Horrifying Catholic School Shooting in Minneapolis - What We're Learning About Victims and Perpetrator

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Speaker 1 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Speaker 1 Hi everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
We start today with the breaking news out of Minneapolis and the reports are terrible.

Speaker 1 There is currently a massive law enforcement response to a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and church this morning.

Speaker 1 The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports first responders said there were at least 20 victims. That does not mean 20 are dead, but 20 were hurt in some way, according to emergency dispatch audio.

Speaker 1 Reuters now reporting that three are dead, including the shooter, and 20 are injured, citing a Justice Department official.

Speaker 1 Annunciation School runs from pre-K through eighth grade, and the school began just two days ago. School started on Monday.

Speaker 1 These are kids just back from their summer vacations, from having fun with their families,

Speaker 1 the excitement of the first couple of days of school, seeing your friends again, and literally beginning the year in worship going to the Mass, as this was a Catholic school and the adjoining church.

Speaker 1 They were packed in pews at an 8:15 a.m. school mass.

Speaker 1 They're literally praying when they were shot.

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 1 what? How is there an explanation? How is there there

Speaker 1 faith in these moments? It's so hard. It's so hard.

Speaker 1 A shooter started firing what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon, according to a parent who witnessed the incident. Some are describing it as a rifle.

Speaker 1 The parent told the Star Tribune, quote, he just pepper sprayed, meaning the gun, through the stained glass windows into the building, 50 to 100 shots.

Speaker 1 A man who lives in the area spoke about what he heard to News Nation.

Speaker 11 This gentleman goes to morning mass every day of the week and he usually goes to the basilica. He just happened to go here randomly and this is what happened.

Speaker 12 And you talked to him as he came out? Yep.

Speaker 11 All the parents were on the,

Speaker 11 if you've never been in there, there's a right and left and there's an aisle in between. So all the parents were on the left side.
And so he was on the left side.

Speaker 11 So there must have been sporadic gunfire

Speaker 11 going on.

Speaker 11 He said it looked like just a normal Sunday mass.

Speaker 11 So it was full, you know, of people and children.

Speaker 12 And how did he get out?

Speaker 11 He just ran, you know, when the fire, he said it seemed like it went on for eternity, but when it stopped, he just ran out of the building.

Speaker 11 When did you first hear about this? So we live about two blocks from here.

Speaker 11 I was on a call. All the windows of our home were open.

Speaker 11 I know what gunfire sounds like. And

Speaker 11 I could tell, I was shocked. I said, there's no way that that could be gunfire.
There was so much of it. So it was sporadic.
So it was a semi-automatic. It seemed like a rifle.

Speaker 11 It certainly didn't sound like a handgun. And

Speaker 11 so he must have reloaded

Speaker 11 several times for sure.

Speaker 15 Do you remember about how many gunshots?

Speaker 11 I'll just say maybe 30 to 50 to

Speaker 11 somewhere in that area.

Speaker 15 Do you recall about how long the fire went on?

Speaker 11 Yeah. For,

Speaker 11 I would say,

Speaker 11 several minutes. I mean, three minutes or, no, four.
I mean, which is a long time for live gunfire.

Speaker 1 At this moment, we're receiving more information from local officials there. The mayor describing the shooter as armed with a rifle, shotgun, a pistol, as well.

Speaker 1 We are now being told by the authorities two children are dead, ages eight and ten,

Speaker 1 Killed where they were sitting in the church. Their parents have been notified.
Another 17 have been injured, 14 of whom are kids, two of those kids in critical condition at this hour.

Speaker 1 The shooter took his own life, as all of these cowards do. In the rear of the church, right now we know nothing about him other than it's one suspect.
He's deceased.

Speaker 1 They say he's in his early 20s, does not have an extensive known criminal history. They're looking for motive.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 look, it's early, but I've covered so many of these, so many of these as a news reporter. And

Speaker 1 whatever the specific shooter's motivation, what it tends to be, I mean, I could have told you this guy was in his early 20s before we had that report, is a guy in his early to mid-20s, possibly late teens at the earliest, who's had a psychotic break, who's had some sort of schizophrenic, psychotic mental health break, which is basically when it happens and goes homicidal.

Speaker 1 And there will have been signs. There will have been social media postings generally.

Speaker 1 There will have been people in the shooter's surrounding environment, whether it's his school, his work, or just his family or friends, who have seen troubling signs.

Speaker 1 And sometimes they report them and sometimes they don't. And sometimes they've had mental health interactions with professionals and sometimes they haven't.
But in all cases, the signs were there.

Speaker 1 And we as a society did nothing. I mean, that's really generally how it goes.
Even if we had an interaction with a mental health institution or with law enforcement, it's revolving door, out they go.

Speaker 1 It's someone else's problem until it's the problem of a bunch of school children literally praying as they were shot to death.

Speaker 1 The local CBS affiliate describing the emotional scene as it unfolded here.

Speaker 16 I am directly in front of the entrance to the school on Farfield Avenue in West 54th, right off of Lindale. And I have seen children leave the school with bandages on their arm.

Speaker 16 One child left with a bandage on his arm, race to his mother for an embrace.

Speaker 16 It's clearly

Speaker 16 a very serious situation. We will not speculate on any details.
What we know now is what I'm seeing. And what I'm seeing is an active police scene outside of the school.

Speaker 16 And I've seen two children leave with bandages on their arm. It's a really emotional scene here for people who are looking on.
I've seen very distraught looking people, potentially parents

Speaker 16 whose children attend this school. And I have seen

Speaker 16 police go in and out of the school here, at least a dozen ambulances blocking off the entire road,

Speaker 16 and just a very

Speaker 16 active scene and an emotional one for the parents and the families.

Speaker 1 And as you can hear there, some of the reporters covering it, how could it not be?

Speaker 1 The Minneapolis Star Tribune reporting young children in school uniforms were seen filing out of the building, clasping hands with their parents and friends. Some did not have shoes on.

Speaker 1 A little boy crying and walking away from the scene was heard saying to his father, I don't feel safe.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 these kids experienced quite a trauma this morning, even the ones who were not injured physically.

Speaker 1 President Trump posting on Truth Social, quote, I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FBI quickly responded, and they are on the scene.

Speaker 1 The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation. Please join me in praying for everyone involved.

