MSNBC host Chris Hayes tore into the “good guy with a gun” narrative Friday by pointing to the delayed response by law enforcement officials during the Robb Elementary School massacre.
The host said that the idea of good guys with a gun stopping bad guys with a gun is a “Wild West state of nature” spread by conservatives for a decade. He criticized Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for praising law enforcement’s courage and ability to gun down the shooter, Salvador Ramos, at Wednesday’s press conference.
The host played footage of a Friday press conference held by Texas Department of Safety director Steven McCraw telling reporters that police did not encounter the suspect for nearly an hour after arriving at the school, despite several children calling 911. He revealed that 19 0fficers did not breach the barricaded classroom until nearly 1 p.m. as they awaited equipment.
“Nineteen police officers were inside the school for more than 40 minutes as the gunman held up in a classroom with those terrified little children and those panicked, desperate kids kept calling 911 and pleading with them to send the police,” Hayes said. “I listened to this press conference today, I kept thinking I was missing something or I was screwing it up. I was left speechless.”
“Given the record of official pronouncements so far, there’s no reason to take anything anyone from law enforcement in this situation says at face value full stop,” he continued. (RELATED: ‘There’s Only So Much BS You Can Take’: Tucker Carlson Rips Police Response To Uvalde Shooting)
Hayes circled back to the “good guy with the gun” scenario stating that police, who were the “good guys with guns,” did not defend the children against Ramos for over 40 minutes.
“The worst possible set of facts appears to be the true one,” he said. “That the police utterly failed with their guns! The good guys with the guns in the school utterly failed to protect those kids. That they set up a cordon outside the school, and yelled at and threatened and prevented parents from rushing in even as it seems that the gunman was still inside.”
He then criticized National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre for pulling the “good guy with a gun” narrative “out of the ether.”
“‘Just give everybody guns.’ An arm, an increasingly militarized police force, more money, more and more weapons, make sure they all have SWAT teams. They all need to have SWAT teams because you never know. So if one of their weapons ends up in the hands of a bad guy, we’ve got a huge military unit that’s trained to go in there and stop them. It’s all B.S.! They’ve built up to this moment. And here it was! Here’s the proving ground! We just saw it fail in real-time.”
Police were present at the school building within 2 minutes of Ramos’ entry at approximately 11:35 a.m. as children repeatedly contacted 911. Border Patrol and Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officials arrived between 12:00 and 12:10 p.m. but were prevented by Uvalde Police Department officers from going into the building. A Border Patrol team eventually entered the building and shot Ramos.
Abbott said Friday that he is “livid” by the inaccurate information initially given to him by law enforcement.