. His analysis starts with a look at President Biden's claim that “When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.” He pokes several holes Biden's claim but cites evidence that the 1994 assault-weapons law "may have been effective in reducing the death toll" by limiting large-capacity magazines.

DeVos provides few details on Trump administration push to reopen schools in the fall

School districts are grappling with how or whether to reopen schools in the fall, and though the Trump administration has called for reopening, it hasn't said how to accomplish that. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sat for interviews Sunday on CNN and Fox News, but offered little clarity on the matter.

"Pressed on how schools in areas with high rates of the coronavirus should protect children and communities, she provided few details," Evie Blad reports for Education Week. "Also unclear: the details of repeated threats made by DeVos and President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from schools that don't reopen, and exactly what a satisfactory school reopening would look like."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that schools limit bus riders, ensure that students wear masks, and space desks six feet apart, but DeVos stressed to CNN's Dana Bash that those are only recommendations, that no two schools are the same, and said that education leaders are smart enough to figure out how to tailor CDC prevention and outbreak-containment guidelines to each individual school, Blad reports.

"Pressed by Fox's Chris Wallace on why the administration would threaten schools' funding during the pandemic, DeVos reiterated previous statements that seemed to allude to a push for a private school choice option," Blad reports. DeVos, who has been a strong proponent of private education, told Wallace: "American investment is a promise to students and their families . . . If schools aren't going to reopen and fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds. Then give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise."

Wallace pointed out that DeVos didn't have the authority to redirect federal funds authorized by Congress; DeVos said she is considering "all options," Blad reports.

Fact Check: Trump wrong about 'Medicare for all,' school violence funding; ad criticizing Tenn. Republican spins facts

Here's another installment of a series we are running weekly until Election Day, in which we list some of the most relevant items from FactCheck.org and other nonpartisan fact checkers. We encourage you to subscribe to their alerts, which you can do here, and republish their findings, which FactCheck lets anyone do for free with credit to them.

In President Trump's Oct. 10 op-ed for USA Today about 'Medicare for all' proposals, "almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood," Glenn Kessler writes for The Washington Post's Fact Checker column. Kessler presumes the president must know that most of his claims have already been debunked by Fact Checker, since Trump links to two of them in his op-ed, but chose to ignore the facts. Trump is correct that the plan promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would cost the federal government $32.6 trillion over 10 years, but doesn't mention that overall national health expenditures might not increase because costs for individuals and state governments would go down. Kessler does a point-by-point debunking of Trump's claims in the op-ed; it's too long for us to detail here, but well worth the read. Read more here.

A TV ad criticizing Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., spins the facts about her votes on health-care issues, Lori Roberts reports for FactCheck.org. Majority Forward, an organization affiliated with the Democratic super PAC Senate Majority, launched the ad in early October to help Blackburn's Democratic challenger, former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen. The ad claims Blackburn voted in 2012 to "give members of Congress health care for life," but lawmakers had already received a health insurance retirement benefit. "There was a possibility at the time that lawmakers could have lost the benefit, but that never happened," Roberts reports. The ad also says she voted in 2017 to take away maternity coverage, but that's not necessarily true. Her vote to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would have meant that some states would no longer require insurers to offer maternity coverage, but insurers could still keep that coverage. Similar claims are likely being made against other Republican House members.

At an event for law enforcement officials, Trump said his administration's STOP School Violence Act had provided "historic levels of funding to improve school safety" and "hire more officers." But this is untrue, because the new law doesn't fund school safety at "historic levels," Eugene Kiely reports for FactCheck.org. The act, which was signed in March, was funded with $75 million shifted from an existing school safety program. "But a single program created in the late 1990s and since disbanded, called COPS in Schools, provided as much as $180 million in fiscal year 2000, according to a 2017 government report. That’s $260 million in 2018 dollars," Kiely reports.

Criminal-justice prof says studies show arming teachers is less effective than other measures against school shootings

"Arming teachers to protect against school shootings is likely less effective than other safety measures, including laws that hold gun owners responsible when minors get a hold of negligently stored firearms," says a research review written for the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York, reports Route Fifty.