Speaker 1 Minnesota Governor Tim Walz writing on X, quote, I am praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement updating, again, looking for motive. No explosives were found at the scene.
One smoke bomb, like a firework, was apparently found.

Speaker 1 Do not know whether that was deployed or not. Joining me now for reaction, Minnesota journalist Liz Collin of Alpha News, James Gagliano, retired FBI supervisory agent.

Speaker 1 James was the senior FBI SWAT team leader for the FBI's New York office and a member of the FBI's elite hostage rescue team.

Speaker 1 And Brandon Tatum, he's former police officer and host of the Officer Tatum show.

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Speaker 1 Thank you all so much for being here. Let me start with you on it, James.

Speaker 1 Your reaction to the news coming out so far that this appears to be one shooter who took his own life after gunning down a bunch of defenseless school children.

Speaker 14 Megan, you laid it out perfectly in the preamble. I mean, this happens all too often.

Speaker 14 And look, going back to 1966 and the University of Texas clocktower shooting where Charles Whitman went up into a clock tower in August of 1966 and gunned down a bunch of co-eds, which is generally considered the first quote-unquote mass shooting that begun the need in the Nexus for SWAT in this country.

Speaker 14 It's just a sad, sad situation.

Speaker 14 Look, I think right now, the number one thing, the focus is, was this a conspiracy or was this a lone wolf actor and and you described the disaffected disenfranchised um outsider that typically fills the bill in these things yes there'll be a history of mental illness yes there'll be questions on how did he get his hands on a semi-automatic rifle there's going to be questions about how did we not notice this with all the red flags that appear to be available but megan we live in a country that that treasures and and prizes our civil liberties.

Speaker 14 We don't want martial law. And at the same time, how does this happen? How does a church and a school with young children in it get targeted?

Speaker 14 And so many people either wounded or lost their lives this morning. Horrible, horrible tragedy.

Speaker 1 Liz, you're a reporter in Minneapolis and Minnesota. This,

Speaker 1 I mean, this is unbelievably tragic. And parents can't get their arms around it whether their child was involved or not.

Speaker 1 But the reporting we're hearing is that this is the second day in a row where a Christian school was targeted, that there was another

Speaker 1 Christian school targeted yesterday, four miles away from this, or a Jesuit high school?

Speaker 12 Yeah, actually, Megan, this is now the fourth shooting that has taken place in Minneapolis in less than a 24-hour period.

Speaker 12 We've had three fatal shootings in a 12-hour period before this horrific act of violence at this Catholic school in Minneapolis.

Speaker 12 But you're right, there was a mass shooting just yesterday outside of Christo-Rey High School, which is another Catholic school.

Speaker 12 At this point, in the press conference that just wrapped up here on scene, they did say they did not see any sort of connection between these other shootings.

Speaker 12 But one Minneapolis police officer told me this morning, in his opinion, this has been the darkest 24 hours in Minneapolis history. Keep in mind, this is a police force down nearly 40%

Speaker 12 after what happened after the George Floyd incident in 2020. These cops are already really stretched to the limits.

Speaker 12 And to see these horrific scenes unfolding in southwest Minneapolis this morning, absolutely heartbreaking.

Speaker 12 And I'll be honest, this is actually where my son attended preschool when I lived in Minneapolis for more than 10 years.

Speaker 12 So really kind of personal for many of us here as well.

Speaker 12 And still

Speaker 12 so many answers, but it's hard to even imagine. school starts on a Monday

Speaker 12 Tuesday morning there's a mass where all the kids go all the the little kids the big kids they're all they're all there for mass each and every morning it's a terrific school and I can't say enough about the the good people there and gunfire erupts through through the windows at these children again as you said we have two children dead.

Speaker 12 I've been in touch with sources at both the Hennepin County Medical Center and Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. They are treating multiple victims on scene.

Speaker 12 It did come in originally as up to 20 victims, and that seems to be the case.

Speaker 12 It sounds like multiple victims are in critical condition at this point, and they are in the most serious areas of the hospital

Speaker 12 being treated. And again, the gunman seems to have killed himself right in the parking lot there, according to what we just heard in the press conference.

Speaker 1 Do we know, Liz, whether this is a level one trauma center where the kids have been brought to?

Speaker 12 Yeah, there's both two facilities

Speaker 12 that both are able to handle these types of calls. But in my correspondence with my sources at Hennepin County Medical Center, they've said they were kind of overwhelmed

Speaker 12 previously with the gunfire that has erupted in the city. So they were doing their best to scramble and get in, it sounds like, to treat these children.

Speaker 12 Just Just absolutely horrific to think about.

Speaker 1 I'll be back to you one sec because I have questions about the church too, especially since you've got a personal connection to it. Brandon,

Speaker 1 the reports are that they're going through hit the shooter's vehicle, which is in the church parking lot.

Speaker 1 I guess the police are saying they don't see a connection to the shooting that happened yesterday behind this Jesuit high school, although I will say in that case,

Speaker 1 they say a man was killed, five men and one woman were also injured, and the suspect got away, but the police apparently not thinking that it's the same person who committed this atrocity.

Speaker 1 You know, there are going to be a lot of parents who are wondering what they can do, what they can do.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't, even if this school were fortified with a security officer, I'm not sure they'd be outside of the church when the kids went to mass.

Speaker 1 There's a certain belief, I think, that we have that there are certain institutions that just aren't going to be targeted. And it's baseless, unfortunately.

Speaker 14 Well, I think it's a, and thanks thanks for having me on, Megan. I think that this is a culmination of issues that we need to address in society.

Speaker 14 One is that we do need to fortify these schools. We cannot take it for granted that there's nut jobs out here that's looking to kill innocent people.
You know, it hit home to me.

Speaker 14 My son just went to school today. He goes to a Catholic school and they do mass.
And it makes me think about it all the time. If, what if an assailant decides to come to the school?

Speaker 14 What security measures do they have in place? This is not a matter of, in many cases, not a matter of if, it's when somebody's going to attempt to assault a Christian institution.

Speaker 14 And one of the things that I think is problematic is we don't give it enough credit to our efforts to fight against anti-Christian rhetoric.

Speaker 14 You know, we have anti-Jewish rhetoric, we have anti-Muslim rhetoric, but where is the rhetoric that is targeted against people who attack Christians?

