Friday on HBO’s Real Time, host Bill Maher argued that you “could take away a lot of different kinds of guns,” but it wouldn’t have made any difference in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas because the shooter was in the room for 40 minutes and therefore “it wouldn’t have mattered what kind of gun he had.”
Maher stated, “[T]here was a second outrage about the fact that the cops stood outside and didn’t do anything, and this is becoming a pattern in America. Parkland, there was a cop there — or a security guard didn’t do his job. The Mandalay Bay [shooting], the guy went up to the wrong floor and stayed there. What do you do about people who are paid to act and just don’t? How do you solve that problem? Because I mean, they could take away a lot of different kinds of guns — I mean, this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of gun he had. Any kind of gun could do any amount of damage in that time.”
True, and so is Maher’s point that this neglect of duty seems to be a pattern now in American law enforcement during mass shootings. That’s a failure of leadership, courage, and service, and it also points to the damage done by an anti-law enforcement, left-leaning culture.
Maher, ordinarily a devout Democrat, seems lately to be seeing the light gradually on a few political issues, or at least to be willing to question leftist dogma. That along makes for a positive step forward in our national discourse about politics.