The notion of arming teachers has gained popularity, especially in rural areas where gun ownership is higher and many schools fear they're too far away for law enforcement to reach in time. But there is little if any research to support the idea. "While no data exist to support the assertion that the presence of armed individuals has been or would be successful in stopping school shootings, there is evidence that indicates such a policy would fail to meet its intended goals," Jaclyn Schildkraut, a criminal-justice professor at SUNY Oswego, writes for the the Rockefeller Institute of Government. 

On the belief that an average civilian would be less accurate with a firearm than a law-enforcement officer, Schildkraut examined research that studied officers' accuracy rates in firearm discharges. A two-decade study found that officers' bullets hit their targets around 20 percent of the time, a figure that remained steady despite improvements in weaponry and training. Another study of New York City officers involved in active-shooter incidents found that the officers' accuracy was 30 percent when no one was shooting back at them, and 18 percent when someone was.

A person's ability to accurately fire a gun during a stressful situation may be hampered by the body's physical response to stress, even after training, Schildkraut writes: "Civilians receive considerably less firearms training in general as compared to law enforcement officers and such instruction does not typically include stress-inducing simulations. Thus, it is conceivable that their accuracy rate during a shooting would be considerably lower, even if they were to receive more extensive training." Also, if civilians have guns during an active-shooter situation, police responders have to spend extra time trying to figure out who is the shooter and who is an armed bystander, Schildkraut notes.

Research shows that civilians have had greater success in ending active-shooter situations without using a firearm, Schildkraut writes: "In sum, the evidence suggests that arming teachers (and other civilians) not only could fail to deter a school shooter, it potentially could make these events more lethal."

Education Department says school officials have always been able to use federal money to buy teachers guns

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Friday that she has "no intention of taking any action concerning the purchase of firearms or firearms training for school staff," a step that may allow state and local officials buy guns with funds from a grant program her department manages.

"Congress did not authorize me or the department to make those decisions," DeVos wrote, replying to a letter from Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia "and dozens of other Democratic lawmakers" concerned about the idea, Education Week reports.

In the school-safety package it passed in March, Congress said the money couldn't be used to buy guns, but that doesn't apply to Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, a program "that makes no mention of prohibiting weapons purchases," The New York Times reported last week.

The Times said DeVos could "use her discretion to approve any state or district plans to use grant funding for firearms and firearm training," but one of her top deputies told Maria Danilova of The Associated Press that states have always had the power to decide how to use the money.

Frank Brogan, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, said arming educators “is a good example of a profoundly personal decision on the part of a school or a school district or even a state,” Danilova reports, adding, "President Donald Trump and DeVos have said that schools may benefit from having armed teachers and should have that option. . . . Democrats and education groups have argued, however, that the funds are intended for academics, not guns."

"Democrats said they were outraged" by the statements fo Brogan and DeVos, Kimberly Hefling and Michael Stratford report for Politico.

U.S. Department of Education may let states use its grant funds to buy guns for teachers

The U.S. Department of Education is considering whether to allow states to use federal grant funding set aside for educational purposes and student services to buy guns for teachers.

"Such a move would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weapons," Erica Green reports for The New York Times. "And it would also undermine efforts by Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns. As recently as March, Congress passed a school safety bill that allocated $50 million a year to local school districts, but expressly prohibited the use of the money for firearms. But the department is eyeing a program in federal education law, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, that makes no mention of prohibiting weapons purchases. That omission would allow the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to use her discretion to approve any state or district plans to use grant funding for firearms and firearm training, unless Congress clarifies the law or bans such funding through legislative action."

Education Week reports that rural Arkansas teachers told the Federal School Safety Commission that sheriffs were 20 to 30 minutes away from their schools, and they felt arming teachers was the best way to keep their students safe.