Speaker 14 It is not a coincidence that this person decided to attack a Catholic school on the day that they do mass. And I think it's a huge problem.
But we need to fortify our schools.

Speaker 14 We We need to stop playing games and hoping that a hope and a prayer is going to stop our children from getting shot. We need security at the school.
We need police officers at school.

Speaker 14 I don't care how much of a boogeyman it looks like to certain people. We need people there to be able to rapidly respond.

Speaker 14 And I'm not saying there's nobody at this school, but I think that schools need to fortify the school a little bit more.

Speaker 14 And therefore, they can be there to respond rapidly and make sure that there's not as many casualties as could be if they don't have anyone who can defend the students and the teachers there.

Speaker 1 That's right. That was my first reaction.
Where's the good guy with a gun? How did he have such unfettered access to children for so long? And we heard the eyewitness account at the top of the show.

Speaker 1 Here's another one. This is a neighbor, Bill Byneman is his name.
What he was saying is that there was no way he believed it was gunfire because it went on too long. And that's the thing, James.

Speaker 1 You know, Minneapolis, Minnesota, it's got very tight gun laws. There clearly wasn't a good guy with a gun there because it wasn't just this guy, Bill.

Speaker 1 Somebody else described what sounded like a pause and a reloading by this guy. There clearly was not a resource officer or a security officer who was armed.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm assuming because I assume that person would have taken this guy out a lot sooner.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I'll go back to what Brandon was saying just a few minutes ago.

Speaker 14 Whether you go back to the Parkland tragedy, which was back in 2018, or the Uvalde, Texas tragedy, where a number of students were shot to death in a school out in Texas, law enforcement has to go to the sound of the guns.

Speaker 14 The days of being methodical and slowly but surely with shields and advancing slowly toward the threat are over. When these things happen, and look, Megan, this is way early in the process.

Speaker 14 Could, and I'm going to throw this out as a supposition, but that's what we do here in the criminology department, could this be a case of workplace violence? Okay, yes.

Speaker 14 Could it be a domestic dispute? Okay, yes.

Speaker 14 But probably, as we look at this, was this something more onerous where somebody targeted this place because of either the religion or the ideology there, the fact that it was a school, or was it some unhinged person that decided they wanted to ratchet up a body count?

Speaker 14 All those things don't matter until the shooter is down. We know the shooter is down now, and now we've got to do a couple of things.
One, make certain that there was no conspiracy afoot there.

Speaker 14 Is this part of a broader conspiracy where there might be other targets?

Speaker 14 If we determine that's not the case, okay, now we step back, take a deep breath, and now we figure out how do we prevent the next one? Well, there's lots of ways.

Speaker 14 You just mentioned it, a school resource officer, a single point entry into these places. And Megan, I'll put my political hat on for a second.

Speaker 14 So I just stepped down after two terms as a mayor in an upstate village in New York State.

Speaker 14 And one of the things that we were concerned about a couple of years ago, there were credible threats against Catholic churches in communities across New York State.

Speaker 14 I was pleasantly surprised to go to speak to my own pastor at our own Catholic church here to find out that they already have plans in place.

Speaker 14 Most places, whether they're synagogues, whether they're Catholic churches, whether they're mosques, they understand that unhinged people and yes, terrorists, because what is terrorism?

Speaker 14 It's violence or the threat of same in the pursuit of certain political, ideological, or religious goals.

Speaker 14 And in this instance, way too early to make that determination, but the fact that there should have been a school resource officer there, there should have been somebody armed and caring concealed in these places, because unfortunately, as Brandon pointed out a minute ago, there are targets and threats, and this is unfortunately the new normal.

Speaker 1 Liz, do you have any idea as somebody who had a child there? I'm like, I'm very well aware of what the security plans are at my children's schools because obviously I'm in news.

Speaker 1 And as you well know, we think we have to think about these things more than the average citizen ever wants to

Speaker 1 do we know anything about whether this is a school that that had a good guy with a gun on standby just in case

Speaker 12 yeah i mean in my time there which is about uh eight nine years ago uh when i moved out of the the city of minneapolis i i can say no that there was there was not an armed security guard there at at the school

Speaker 12 I'll also say that this mass, it takes place every morning and the school itself, which is a K through 8 building, but they do offer some preschool programs there as well, is an older building.

Speaker 12 I would kind of describe it as a bit of a maze, the way that many of them are makeshift classrooms.

Speaker 12 So, that was my immediate thought that perhaps this gunman somehow got inside and was going room to room.

Speaker 12 But then to hear these details to just open fire through the stained glass windows during Mass, which is where the kids basically start their day each and every morning,

Speaker 12 obviously added another

Speaker 12 horrific element to all this.

Speaker 12 I was just getting some latest information here from the hospital on the numbers, and they are saying, this is from Hennepin County Medical Center, that the children ages 6 through 14

Speaker 12 are being treated there. Six of them are in critical condition.

Speaker 12 So, six of them are in critical at this point. And again, kids ages 6 through 14.
They say that they got 11 patients total from the shooting. Nine, they consider pediatric patients, and two adults.

Speaker 12 So that is the latest from Hennepin County.

Speaker 12 So the reports again that as many as 20 shot in this incident, those were the initial reports just a couple of hours ago now seem to be the case with what the hospitals are reporting now at this hour.

Speaker 1 I mean, the thing that's so frustrating in watching all this, Brandon, is I'll tell you right now, nothing's going to change. Absolutely nothing is going to change.

Speaker 1 We had 20 dead first graders at Sandy Hook.

Speaker 1 Nothing changed. If you don't change after 20 dead first graders, you don't change.

Speaker 1 And I understand it because we're a free country and we can't protect against any and all threats out there, but we can fortify the areas where our most vulnerable are.

Speaker 1 And that means the schools, whether it's the school itself or the adjacent church where they worship because it's a Catholic school, that we actually can do.

Speaker 1 But you know as well as I do, what we're about to do is spiral into a debate about guns. That's where the media and the left will take this.
That's what they do every time.

Speaker 1 And my own belief is that's exactly why nothing, nothing will change. That actually might stop the next one.

Speaker 14 Well, yeah, because the thing is, if you're focusing on the wrong issue, you can never fix anything.

Speaker 14 You know, in this situation, the gun is not the problem. The person with the gun is the problem.
Clearly, there's many people with guns that are not shooting up a school.

