The Uvalde shooting shows that gun laws do matter, says official who worked on report
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have follow-up questions now for state Representative Joe Moody, who we just heard. He was on the Texas House Investigative Committee. He's a Democrat. Welcome to the program.
JOE MOODY: Hi. Good morning.
INSKEEP: We just heard you say the accused gunman had a fixation on school shootings. And there were a lot of warning signs. Was enough known that someone could have intervened and stopped him beforehand?
MOODY: You know, I think the main takeaway from our investigation was what was referenced earlier, you know, multiple systemic failures. When you look at the systems around the attacker - and I want to be very clear, we use that term intentionally. This is someone who was after fame and notoriety. So I will never use his name. And the version of the video that we sought to release to the families did not include his image. It is unfortunate that that was done by others. But the - you know, the systems around him, I think, failed as well. This is someone who is on, you know, multiple platforms, becomes - you know, it becomes a running joke, calling him a school shooter on those platforms. None of those people made any sorts of reports, even though he made no secret of the fact that he was fascinated with school shootings.
INSKEEP: So nobody tried to reach out to authorities, you're saying?
MOODY: There's no outreach to authorities. There's instance of the attacker making suicidal remarks at the same time, you know, contemporaneous with purchasing weapons. Those are things that should have and could have been reported as well.
INSKEEP: Watching the additional video of officers standing around, it's been really disturbing. I'm trying to figure out why it bothers me so much to watch these heavily armed police officers standing around. And it finally hit me, Representative Moody, it's a moral injury, isn't it? I mean, these are people who are participating in what seems to us, looking at the video, like a terrible thing, allowing a terrible thing to happen. What goes through your mind as you watch that video?
MOODY: Well, it is challenging. And I have reviewed an enormous amount of body cam footage and other evidence from this case. So I am as troubled as anyone else about this. I think it's hard because I have a complete picture of what I know, you know, happened in that classroom. And when you see that reaction, it - you know, there's something you want to have happened that's different. And I've watched a number of videos where I want something every time I watch it to happen differently, but I know that it doesn't. And it's something that I probably will never be able to understand fully or maybe even process fully. It's tragic.
I think one of the contextual pieces that's important when we note that there's nearly 400 officers on scene, not the - you know, nowhere near that number had an understanding of what was going on in that hallway. That number is far fewer. Some people arrive and have no information, bad information or actually outright, you know, misinformation given to them. You know, there are some officers that were told that the chief of police of the ICD was actually in the room, negotiating with the attacker. So you get that piece of information, that sounds very different. So it was a - you know, it was a failure of the systems that should have been in place to be able to produce a better result in that scenario.
INSKEEP: One other thing. We heard Dan Katz say that your report did not mention the easy availability of high-powered weapons. Should you, in some way, have addressed that?
MOODY: I think our report mentions that the laws that we have - and this is important, is, you know, I hear some people who are critical of working on gun safety say, well, you know, if someone is wanting to do something bad, they will figure out how to do it. And the laws don't matter. I think this actually does show that the laws did matter, right? This is someone who made attempts prior to turning 18 to buy weapons and that those were rebuffed, did not happen.
And so I think, you know, our task was, obviously, to lay out facts and let people understand where we go from there, so as to be kind of a solidifying piece that we can stand on to work on policy going forward. I think one of the biggest takeaways here is our laws do work. If we want to - you know, if we want to make them more stringent and have that conversation, in this situation, I think this - I think the attacker doesn't end up with those guns. If we had a 21-year, you know, purchase age and not 18, I don't think he ends up with those guns.
INSKEEP: Representative Moody, thanks for the time and for your work, really appreciate it.
MOODY: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Texas state Representative Joe Moody.
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