Tucker: These questions needs to be answered in Texas school shooting
Fox News host reacts to the politicization of the Texas school shooting on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
It was a week ago today that a deranged teenager called Salvador Ramos murdered 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas.
You know this because we've had seven days of full saturation coverage, and it's all deserved. Given that, it's amazing what we still don't know about what happened that day. Let's start just because it's the most obvious with how the shooter could possibly have afforded the firearms he used.
Salvador Ramos was 18-years-old. He worked part-time at the drive-thru at a local Wendy's, yet police say he had at least $4,000 of brand-new weapons, including two AR-15 rifles, 1,600 rounds of 5.56 ammunition, a ballistic vest and 60 magazines.
One of Ramos' rifles was a high-end model manufactured by a company called Daniel Defense. According to a receipt that Ramos posted in a private message, that gun cost $2,000, and he paid in full. Now, Ramos could have bought effectively the very same rifle at any gun store for a third of the cost, but apparently to Ramos, price was no object. That's pretty weird.
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A police officer comforts family members at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Thursday, May 26. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
If police know where Ramos got the money to buy one of the most expensive AR-15s on the market, they're not telling us. Nor, for that matter, have they explained why they lied about the most basic facts of the shooting.
For the first 24 hours, they told us that a school resource officer fired at the gunman. He "engaged Ramos," but they must have known at the time they said it that that was not true. They must have known the resource officer was not even at the school when Ramos arrived, but they told us otherwise. Why did they do that.
And, by the way, how long was Ramos outside the school firing his gun at people at a nearby funeral home before he went inside and killed children? That seems like a fairly simple question, certainly an important question. Last week, authorities told us that Ramos was outside the school for 10 to 12 minutes. Here's the claim.
VICTOR ESCALON, TEXAS RANGER: We got a crash and a man with a gun and we have responding officers. That's what it is. If it's 12 minutes from 11:30 to 11:40, that's the information we have.
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"12 minutes from 11:30 to 11:40, that's the information we have." But that information is clearly wrong because 11:30 to 11:40 is not 10 minutes. The timeline matters. So, what's the real timeline? Well, on Friday, the director of Texas DPS came up with a brand-new timeline. Here it is.
STEVEN MCCRAW TEXAS DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY: 11:28: the suspect vehicle crashes into the ditch as previously described. The teacher runs to the room 132 to retrieve a phone, and that same teacher walks back to the exit door, and door remains propped open. At 11:33 the suspect began shooting into room 111 or 112. It's not possible to determine from the video angle that we have at this point in time.
So, actually and that was the director of public safety in Texas, it was only 5 minutes that Ramos was outside shooting at people. Ok, but here's the key takeaway from that statement. Here's what they want you to believe: The back door to the school was open because a teacher at the school left it open after going outside to retrieve a phone. So, it's the teacher's fault that Ramos was able to get inside. That's what they said on Friday, but this, too, appears to be untrue.
The Houston Chronicle is reporting tonight that surveillance footage of the school shows that the teacher slammed the door after running back inside and of course, that would make sense, since by this point, Ramos was firing his rifle and that same teacher was using the phone in question to make a panicked call to 911. No one disputes that. So why did the authorities tell us otherwise?
And for that matter, why did they initially deny that the on-scene police commander ordered cops to stand down and remain outside as children were being shot to death inside the school? On Thursday, a spokesman for Texas DPS called that account a "rumor," but there was videotape to show that it was true. It actually happened.
So, the next day, forced by the videotape, Texas DPS admitted the rumors were true. Watch.
REPORTER: What effort were the officers making to try and break either that door or another door inside the classroom?
MCCRAW: None of that time.
REPORTER: Why?
MCCRAW: The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.
REPORTER: Sir, you have people who are alive, children calling 911 saying," Please send the police. "They are alive in that classroom. There are lives at risk. That's not--
MCCRAW: We're well aware of that, obviously. Obviously, you know, based upon the information we have, the were children in that classroom that were at risk and it was, in fact, still an active shooter situation and not a barricaded subject.