Speaker 14 And then you go down the list of how could this have happened? And there's, like you said, Megan, there are signs. This, the parents, where are the parents at?

Speaker 14 Where are the people that are saying this person is crazy? This person is threatening to shoot up places. This person is, you know, a loner.
And there are signs to this stuff.

Speaker 14 And we have laws and we have investigatory bodies that look into these things. The FBI looks into them.
Local law enforcement, counterterrorism. We have elements in place that already exist that

Speaker 14 we could actually utilize that could prevent these things. It's very clear, man.
You know, people want to use this as a political pun because they hate guns. They want to make Donald Trump look bad.

Speaker 14 They want to make Republicans look bad, either side of the spectrum. And they would rather talk about the guns.
They would rather talk about bans. They would rather talk about banning AR-15s.

Speaker 14 But the truth of the matter is, law-abiding citizens are going to be the only people that are affected by a ban of an AR-15. Crazy lunatics will always have an opportunity to obtain firearms.

Speaker 14 Same thing in prohibition. People will be able to get illegal things if they have their minds set on it.

Speaker 14 And they're going to shoot up more and more schools and hurt more and more people because nobody's going to be armed, especially the good guys. It is asinine to me.

Speaker 14 that at this point, we are not focusing on bolstering our law enforcement agencies, making them have higher staff numbers so they can protect schools like this.

Speaker 14 There's nothing outside of the realm of saying we need to hire more law enforcement.

Speaker 14 We need to have every school, especially public schools, because that is where the money comes from, but every public school should have multiple resource officers there to protect, there to prevent crimes outside of mass shootings.

Speaker 14 And then we'll look at it like this.

Speaker 14 If we go back, and it's early in this investigation, so we don't know all the details, but if we go back to this school, I guarantee you that there was no real recourse.

Speaker 14 That's why this person chose this particular school during mass.

Speaker 14 They probably scouted the school, may have gone to the school, and they know that when I go here, I'm going to be unabetted.

Speaker 14 I'm not going to have any resistance from any teacher, from any law enforcement, no security.

Speaker 14 And that's why they went to that school and not the school down the street or the school around the corner. And when are we going to wake up to this reality?

Speaker 14 If I had control of the schools, I would say we need to have armed security staff with AR-15s at the school.

Speaker 14 You can have them staged in a strategic area where they're not visible to the kids, but when somebody comes on campus, they can react very swiftly.

Speaker 1 I completely agree. There need to be more cops or law enforcement or security officers at these schools, armed, armed officers.

Speaker 1 We're about, I guarantee you, we're going to spiral into the guns, guns, guns. And I'm totally open-minded too.

Speaker 1 If this guy had some sort of mental health history and got a gun anyway, we should definitely be looking into how that happened and try to stop that from continuing to happen in other cases.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. But another gun law is not going to do it.
We have 400 million guns in the United States of America. 400 million.
The vast majority of them are semi-automatic handguns.

Speaker 1 They will never be taken away from the people. Never.
Even if there were a voluntary give up your gun program, there would still be hundreds of millions out there that people would hold. It's America.

Speaker 1 It's too embedded in the foundation and fabric of who we are. The answer, my friends, I'm sorry to my gun control advocates, friends, it's not more laws on guns.
It's not going to work.

Speaker 1 It hasn't worked. You are the ones stopping the productive conversations.
You are. What we need is more good guys with guns on soft targets.

Speaker 1 And yes, we need to take a serious look at our mental health system and why we don't mandatorily institutionalize

Speaker 1 around whom there have been repeated red flags, who the rest of us can see in many cases very clearly were on a steady path to deteriorating, right? Like we've seen it many, many times.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what this guy's history is going to be, but I guarantee you it is what I said at the top. There's going to be some issue around this guy.

Speaker 1 It could be one of a number of things, but people are going to have a talk or in a discussion about whether he was spiraling.

Speaker 1 Could have been medication involved, could have been a mental health system that's already seeing this guy, but there will have been signs and we will have done very little about it. Liz,

Speaker 1 Minneapolis, Minnesota has very strong gun laws. I just asked the team to pull

Speaker 1 a summary for me before we went on the air. Minnesota requires background checks for handgun purchases at the point of sale and or for a permit to purchase.

Speaker 1 Allows law enforcement and often family members to petition for a court order to temporarily prevent someone in crisis from accessing guns.

Speaker 1 Bars gun possession by people who have been involuntarily committed or found to be a danger to themselves or others.

Speaker 1 Requires that firearms be stored, locked, unloaded, and separate from ammo in certain circumstances. Assault weapons prohibited.

Speaker 1 Bars concealed carry by people with assault or other violent misdemeanor convictions.

Speaker 1 How many times have we seen this in states with the toughest gun laws in the nation, including New York state, just a month ago, where that guy walked into that building and shot up the lobby and then went up to the whatever floor it was, 20-something?

Speaker 1 Talk to me a little bit about the Minnesota attitude toward guns and fortification of soft targets.

Speaker 12 You know, I think it's such an important point to bring up in all of this. It wasn't that long ago that school resource officers were not even allowed in Minnesota schools.

Speaker 12 This was post-George Floyd when several departments decided to pull their officers out of the schools.

Speaker 12 There were some liability issues after some laws passed by the DFL trifecta here in Minnesota at the time. That's the Democratic Party basically of Minnesota.

Speaker 12 And Governor Walls, who still is here as governor, signed off on all of this. Well, finally, they had to go ahead and make some law changes to allow SROs back in school.
And that's just pretty recent.

Speaker 12 So there was more than one school year that passed, not even allowing SROs in schools at all

Speaker 12 in Minnesota. And again, hard to ignore the politics at play in Minneapolis.
You have a primarily socialist controlled city council in Minneapolis. This This isn't me calling them socialists.

Speaker 12 They are self-proclaimed socialists. They do not like the police.

Speaker 12 We continue covering these stories, you know, day after day, month after month, year after year in Minneapolis about their feelings about the police department.

Speaker 12 This really isn't rocket science if they want to fix this.

Speaker 12 This has, you know, we did not report on these issues before, yet they continue to peddle, you know, the crime is down narrative in Minneapolis, despite, you know, we have four shootings here in less than 24 hours.

