CAN THE BROWARD COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT GET ANY MORE SAD AND USELESS AND PATHETIC? YES, YES IT CAN. Sheriff: Armed officer at school never entered building during shooting.

Two thoughts: (1). So much for “only the police should have guns.” (2). If an armed teacher had had a gun, he/she would have already been in the building. So even if he/she was as big a coward as this officer, he/she might have still done something.

Oh, and (3): Now we see why the Broward Sheriff has been so eager to blame the NRA instead of his pathetic department.

Plus, this question: “When does the incompetent sheriff resign?”

And a friend on Facebook comments:

Let’s get this straight: the FBI failed to follow its own procedure when warned of the Florida school killer, which might have prevented the massacre; and now we learn that the armed sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school failed to execute his duty, which also might have prevented the massacre.

It should be no wonder Americans don’t trust their institutions — nor that they want the ability to protect themselves when those institutions show themselves incompetent to do the job. Instead of new laws and procedures administered by these same inept bureaucracies, either reform those bureaucracies and their personnel to enforce the existing laws, or allow American citizens to do for themselves what the institutions do not.

The present political moment for gun control will shortly fade without having achieved its major objectives, as all its predecessors have. The reason it will fail is not the NRA nor its money: it’s this.

Indeed. Or as another friend notes: “Government failed repeatedly and catastrophically at all levels. And the solution is more government?”

And:

UPDATE: FIRE THE SHERIFF: Coral Springs police officers — and not Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies — were the first ones to try to help save students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.