WaPo: “Few ideas are more deeply ingrained in the American psyche than the power of the gun. The gun is alpha and omega; it puts dramas in motion by empowering a bad guy, then wraps them up in the hands of a good guy. If a gun creates a problem, the solution is another gun — or a bigger gun, or a lot of guns.
So it confounds our view of the world to see images from the brightly painted grade-school corridor showing a small army of men packing guns and bigger guns, plus protective helmets and shields — and all these guns are solving nothing. Though armed to the teeth, the good guys are just standing around. The bad guy is a few feet away, with only a door (unlocked, we now learn) between him and the police. Yet most of an hour passes, and little happens apart from the bleeding, the dying and the fear.
What was missing in that hallway was strong leadership and clear communication. The good guys had more than enough firepower, but they weren’t sure what they were up against. Knowledge was piecemeal and siloed. Information from inside the classroom, conveyed in desperate calls to a 911 operator, was not reaching them. Some of the police were apparently under the mistaken impression that the gunman was holed up alone. Some may have believed they were waiting for a door key, or a crowbar.
All were waiting for the word “go” from a person they knew to be in charge.
These failures all stem from the same root cause: America has far too many police departments.”