Speaker 12 And I will say, even that the first mass shooting that took place just yesterday outside of the other school barely even made the news.

Speaker 12 It was about a 20-second mention on the corporate media here in Minnesota because they're not really willing to get to the bottom of why this is happening. And

Speaker 12 again, this didn't happen before. You had a Minneapolis Police Department.
Nearly 900 officers were once on the force. Now I think it's about 350.

Speaker 12 They're actually even on the streets of Minneapolis at this point.

Speaker 12 So that certainly

Speaker 12 plays a role in this as well.

Speaker 1 I want to just remind our viewers that you and Alpha News were behind the documentary about what really happened in the George Floyd situation and with Derek Chauvin and have backed the blue just by telling the truth.

Speaker 1 And it's a very important documentary that everybody should see.

Speaker 1 And obviously, you had concerns then about what was happening to the Minneapolis Police Force, which is a related it's obviously not necessarily we don't know yet at the heart of this but there will be questions about response time and and could it have been faster if there had been more bodies available and certainly should there just be a standard of a current or retired cop or law enforcement type outside of these

Speaker 1 these venues. I want to play a little bit from the Minneapolis mayor.
His name is Jacob Fry.

Speaker 1 He's the guy who knelt before the casket of George Floyd, which is sort of an infamous moment among people who watched this all go down years ago.

Speaker 1 And he took to the microphones just as we were coming on the air. Here's what he said:

Speaker 18 These were Minneapolis families. These were American families.

Speaker 18 And the amount of pain that they are suffering right now is extraordinary.

Speaker 18 And don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.

Speaker 1 It was the first week of school.

Speaker 18 They were in a church.

Speaker 18 These are are kids that should be learning with their friends.

Speaker 1 Okay, I don't understand this, Brandon, when people say reject thoughts and prayers because they didn't happen to prevent the injury. They didn't have, like, what does Jacob Fry have in mind?

Speaker 1 Where were his city-mandated security officers? What he, so, I mean, even his governor, the far left, Tim Walt, is offering thoughts and prayers because it's a human response to tragedy.

Speaker 14 Well, these godless,

Speaker 14 mindless people, of course they think that thoughts and prayers don't work. You know, maybe the thoughts and prayers at the school prevented more kids from dying.
How would he know?

Speaker 14 But the funny thing is, is that if he went to mass to visit this school, he would have a security detail there. Why? Just in case somebody decided to try to take his life.

Speaker 14 But his thoughts and prayer comment is not backed up with any kind of real tangible actions that he's willing to take.

Speaker 14 Is he going to say on the news with his theater that he's presenting that we need to fortify the schools? Let me tell you something real quick, Megan.

Speaker 14 I think you know this and everybody on the panel know this. Which one will happen quicker?

Speaker 14 If we pass legislation to ban every AR-15, every assault weapon or whatever they call it in the state of Minnesota, period, that means nobody can own them. They have a gun confiscation.

Speaker 14 Which one will happen quicker? That legislative power or fortifying the school? I mean, tonight,

Speaker 14 they could get police officers at the school. Tonight, they can hire private security.
Tonight, they can do it.

Speaker 14 Every school in the city by at least at the end of this week, every school can have somebody. If they wanted to pass legislation, it's going to take forever.
It has to go through

Speaker 14 the Congress in the state. They have to somehow pass it.
It has to go through the House. It has to go through the governor.
It has to sign in a law. Then it has to go into effect.

Speaker 14 And then you have to have somebody enforce the law. I mean, these people are,

Speaker 14 they make me infuriated, especially when they try to say that thoughts and prayers don't matter.

Speaker 14 Well, maybe the thoughts and prayers is what have prevented this nut job from shooting the school up a long time ago or doing more than one school shooting at a time, or the fact that there's 400 million guns and there's not a murder every 20 seconds in this country.

Speaker 14 Maybe our thoughts and prayers and our prayers to God to protect us have been effective.

Speaker 14 And I just can't stand when these godless people who are either fake Christians, fake Catholics, or they don't believe in God at all, are out here trying to shun a religion for saying we are going to at least pray and be faithful to our God for protection.

Speaker 14 And just because it don't work 100% of the time in the moment does not mean that God isn't working. It does not mean that we can't do something about it.
It's not about just praying.

Speaker 14 God said in the Bible that you seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened. That means an action needs to come from you, and God will then protect you in the action that you take.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for saying that.

Speaker 1 I opened the show saying these are the moments when you see an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old shot to death in a church, you know, at school, opening the day in prayer, that your own faith can get rattled, right?

Speaker 1 Like, why? Why, God, why? You know, you just don't understand it. But the second half of that is this kind of thing, not this particular tragedy, but tragedy, awful things happen all the time.

Speaker 1 And you ask God, why? Why would you allow it? Why is it okay? Why do kids get cancer? Why do you let them suffer at all? It's part of being a faithful person to ask that question.

Speaker 1 And it's totally fine to ask that question. And then you remind yourself, most of us do, of our own

Speaker 1 status as mere mortals. You know, that we can't know everything.
We don't have all the answers and we never will. But you go on believing anyway.
You don't give up on prayer.

Speaker 1 You don't give up on faith when you need it most. And let's face it, when you're a mayor in a position like this guy, that's just a totally inappropriate response.

Speaker 1 But who is he trying to pawn responsibility off on, right? James, it's like, you're the mayor.

Speaker 1 You're up there saying thoughts and prayers. What did you do to try to prevent this?

Speaker 1 Because no one's like blaming you yet, but you're out there blaming people for calling for prayer as somehow they're inappropriate.

Speaker 14 Yeah, well, Megan, unfortunately, as a recovering politician,

Speaker 14 you know, I think a big part of this is politicians use these moments for opportunities and opportunities to get their name and face in front front of the camera, opportunities to apply platitudes and bromides as they feel necessary to, and then also to push their own ideological bent.

Speaker 14 And look, you laid it out. This is a country of 327 million people.
There are 400 million guns in this country. This country was founded upon the Second Amendment.

Speaker 14 There's no way possible that you're going to go back and figure out the solution here is we're just going to start collecting up guns. We're going to have a a gun buyback program.

Speaker 14 People are going to willingly turn them in. We're going to offer them $50 gift certificates to Walmart, and that's going to solve the problem.
We've got to be pragmatic about this.