But one Texas school says it and other rural schools can have a harder time getting grant money to add security measures to protect against active shooters. At Granger Independent School District in Williamson County, leaders say using funding for such measures means diverting scarce funding from educational needs, Steffi Lee reports for KXAN-TV in Austin. Supt. Randy Willis told Lee that rural schools are sometimes ignored when federal and state officials discuss grant options.

"I have two principals and I have two people in central administration that help me with counseling, our accountability and our testing," Willis told Lee. "So when you have to write a . . . grant application and you have to put all this stuff in to write that grant, it takes time and it takes expertise."

Rural Arkansas educators tell DOE commission that rural areas, too far from law enforcement, need armed teachers

"Proposals to arm teachers and school staff have stirred controversy since the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla., but such plans are sometimes the best options for rural schools far from first responders, state and school officials told the Federal School Safety Commission at a site visit in Arkansas on Wednesday," Elvie Blad reports for Education Week.

Lake Hamilton Schools Supt. Steve Anderson, who carries a gun at school, told the commission that sheriffs said they would be 20 to 30 minutes away during an active-shooter situation, and that the district needed someone closer to protect the students. Another superintendent told the panel of a time when, after hearing three gunshots on an elementary playground, she ran to respond as the gunman ran away. She said she felt relieved and empowered to know that she had a gun and could protect her students, Blad reports.

"The federal task force, chaired by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has held public comment hearings, convened panels of experts, and visited schools of various sizes to hear about how they prevent and respond to school violence since it was formed in the spring. DeVos was not present at Wednesday's meeting in Pearcy, Arkansas, which was led by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions," Blad reports. "The commission heard testimony from local supporters of armed school staff, but it did not hear from any of the groups who have opposed such proposals."

Jay Barth, chair of the Arkansas Board of Education, told the commission that armed school staff shouldn't include teachers, since he said they need to concentrate on educating children, Blad reports. But hiring trained officers might not always be possible because the state already struggles to hire and retain enough officers, according to Jami Cook, director of the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training.

Idea to arm teachers hits a bump: insurance premiums

In the ongoing debate over school violence, the notion of arming teachers has been more popular than gun-control proposals in rural and conservative areas. But some insurance companies think armed teachers not only won't stop mass shootings, but will cause more accidents, and they're charging accordingly higher rates. Others are refusing to cover schools with armed teachers at all. That's why almost no teachers carry guns in the classroom in Kansas, even though they are legally allowed to do so, Todd Frankel reports for The Washington Post.

At least 10 states have laws allowing instructors to carry firearms, and 17 more have considered similar bills since the Parkland, Fla., shooting. Some of those bills failed once legislators found out how much it would cost to insure schools.

"The reaction of insurance companies is notable because they are supposed to evaluate dangers through the dry eye of actuarial science, largely avoiding the heated emotions of the nation’s gun debate, in which one side condemns guns and the other side claims, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) did last week, that the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun," Frankel reports.

Insurers have reason to worry about increased costs: the 2017 Las Vegas shooting in which 58 concert-goers were killed could cost insurance companies more than $1 billion, according to the International Risk Management Institute. And the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, with 32 dead and 17 injured, cost insurers at least $50 million for security upgrades and lawsuit settlement costs, said Paul Marshall of McGowan Program Administrators, Frankel reports.

It's not just active shooters the insurers fear. "Reports of teachers caught bringing guns to school reinforce insurers’ concerns," Frankel reports. "In 2014, a sixth-grade teacher in Utah mistakenly shot a school toilet. No one was injured. Utah allows people with concealed-weapons permits to carry handguns on campus." Adding trained police or resource officers is more popular with insurers.

Western Kentucky county rocked by high-school shooting remains skeptical of gun control measures

A deadly school shooting rocked Marshall County High School in Western Kentucky this January, but that hasn't changed local attitudes about gun control very much, Dylan Lovan reports for The Associated Press.

