| NEWS | Kindergarten Cops Here’s how Arizona Republicans plan to protect our schools. BY ELIAS WEISS that left 19 children and two adults dead. Here’s the plan: Arm teachers and A administrators to the teeth and prepare them to fire back at an active shooter. More, not fewer, guns is their solution. At first, U.S. Representative Paul Gosar misidentified the assassin as “a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos.” The since-deleted tweet on May 25 was part of a debunked conspiracy theory that the shooting was a govern- ment-orchestrated false-flag operation. He’s since backpedaled from the bizarre claim that failed to stick among his GOP colleagues, and joined the push to equip educators with concealed firearms. The sixth-term congressman was mum on the inflammatory tweet in comments to Phoenix New Times but flipped the narra- tive on his colleagues across the aisle. “Reflexively, moments after the shooting, the left blamed Republicans including me for the actions of this murderer,” Gosar told New Times in a letter last week. “This absurd rhetoric is completely abhorrent, yet all too common from leftists quick to politicize tragedies.” In House chambers, Gosar is surrounded at all times by an armed secu- rity detail. There are guarded points of entry. Armed security personnel and metal detectors safeguard the airports where he and his compatriots fly frequently between Phoenix Sky Harbor and Washington Dulles international airports. The same should be true in schools, he and his fellow Republicans agree. “If members of Congress and everyday travelers have this level of security, why can’t we secure our schools with single entry points and security?” he asked. “Don’t tell me we don’t have the money.” Over his objections, Gosar noted, Congress recently voted to send Ukraine $62 billion in humanitarian aid, money he said would be put to better use fighting the mental health crisis that often underlies school shootings. Gosar wrote that he believes the United States wasted trillions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq by building schools and security there during wartime. Calls for mental health reform have 8 become a common theme for conserva- tives looking to curb school shootings rizona Republicans last week found a way to come together in the wake of an elementary school massacre on May 24 in Uvalde, Texas, while preserving the freedom to own firearms. “Not surprising, Joe Biden and most Democrats used this tragedy to push for gun control suggesting that if it wasn’t for a gun, this murderer would be a well- adjusted individual,” Gosar said. “Schools remain the most unprotected institutions in America, yet Democrats fail to remember they pushed legislation to defund school police protection and fought to remove armed police from schools.” The Mohave County Republican ques- tioned the effectiveness of police responding to the Texas massacre. Despite a $23 million endowment to clad every Uvalde Police officer with the highest-rated bulletproof armor on the market in 2018, cops delayed storming the school by nearly an hour, in a potentially fatal departure from active-shooter proto- cols that existed since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. Distraught parents in Texas were even detained and pepper-sprayed by moth- balled police as their children were gunned down mere yards away, sparking a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the law enforcement’s actions in Uvalde. “Something went wrong in Texas,” said Gosar, a devout champion of law enforce- ment, calling police response in Uvalde “disturbing.” Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican from Flagstaff, broke a three- day silence on Friday to echo other Arizona GOP leaders. In January, Rogers sponsored legisla- tion that required public colleges and universities in the state to allow anyone with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun. Now, it’s time to take similar measures on public school campuses, she believes. “We must harden our schools with school resource officers and allow trained teachers and administrators to conceal carry,” Rogers tweeted on May 27. “Tragedies are preventable. More good guys with guns.” In a May 27 interview with Fox News, Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich indicated that he supports arming school resource officers to deter mass shootings. He first jabbed at “video games and the media” as being culpable for school shoot- ings before suggesting that further prolif- eration of firearms, the opposite action sought by Democrats, was the only hope of preventing a similar tragedy in Arizona. Brnovich likened Zionist communities near Gaza amid the raging Israeli- Palestinian conflict to American public schools, saying “every single one of the members of that community is armed” and asking, “What are we doing to arm our Dread Judges Supreme Court ruling on death row cases is called a ‘byproduct of Arizona’s failed system.’ BY KATYA SCHWENK O Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons U.S. Representative Paul Gosar has joined the push to equip educators with concealed firearms. most precious resource, our children?” The policy solution he offered mirrored that of his GOP cohorts, begging the Arizona Legislature to codify plans “making sure that we have the proper security in those classrooms, including police officers.” Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing, as Gosar told New Times: “The tragic shooting of precious, innocent life in Texas is beyond heartbreaking.” The party-line rift comes from differing opinions on why school shootings occur and how to stop them. Republicans want more guns in schools, and Democrats want gun control for all Americans. U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, a first-term Democrat from Tucson, said, “It’s fucking nuts to do nothing about this,” implying comprehensive gun control, according to Capitol Hill pool reports. At an impasse, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on May 25 called on the Republican minority to work with Democrats to pass bipartisan gun control legislation. Absent bilateral cooperation, it’s possible that nothing will be done before the next mass school shooting — a fear shared by lawmakers across the political spectrum. And it’s not looking likely that they’ll reach a compromise given the animosity toward gun control from Republicans. “The leftists want your guns and to take away your right to self-defense,” Gosar said. “They use tragedies like this to push that unconstitutional notion all the while claiming it’s for the children. Like the Democrat-run cities, they want the people defenseless at the mercy of criminals and big government.” n July 6, 1995, Barry Jones, a mechanic in Tucson, was sentenced to die. Jones was convicted of the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter, Rachel Gray, who died of a blow to her abdomen that was left untreated. But over the next 20 years, as Jones appealed his conviction through the courts, the state’s case against him began to unravel. After Jones’ attorneys uncovered new, potentially exonerating evidence in the case, a federal judge ordered the state to give Jones a new trial or release him. It was a major break in his case. Now, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week, the state has a green light to send Jones back to death row — despite the evidence in his favor. The Supreme Court ruled on Jones’ case after the state of Arizona challenged the appeals of Jones and another prisoner who believed he had bad lawyers at trial, in a peti- tion called Shinn v. Ramirez. The other death row inmate, David Ramirez, was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her daughter in 1989. Ramirez, unlike Jones, challenged his conviction by presenting evidence of a mental disability, not innocence. Both had argued that their attorneys were ineffective — during trial, then again as they appealed their cases post-conviction. Both requested that federal courts re-review the evidence in their cases. In Jones’ case, a federal judge did — and ordered that the state either release Jones or re-try him. The new Supreme Court ruling in Shinn v. Ramirez reverses that decision. For other potentially innocent convicts like Jones around the country, the new ruling closes a rare loophole that allowed them to present new evidence in their case if their initial lawyers were ineffective. In a 6-3 decision, the high court ruled Monday that federal judges may not consider evidence in cases like Jones’ if the evidence was not presented earlier in the state trial courts — even if that evidence is exonerating. And even if it was not intro- duced because incompetent attorneys didn’t think to look for it. Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told Phoenix New Times that while impacts of the >>p 10 JUNE 9TH– JUNE 15TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