Speaker 14 The vast majority of gun owners in this country, and I say this as a 25-year law enforcement veteran, the vast majority are good and decent citizens. They're the best of the best.

Speaker 14 They follow the rules. They get permits where applicable.
They subject themselves to background checks. They go through the process appropriately.

Speaker 14 The problem is, when you live, as you pointed out at the top of this, when you live in a free society that's not subjected to martial law, it's next to impossible to ensure that evil doesn't happen.

Speaker 14 And I think Brandon might have mentioned this before: you know, it's the path of least resistance.

Speaker 14 I tell my kids all the time: if you don't lock your car door, you're going to guarantee somebody breaking into your car and taking something.

Speaker 14 If you lock it, it's no guarantee that that won't happen, but you make it a little bit more difficult for the criminal. Criminals, evil people, mass shooters, terrorists, they're all the same.

Speaker 14 They follow the path of least resistance. If this school looked like an opportune place to go and to spray rounds inside windows and to attack people saying their daily mass, that's what happened.

Speaker 14 Now, is it a guarantee? Is it a panacea to say one armed SRO there might have been the difference? No, but you've got to put the deterrent effect up there.

Speaker 14 You've got to ensure that you make it as difficult as possible. And Megan, that's the right conversation to be having now in the wake of this horrible tragedy.

Speaker 1 That's right. How many layers? My audience has heard me talk about this before just from my own security.
It's all about putting layers between you and a bad guy. How many layers can you put?

Speaker 1 And we didn't have enough layers between these children and a bad guy. And it's not 2020 hindsight.

Speaker 1 It's just a question of let's be real about how we could have protected them because it is the first week of school for millions of American school kids, and next week is the first week of school for millions more.

Speaker 1 And there really are things that can be done. On that front, James, can I just ask you? Because,

Speaker 1 you know, as a news person, I also know sadly that these things are often followed by copycat events. I'm sorry to say it.
It's just,

Speaker 1 it is true. And that could be potentially at another place of worship or at another school.

Speaker 1 And so if you got called in to advise those venues, any one of them right now, what would you be telling them?

Speaker 14 That's a great question, Megan. Look, I grew up in the deep south.
You can't tell from my accent in Decatur, Georgia, in the 1970s and 80s.

Speaker 14 The biggest fear I had at my elementary school was, oh my gosh, the Russian threat, the Soviet Union is going to bomb us, and we have to get underneath our desks and tornado drills.

Speaker 14 We never had mass shooting drills. Unfortunately, the paradigm has shifted.
And in law enforcement, we have to shift and adapt to that. Now, are copycats real things?

Speaker 14 Absolutely. But copycats don't just follow something that happens in the news.

Speaker 14 They could go see a Denzel Washington movie or an Al Pacino movie and see something there, and they could all of a sudden become entranced by that and do the same thing.

Speaker 14 The problem is we know that schools, malls, places of math gatherings,

Speaker 14 houses of worship, why are those such delectable targets to terrorists and mass shooters that are looking to ratchet up body counts? Because they're soft targets.

Speaker 14 You know, to go to a sporting event, to go to, you know, MetLife Stadium in New York and watch the New York Giants play,

Speaker 14 you can't be armed. You're going through,

Speaker 14 as you just pointed out, layers of screening. We need that, unfortunately.
It's a sad state of affairs, but that's where we are. We need that in churches and we need that in schools, ASAP.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't, I mean, you could do it such that the kids don't even know they're going through a magnetometer. You really could.

Speaker 1 Like, they'd know because eventually, you know, somebody would always have something, not a gun, but something metal that would go off and they'd figure it out.

Speaker 1 But you could make it such that it's not like it is at the airport where it's just kind of less obvious and they're walking through it in the mornings.

Speaker 1 And at a minimum, you could put a guy with a gun or ideally more than one standing out in front of the school so that if in a situation like this, if there had been two guys armed outside of that church because their most precious cargo was inside of it, the guy, I mean, the odds of like a guy being able to come up and take out one guy unexpectedly, I guess, are higher, but two, unless it's a sharpshooter with a lot of training, I just, I have my doubts.

Speaker 1 Liz, what are you hearing now from, I know you've been checking your sources this entire conversation.

Speaker 1 It sounds like to me, like, the Hennepin County Hospital has just now made public what you already reported, that their injuries are

Speaker 1 between six years old and two, six and between six and 14-year-olds, that some six are in critical condition, and that they received 16 patients nine of whom are pediatric uh what's the latest as far as you know

Speaker 12 yeah and along with that uh two adults being treated there at at hennepin county medical center as well which is uh the the trauma center in downtown minneapolis uh they did also say at the the press conference uh that apparently uh this man again in his early 20s uh dressed in black uh by the sound of things uh does not have a a criminal record.

Speaker 12 That is what they did say at the press conference this morning. You know, I wanted to bring up a point that I think is also interesting.

Speaker 12 Mayor Jacob Fry attended the Minnesota State Fair, I know, last week and was flanked with police officers

Speaker 12 there at the fair. Many were with him.

Speaker 12 It's kind of hard for many of us to even take this guy seriously after

Speaker 12 everything that has transpired in Minneapolis, but the hypocrisy is really

Speaker 12 through the roof with many of the things coming out of his mouth here at this press conference this morning at the the scene of this.

Speaker 1 Well, and Liz, can I just ask you, as far as I know, I don't remember there being an incident where somebody actually tried to take out the mayor. And not that we want that.

Speaker 1 I mean, I want him to stay well and healthy and do this job as long as the Minneapolis folks want him there. But there was just an attack on a Catholic school yesterday.

Speaker 1 So you'd think if there were time to beef up security at the schools, in particular possibly the Catholic ones, that would have been today.

Speaker 12 But after all of these shootings, he has very little to say. If he is saying anything at all, Megan, it's the fact

Speaker 12 how great Minneapolis is and how crime is down. They've went ahead and encrypted their communications, so now you can't even report many of these incidents at all in real time.

Speaker 12 They took that away because too many independent journalists were putting out what was really happening in Minneapolis. So that change finally took place.

Speaker 12 So there's a lot of creative ways that they are doing things here in Minneapolis to keep the truth, I think,

Speaker 12 from coming

Speaker 1 to light.

