Texas Lt. Gov blames school doors for shootings; Twitter disagrees
America has a major gun problem. No space is safe anymore; not church, not a concert venue, and especially, it seems, not school. While the common denominator in many of these mass shootings is an often legally procured AR-15, various elements of the pro-gun contingent always seem to find another scapegoat boogeyman to blame.
The latest school shooting may have produced the lamest one yet, however.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says there are too many entrances and exits to schools, and that is why shootings are able to happen. “Had there been one single entrance possibly for every student, maybe he would have been stopped.”
— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) May 18, 2018
Following Friday’s tragic shooting at Santa Fe High School, where at least 10 people were killed and another 10 wounded, Texas officials held a press conference. One of them, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick took this opportunity to suggest that the reason this school shooting happened may have something to do with the school’s design, rather than the young man who brought several firearms to school and started shooting kids.
“There are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas,” Patrick said, according to The Daily Beast. “There aren’t enough people to put a guard at every entrance and exit . . . maybe we need to look at limiting the entrance and exits into our schools so that we can have law enforcement looking at the people coming in through one or two entrances.”
At least when people blame school shootings on mental illness, rather than the assault weapon the mentally ill manage to obtain–and it almost always is an assault weapon–at least then, the national conversation can (hypothetically) turn to readily available mental healthcare. In this case, the conversation can only turn to architecture, which is not likely to solve the problem that’s already resulted in at least 22 school shootings so far in 2018.
Judging by the Twitter reaction to Patrick’s suggestion, however, there will not be a nationwide soul-searching over high school layouts. In the immediate aftermath of his statement, prominent voices on Twitter began to relentlessly drag Patrick over the inherent absurdity of his blame game.
Have a look at some of the more popular examples below.
see the problem with school shootings is that way too many unstable and dangerous people have easy access to [checks notes] schools https://t.co/S2rBPSW4ig
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) May 18, 2018
BAN DOORS https://t.co/PCULShRVlE
— ???????????????????????? ???????????????? (@NicCageMatch) May 18, 2018
A bold call for door control. https://t.co/0FN9dLwO7i
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 18, 2018
We need to stop making it so easy for people to get access to doorways. https://t.co/RRI8QYEQYN
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) May 18, 2018
Ah yes, the old “eliminate all escape routes so the shooter literally has the entire school cornered” technique. Could work! https://t.co/MWO63RFUrD
— Chase Mitchell (@ChaseMit) May 18, 2018
Guns don’t kill people. Doors kill people. #StopDoorProliferation https://t.co/iV5qTG5Knt
— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) May 18, 2018
“The way to prevent mass shootings is to make it harder for people to escape shooters.” https://t.co/bJbEzsAiyQ
— Danny Bowes (@bybowes) May 18, 2018
imagine blaming DOORS and not guns, the things that can shoot projectiles that kill people https://t.co/gV4rfZkPbl
— Amy McCarthy (@aemccarthy) May 18, 2018
the triangle shirtwaist factory had the right idea! https://t.co/yfxDTqowdF
— erin ryan (@morninggloria) May 18, 2018
Omfg they’re going to ban doors before they ban assault rifles https://t.co/v0A6QLfGfW
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) May 18, 2018
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