Lovan focuses first on Jeff Dysinger, whose 15-year-old daughter Hannah was shot in the arm and chest. He doesn't agree with calls to curb military-style weapons. A former soldier who uses his AR-15 for sport shooting and hunting, he told Lovan, "I think everybody in rural Kentucky, we're all brought up with guns, I mean we've all been around guns our entire life. . . . Kids in cities like (Parkland, Fla.) don't get that." Hannah Dysinger said she supports more comprehensive background checks and, like her dad, wants to make sure the wrong people don't get their hands on guns.

Marshall County (Wikipedia map)

That stance is reflected by former sheriff Brian Roy, who was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Congress in 1996, the election after a Republican won the seat for the first time since the Civil War, partly because the one-term Democrat had cast a vote that helped put an "assault weapons" ban in that year's crime bill. "I think everybody here respects guns. We appreciate the opportunity to have them," Roy said. "We respect the Second Amendment. We're not going to be the type to go out and have any dramatic changes, because we've grown up with guns, for hunting."

Marshall County generally reflects the gun views of rural America. Lovan notes, "A Pew Research poll from April 2017 showed 63 percent of Americans in rural areas said it's more important to support gun rights than gun control, compared to only 37 percent in urban areas."

After the shooting, the conversation in Marshall County tended to focus not on gun control, but on improving security and increasing the presence of armed personnel in schools. School Supt. Trent Lovett said his students' familiarity with guns may have helped save lives; when shooter Gabriel Parker was changing magazines on his Ruger, some students saw the moment for what it was and were able to direct students to run.

Rural weekly editors' perspective on the gun debate

Following our recent item about the difference between a March for Our Lives rally in rural Kentucky and those in more urban areas, we wondered what the nation's rural newspapers had to say about the debate on guns and school violence. Here are examples from a few rural weeklies:

Editor Anthony Campbell of the Advertiser-Gleam in Guntersville, Ala. (pop 8,197), said he had "conflicted feelings" about a state House bill to allow teachers to carry guns. As a hunter and avid recreational shooter, he says he is pro-Second Amendment, but abhors open-carry laws because he doesn't know how much training a gun owner has had. "Bearing arms is a right," he writes. "But it is also a big responsibility." He likes that the proposed bill would require 40 hours of training and a mental evaluation. Read him here.

John Newkirk of the Canyon Courier in Evergreen, Colo. (pop. 9,038), says the problem goes deeper than the National Rifle Association or gun manufacturers: "By all means, let’s get out there and protest: let’s protest the Hollywood hypocrites who sanctimoniously stand against gun violence but then strap on multiple assault weapons for their latest 'action-adventure' film. Let’s protest the purveyors of ultra-violent video games that normalize killing and give first prize for the highest body count. Let’s protest a system that won’t hesitate to politicize our students yet spends little if any time on character development." Read it here.

The Blackshear Times (motto: "Liked by many, cussed by some, read by them all") in a Georgia town of 3,445 remonstrated readers for spreading unfounded rumors on social media after an alleged local school-shooting threat. "You very likely do not know as much information about the situation as do your school officials and our law enforcement. There is a reason for that: They are trained and given the direct responsibility to deal with such situations . . . Stop: Don’t get swept away in fits of hysteria. Look: Check other trusted, more reliable, sources before you spread information. Listen: We all have a voice inside our heads that begs us not to react too quickly, to be careful, to use good judgment. Listen to that voice." Read more here.

Mike Buffington of the Jackson Herald in Jefferson, Ga. (pop. 9,432), writes that it wasn't unusual for high-school students to have a rifle in their cars in the school parking lot in his youth, "but the world has changed a lot since then. As the recent events in Florida demonstrate, there is no reason anyone under the age of 21 should be able to buy a gun, especially a high-capacity rifle. Raising the purchase age to 21 should be a no-brainer." An avid recreational shooter and antique gun collector, Buffington also says we must stop viewing guns as a form of political expression. "A gun is a gun; it's not the national symbol."

The Perry County News in Tell City, Ind. (pop. 19,388), focused on school safety rather than guns, saying that local efforts to fund the hiring of more resource officers were "a step in the right direction" and noted that "87 percent of school resource officers report confiscating knives from students, with two-thirds of officers saying they’ve prevented assaults on faculty. That is of the more than 7,000 officers patrolling schools across the nation." Read more here.