Speaker 1 And now, Brandon, realistically, nothing's going to change. And parents, coast to coast, will send their kids to school tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Speaker 1 And in the vast, vast majority of cases, nothing will happen, God willing. Nothing will happen.
I mean, these school shootings are too common, but they are not.

Speaker 1 They are not overall common. You know, they're too common, but they're not common.
The vast majority of students go to school every day and

Speaker 1 they're not hurt, they're not harmed, and they're not in danger. But in an event like this, as you point out, it's terrorism.

Speaker 1 It will have a reverberating effect for at least the next few weeks as it's on the mind of students. I mean, I'll tell you the truth.
I've got three kids. They're 15, 14, and 12.

Speaker 1 I don't talk to them about this stuff.

Speaker 1 I just don't. I think there's very little they can do in the moment.
The schools, of course, all do these drills.

Speaker 1 But I just think the more you discuss this kind of thing with a young person, the more you scare them. What do you think?

Speaker 14 Well, I think I think you have a point there, but I think it's two sides to it, you know, right?

Speaker 14 Sometimes it could be very scary, but the scariest thing is then when the parents don't talk to the kids about it and they hear it from an authority or they hear it from the school and they make it all scary because they, because they're not, they don't understand your kid the way you do, right?

Speaker 14 I understand what makes my kid afraid. I understand what could be a compassionate approach or make them feel a lot more confident, give them encouragement.
I know how to talk to my son.

Speaker 14 So when I talk to my kids about things like this,

Speaker 14 I believe that they feel a lot more confident. They hear it from dad, who was a former law enforcement officer.
I was on the SWAT team.

Speaker 14 You know, he feels a lot more confident that I talk to him about these things. When he goes to school, you know, they kind of blanket over the situation.

Speaker 14 I remember when I was in school, growing up in Texas and we do the tornado warning, you know, I was terrified because the teachers didn't sit and explain, what is a tornado? How is this going to work?

Speaker 14 What really is going to happen? I mean, they scared the living daylights out of us. we did the tornado drill.

Speaker 14 So with having my dad speak to me made me feel a lot more confident because he can explain the nuances and we can go back and forth and he can answer questions.

Speaker 14 What I think parents should do, and one thing I think you said, Megan, that was very important is that parents don't have to necessarily feel like every school is under threat at this point.

Speaker 14 In reality, it's not really that case. This is one, there's probably hundreds of schools in Minneapolis.

Speaker 14 You know, when I look at my homeschool in Texas, we've been around for 100 years or so, and no situation has happened like this.

Speaker 14 And no situation has ever happened in the city of Fort Worth, you know, as far as the Fort Fort Worth school district. So majority of the schools are not going to experience this.

Speaker 14 However, I will tell teachers, take a step in the right direction at at least talking to the principal and at least asking them what contingencies do you have in place.

Speaker 14 And if there is none, demand that the school do something about it. The parents can come together because my son is at a private school.
Of course, they love to take some money from us.

Speaker 14 We can demand since we're spending money and a lot of the parents that go to our school are affluent enough that we could pay for our own security as a as a group of parents.

Speaker 14 And so if the school doesn't want to provide it because they don't want to put it in the budget, the parents need to come together and say, we're going to hire personal private security to be at least the external portion of the school.

Speaker 14 They can be in plain clothes. They can be in unmarked cars.
The fee for that is not that big of a deal. I mean, one officer maybe per day.
I mean, he's probably getting paid $30 an hour.

Speaker 14 The school times is between X and Y. The parents can come together.
It's a thousand parents at some of these schools.

Speaker 14 Come together, give a little bit of money, and let's do what we need to do as parents instead of waiting on these bureaucrats and these politicians to

Speaker 14 flap their feathers or whatever, peacock a little bit before they actually do anything.

Speaker 1 Like, we see a lot, a lot of these retired cops would do it for a reduced rate. You know, they'd split the shift.
One guy would take four hours, another guy would take four hours.

Speaker 1 A lot of these retired cops have hearts of gold.

Speaker 19 Meaning that they're making it.

Speaker 1 They'd give you a lower rate.

Speaker 19 Yeah, they do it for free.

Speaker 14 Just give me

Speaker 14 provide transportation, give me a lunch. You know, if I was, if I was in that position, let me serve.
Let me have a purpose again.

Speaker 14 I think we should create a program for people who are retired military because, and police, because what happens when you retire from the military or you retire from policing, many of these police officers, they don't live long after.

Speaker 14 And one reason is because they don't feel that they have a purpose.

Speaker 14 Many of them become depressed, they commit suicide, they don't feel like they have a purpose anymore because their identity has been saving lives and being active in the community.

Speaker 14 And then when they go home and they sit on the the couch, they don't have any friends, no camaraderie. They begin to go down a slippery slope at times.

Speaker 14 So, in my personal opinion, I think that obviously you have to do a background check and make sure that they're not struggling with PTSD or anything like that, but you can have a contingency of getting in these law enforcement officers that can build that passion again to protect and serve something they've done their whole life.

Speaker 14 They would love and be honored. If I didn't have a lot to do and I wasn't running all these companies, I would suit up and sit outside my son's school for hours for free.

Speaker 19 You know, it's a great idea.

Speaker 14 It would be my pleasure to protect my children from these maniacs that want to come kill them.

Speaker 1 Well, you'd have to add one other thing, which is you have to give him immunity from

Speaker 1 lawsuits by parents who want to blame the security guard for whatever, which would be easy to do because without that, the guy's not going to sit there. So you're losing nothing by giving him that.

Speaker 1 But we need to do something to incentivize good guys to want to be present protecting these children. We've had Columbine, we've had Parkland, we've had Uvalde.

Speaker 1 Now we have this school, Ascension, we had the school down in Louisiana. Like, it's too much, or Tennessee, Tennessee and New Orleans.

Speaker 1 Nashville, forgive me, I'm mixing them up. There have been so many.
We need to get serious about where the threat actually is. There's a reason these soft targets continuously get targeted.

Speaker 1 And it's time we face that reality and do something about it. You guys, thank you all so much for being here.
Really appreciate it. James, Liz, Brandon, all the best to you.