But that's not really an explanation, of course, because no one disputes that everyone on the scene, including police, knew that Ramos had weapons, was firing them at people to kill people, and was inside the school with children. No one disputes that. So why did heavily armed police units decide not to stop Salvador Ramos from executing children?
Now, it's not finger-pointing to ask that question. These are very complicated circumstances. People are under immense pressure. People make mistakes. But we are making long-term policy decisions based on the specifics of what happened last week in Uvalde.
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A heart-shaped balloon flies decorating a memorial site outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Monday, May 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
Politicians across this country are calling for militarizing America's elementary schools, and yet they can't answer why the military force, effectively outside this elementary school, refused to stop the killing. So, this massacre could have been prevented at some point. It was not prevented. Why was that? We should know the answer, but don't hold your breath. No one in power seems anxious to hold themselves accountable for what happened in Uvalde and amazingly and this is so perverse, it's hard to believe it's true, but it is. Some seem determined to make future school shootings more likely.
In California, the state assembly just voted to end the requirement, the long-standing requirement that was put in place after school shootings, that schools alert law enforcement when students, "attack, assault or physically threaten school officials." That's no longer in place and according to the Democratic Party, that's a win for equity. We know this because the sponsor of the bill, a California state senator called Steven Bradford, said so. Here's what he told The Daily Caller: "Black students, Latinx students, students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately referred to law enforcement, cited and arrested."
So too many Latinx students in wheelchairs apparently are being blamed for school shootings. So, there's no more violence reporting in California schools at all. How does that help prevent the next school shooting? Well, of course it doesn't, but it's starting to seem like helping prevent school shootings is not really the point of this exercise. Amassing more power is the point. And we know this from what's happening north of us. Canada's Botoxed dictator Justin Trudeau wasted no time in using the tragedy in the U.S. to his own political advantage in Canada. Now Uvalde is more than 2,000 miles from Ottawa, but because of what Salvador Ramos was allowed to do in Texas, Canadians are no longer allowed to protect themselves.
Justin Trudeau has introduced a bill that would ban Canadian citizens from buying, selling and transferring handguns within their own country. Again, handguns were not the cause of the shooting in Uvalde. Uvalde nowhere near Canada and yet Justin Trudeau is using that tragedy to disarm anyone who disagrees with them. By the way, that law would empower courts to confiscate guns from people even if they've not committed a crime.
Watch Justin Trudeau announce this power grab and as you do watch, pay special attention to the masked toadies behind him, nodding in unison.
JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We're introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership. What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada. In other words, we're capping the market for handguns.
What's actually happening here is that people like Justin Trudeau know that their rule is illegitimate. They know perfectly well how resented they are, and they spend an awful lot of time thinking about civil unrest.
You probably don't. You live in a democracy, so you don't imagine that anyone needs to be disarmed for political reasons, but people like Justin Trudeau can feel the deep resentment aimed at them, and they are fully intent on disarming the population. Now, we reached out to Justin Trudeau's office today about this new law. We want to know if Trudeau will apply these laws to himself. That's always the first and most important test of sincerity. If it's good for me, it ought to be good for you, too, and vice versa.
So, in this case, will Justin Trudeau's state-funded bodyguards be relinquishing their handguns? And how about their banned AR-15s? But of course, we're not allowed to know the answer to that question because he's in power, we're not. "We do not comment on matters related to the prime minister's security," his office responded, meaning, of course not.
Justin Trudeau isn't that stupid. He's going to continue to protect his own family. You're just not going to be allowed to protect yours in Canada. Now here in the United States, as always, Democrats are watching very carefully what Trudeau was up to as they plan our future here and already the rhetoric of the Democratic Party has changed.
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For years, Democrats, Joe Biden, his supporters, the media have talked about banning AR-15s, the so-called weapons of war, which are not, in fact used by any military, but weapons of war have been their focus. Watch.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: The venom of the haters and their weapons of war.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Assault-style weapons that are weapons of war.
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: And purchase these weapons at war.
SEN. CORY BOOKER: To get these weapons of war.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: Finally ridding our streets of weapons of war.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: What we should be doing is taking these weapons of war out of the hands of civilians.
REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO: Because they see what these weapons of war do on the street.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
KAMALA HARRIS: An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society.
They wouldn't know what end the bullet comes out of. They know nothing about this topic. They don't even know the basic crime stats. In the United States, rifles kill fewer people every year than fists or knives do. There's no effort afoot to ban knives or fists, but weapons of war have long been their focus, meaning a AR-15 is the single most popular self-defense rifle in the United States.
Self-defense is the point. On Sunday, Congressman Adam Kinzinger has decided—and says it out loud—that in order for him to feel safe, we're going to need to confiscate your rifle because he feels unsafe. Watch.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Congressman, you do still oppose a ban on the kind of assault weapons that were used in the shooting. Can you explain why private citizens need weapons of war?
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REP. ADAM KINZINGER: Look, I have opposed a ban, you know, fairly recently. I think I'm open to a ban now.
"Can you explain, congressman, why private citizens need weapons of war now? CNN anchors need to be surrounded by bodyguards with weapons of war because they're important, but you and your family, no you don't need weapons of war. For years it's been about the AR-15, but things are changing. Joe Biden is now calling for a ban on the ubiquitous nine mm round. Watch this.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: A 9 mm bullet blows the lungs out of the body, so the idea these high caliber weapons, there's simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting and remember the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn't buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.
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US President Joe Biden meets Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, May 31, 2022. ( Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
So, there's a guy who can't even recognize his own wife of 40 years in public lecturing us about what the rational basis is for this or that. "There's simply no rational basis for the 9 mm round in terms of self-protection."
Of course, the opposite is true. The 9 mm is the main self-protection round in the United States, along with the 5.56 round used in the AR-15. Both of them are small rounds. People use them to protect their families and if you take them away, Americans are no longer be able to defend themselves in the middle of a crime wave that was wholly manufactured by the same people who are trying to strip your guns from you.
And that's, of course, the point. This is a power grab, and you can be certain that it is a power grab and not an effort to make this a safer country because the people who are calling for it are exempting themselves from its requirements, once again.
That is the acid test. If you're for a law, will it apply to you? Do Michael Bloomberg's bodyguards carry the dreaded 9 mm or .223 rounds. Do they have high-capacity magazines?
Do Nancy Pelosi's bodyguards, which you pay for, do Mitch McConnell's bodyguards carry those rounds? Well, we wanted to know. Why wouldn't we want to know? Why don't we have a right to know? So, we emailed all three of their offices today, and unlike, we have to say, Justin Trudeau's office, none of them even bothered to reply to us. So, obviously, they won't be disarming their own bodyguards.
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They'll keep their own weapons of war. In the meantime, they'll continue to pass legislation against weapons they know nothing about. They've been doing this for decades. We did a documentary on this, actually, and we spoke to probably the person who knows more about self-defense weapons in any living American, Hickok45, one of the most popular figures on YouTube and truly an expert on the use of firearms for self-defense. Here's part of what he told us.
HICKOK45: And of course, it has the famous Tucker Carlson barrel shroud on.
TUCKER VOICEOVER: Hickok45 is referring to Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York, who famously didn't understand the firearm she was trying to ban.
TUCKER ON MSNBC IN 2007: Do you know what a barrel shroud is?
REP. CAROLYN MCCARTHY: I actually don't know what a barrel shroud is.
TUCKER ON MSNBC: Oh ok, because it's in your legislation.
REP. MCCARTHY: I believe it's a shoulder thing that goes up.
TUCKER ON MSNBC: No, it's not.
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TUCKER TO HICKOK45 ON "TUCKER CARLSON ORIGINALS": So, a barrel shroud makes the rifle more deadly, right?
HICKOK45: Yeah, really. It shrouds that barrel. You know, a lot of what people come up with that do not know firearms, they just do not like them. They hate them and, you know, so they're looking for reasons to hate them. They don't know anything about the cartridges. A bullet is dangerous. Let's face it. A hammer a chainsaw, a ladder, a car. They're potentially dangerous.
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