In the twice-weekly Cody Enterprise (in the Wyoming town of 9,500 founded by gunslinger William "Buffalo Bill" Cody), Editor Amber Peabody acknowledged that the gun debate is contentious, but said that there are many common-sense steps local schools can take and have taken to reduce students' risk. She applauded students in the nearby Riverton school district who had told the school board they felt unsafe. "The students demanding action in Riverton and throughout the nation deserve credit. We can’t expect any one change to eliminate shootings, but as the Riverton students’ mentioned, lets not fail them. This is not about politics, it's about collaborating and even compromising for the safety of our students." Read more here.

Rural Kentucky community, site of recent school shooting, holds March for Our Lives rally, calls for gun safety

Saturday's March for Our Lives was one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam War, with at least 1.2 million participants across the U.S. and other countries protesting gun violence and school shootings. Rural kids marched too, but some focused more on gun safety rather than gun control.

The March for Our Lives rally in Marshall County, Kentucky
(Photo by WKMS-FM, Murray, Ky.)

Marshall County High School in Western Kentucky was the site of a deadly school shooting in January; students at the school organized a march and several spoke. Other speakers included Alonzo Pennington, a musician and hunting guide running for Congress as a Democrat. He opposes bump stocks because it "makes your gun inaccurate and it makes it malfunction," he told Camila Domonoske of Murray's WKMS-FM. He thinks restrictions on high-capacity magazines are sensible because "If you're too lazy to load a smaller clip, then you don't need to be taking the time out there and hunt anyhow."

One student who spoke was Makayla Wadkins, who said that society's propensity for blaming the mentally ill for school shootings makes it less likely for people struggling with mental illness to get the help they need. Other students called for legislative change. "After the shooting, Gov. Matt Bevin called for a day of prayer. President Donald Trump said his 'thoughts and prayers' were with the victims. Students at the rally said that's not enough," WKMS reports.

Federal government focuses on school safety bills instead of gun restrictions

While state legislatures have mostly focused on gun-control legislation in response to recent school shootings, the federal government is leaning more toward school-safety initiatives. President Trump walked back his recent support for raising the minimum age for gun purchases after pushback from the National Rifle Association, and called on Congress today to pass legislation aimed at violence prevention and intervention in schools.

The Students, Teachers and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act has been introduced in the Senate and the House. Both versions have bipartisan support, would authorize Department of Justice school safety programs, and would authorize grant money for school safety initiatives, but there are some differences in the House and Senate versions, Andrew Ujifusa reports for Education Week.

The House bill, introduced by Republican John Rutherford of Florida, would provide $50 million annually from fiscal years 2019 through 2028. The Senate bill, introduced by Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, would provide $75 million for the Secure Our Schools grant program through the end of fiscal year 2018, which ends on Sept. 30, then $100 million annually for fiscal years 2019 through 2028.

The bills differ on how the grant money could be spent. The Senate bill specifies that the grants can be used for technology such as panic buttons or surveillance systems, while the House bill doesn't mention technology as a possible use for funding. Hatch's bill also puts a greater emphasis on seeking evidence-based solutions to award grant money. Both bills would require school districts to put up 25 percent in matching funds to be eligible for grants, but the Senate bill allows the fund-matching requirement to be waived. And finally, "Rutherford's bill would move the Secure Our Schools grant program out of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office at the Justice Department, and into the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which provides technical assistance to state and local officials. Hatch's bill keeps the program in the COPS office," Ujifusa reports.

In addition to urging Congress to pass the STOP legislation, Trump is also calling on Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to form and chair a school safety task force to look at successful safety measures already in place in schools and districts around the country. "The administration will also review federal privacy laws to determine if there are ways to improve coordination between education, healthcare, and law enforcement sectors. And it will support a so-called 'Fix NICS' bill that would seek to ensure more thorough records in the existing background check system for gun purchases," Evie Blad reports for Education Week.