Police who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting told investigators they were cowed by the shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour. uvalde kprc2
, chair of the House committee that will hear all gun-related proposals, declined to discuss the findings of this story or did not respond. Two gun advocacy groups, Texas Gun Rights and the Texas State Rifle Association, also did not respond.
Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Robb Elementary victim Jackie Cazares, 9, said that the police “knew the monster behind the door was not the kid. It’s the rifle the kid is holding.” Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas TribuneOfficers arriving at Robb Elementary on May 24 had similar reactions as they realized that the gunman had an AR-15.
A rifle cartridge identical to the ammunition used in the Robb Elementary shooting. Credit: Photo illustration by Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune “I knew too it wasn’t a pistol. ... I was like, ‘Shit, it’s a rifle,’” he said. He added, “The way he was shooting, he was probably going to take all of us out.”
The Defense Department placed its first mass order for the rifle in 1963, calling its version the M16, and based each of its service rifles until 2022 on this design. The only significant difference between the military and civilian versions of the AR-15 is that the military rifle can fire automatically, meaning the user can depress the trigger to shoot multiple rounds. The civilian AR-15 is semi-automatic, requiring a trigger pull for each round.
The Corps spends so much time drilling firearm safety into Marines that Torres can recite the rules from memory. Even now, he has no objection to civilians owning AR-15s, but he thinks they should be required to complete training like soldiers because too many who buy one treat it like a toy. “In the 2000s, there was a shift in the industry’s marketing to people who are not just looking for self-defense, but people who are also looking for some sort of tactical experience,” Lytton said. He said this new consumer wanted to “simulate military combat situations.”
Beginning in late 2021, he began buying accessories: an electronic gun sight, rifle straps, shin guards, a vest with pockets to hold body armor and a hellfire trigger, which can be snapped onto semi-automatic weapons to allow near-automatic fire. The gunman visited the store alone three times between May 17 and May 20. First, he purchased a Smith & Wesson AR-15-style rifle, then returned to buy 375 rounds of ammunition, then came back again to pick up the Daniel Defense rifle. Surveillance footage from the shop shows an employee placing the case on the counter and opening it.
May 24, the day of the Uvalde shooting, was most likely the first time he had ever fired a gun, investigators concluded. To do so with an AR-15 is simple: Insert a loaded magazine, cock the rifle to force a cartridge into the firing chamber, slide the safety switch off and pull the trigger. Still, he initially struggled to attach the magazine correctly in the previous days, a relative recalled to investigators, and it kept falling to the floor.
In some instances, police have confronted the rifle without hesitation. Officers killed a gunman who had fatally shot seven people in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa. During the 2021 supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colorado, one of the 10 victims the gunman killed with his AR-15 was one of the first responding officers.
“All we can do is play the averages … and hope that the training will take place and they’ll be able to understand the gravity of the situation and respond accordingly,” Perdue said. “But there is no guarantee that the one officer that happens to be on duty when this next shooting occurs is going to respond correctly.”
He cited two examples: the Border Patrol team who finally breached the classroom at Robb Elementary and the firearms instructor who shot the gunman who in 2017 attacked a church in Sutherland Springs with an AR-15-style rifle. Both actions potentially saved lives. But they failed to prevent the murders of 47 people.
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