Speaker 1 We're going to stay on it after this break as we have now Carol Markowitz of the New York Post who has the identity of the shooter. And we're learning more about him.
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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show. We're covering the tragic breaking news story out of Minneapolis, a shooting at a Catholic grade school there, K through 8.
The children next door at the

Speaker 1 church attending morning mass that began at 8.15 and by 8.30 the shooter was firing at them leaving multiple children dead. At least two, we've been told now, ages 8 and 10, and many more injured.

Speaker 1 There are multiple children in the hospital. We're told there are several critical

Speaker 1 who are critically injured. I'm going to give you two soundbites, and then I'm going to tell you about the shooter because we have independently confirmed who it is.

Speaker 1 You know, we don't say the names of shooters on this show because

Speaker 1 we decline to contribute to their infamy. But I will tell you that there is a picture circulating online.
The man is very pale. He's said to be in his mid-20s.
He has long red hair.

Speaker 1 And there is a question about whether he was experiencing trans

Speaker 1 delusions about actually being a female and not a biological male, which is what he was.

Speaker 1 And we've confirmed that too. We'll get to that in one second.
First, I just want to get an update on the victims who are the ones that matter.

Speaker 1 Here is what the police said at a presser exactly one hour ago.

Speaker 20 Earlier today, just before 8.30 a.m.,

Speaker 20 our city experienced an unthinkable tragedy.

Speaker 20 Minneapolis police officers responded to a report of a shooting at a mass that was happening at the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church on the block behind me.

Speaker 20 This worship service was marking the first week of school for children that are attending the Annunciation Catholic School.

Speaker 20 During the Mass, a gunman approached on the outside on the side of the building and began firing a rifle through the church windows towards the children sitting in the pews at the Mass.

Speaker 20 Shooting through the windows, he struck children and worshipers that were inside the building. The shooter was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol.

Speaker 20 This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshiping.

Speaker 20 The sheer cruelty

Speaker 20 and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.

Speaker 1 God bless the first responders who have to deal with the carnage after the fact, which is just such a test of human strength.

Speaker 1 One of those cops and EMTs had to go in there and pick up a dead eight-year-old and 10-year-old who should have been moving on from Mass to go to study the basics of math or reading and see their friends in PE and run around and enjoy the beautiful weather that we're having this time of year.

Speaker 1 And instead, their parents are grieving the kind of grief no parent should ever have to feel.

Speaker 1 The local hospital, you heard Liz talk about it in our last hour, going on the record in terms of what they have received.

Speaker 1 There are multiple hospitals that have received victims, but here's the latest. I think this was out of Hennepin County.

Speaker 21 We received a total of 11 patients from

Speaker 21 this incident.

Speaker 21 Two of them were adult patients, nine pediatric patients.

Speaker 21 Four of them required the operating room. And up to this point in time, there have been no fatalities related to any of those patients that were brought to our organization.

Speaker 21 Nine of the 11 patients were pediatric ages, I can't remember the exact name, the exact ages, I believe it's six all the way up to 14.

Speaker 1 That's the range.

Speaker 1 They're all in our prayers, both the victims and the families. And now we are learning more about the shooter.

Speaker 1 He is said to have entered, or at least approached, the back of the church from the outside with both, according to the authorities, a rifle and a handgun and opened fire through the glass windows on the children inside, obviously shooting more than just children there.

Speaker 1 As you heard, at least two adult victims were brought to that hospital alone.

Speaker 1 We believe that there were as many as 20 victims total. The numbers have changed a bit as they obviously will continue to

Speaker 1 once the authorities get their arms around exactly who was hit and what hospitals they went to. We'll get a final number.

Speaker 1 This man was busy posting on his social media this morning. It appears to have populated on his YouTube feed, which has now been taken down, but we got there before it was.

Speaker 1 During what would have been the time of the shooting, but obviously we have a large YouTube presence and you generally schedule your

Speaker 1 shows, your posts to appear when you want them to. You know,

Speaker 1 it's not that my executive producer is sitting there at five o'clock when he presses publish on YouTube.

Speaker 1 He sets the show to publish at the time that it publishes every day, and that's very possible.

Speaker 1 In any event, we have confirmed his name. It's not important.
You don't need to know his name, and they've taken down his social media anyway, but we're going to show it to you.

Speaker 1 And this does appear to be somebody who was experiencing some sort of gender dysphoria. He has long red hair.
He's very unattractive, which is not surprising.

Speaker 1 And he's, among other things, posted an

Speaker 1 LGBTQ flag. Next to it, he wrote, Defend equality.

Speaker 1 We're not showing his picture as a reminder to my team, who's got his picture in a place where I can see it, but we're not going to put it up there.

Speaker 1 Here is the notebook where he has defend equality on top of a pride flag there. That's not the only thing.
There is clearly a desire.

Speaker 1 There's another phrase, by the way, in his writings, why so queer, us.

Speaker 1 A lot of this doesn't make sense, but why so queer? Q-U-E-E-R, like queer us.

Speaker 1 And then there are writings over guns and over the magazines that one would insert in a gun that have a number of obvious possible motives that are referenced, like

Speaker 1 target.

Speaker 1 Sorry, like,

Speaker 1 hold on, I'm trying to read my own writing. Where is your God?

Speaker 1 Extra Jew gas,

Speaker 1 Israel must fall.

Speaker 1 Kill Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 RIP and TARE, T-E-A-R. Maybe it's Tear.
I don't know what that means. Humanity is overrated.

Speaker 1 Nothing ever happens.

Speaker 1 So he's clearly focused on

Speaker 1 looks like those who believe in God. He's got another, like a target you would use and shoot at during target practice, which has a picture of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Now it's starting to make some sense.

Speaker 1 The target he chose, what was on his mind. I think I mentioned one of the writings on either the guns or the ammos read, fuck everything that, and then the next word is cut off.

Speaker 1 The beginning of it is stand, like maybe the word was stands. We can only see S-T-A-N, F everything that's stand.

Speaker 1 And that's about all we've seen thus far, though we're going through it because we did manage to capture the two YouTube videos that he posted before YouTube took them down, which is probably another indicator that, I mean, I've confirmed the name of the shooter, and this is the shooter's YouTube page.

Speaker 1 Potentially, there's another person by this name that is also obsessed with guns and killing children and pictures of Jesus and targets, but I'm going to go out there and say the odds are slim.

Speaker 1 Joining me now to discuss it all, Chad Ayers, founder of Proactive Response Group.

Speaker 1 Proactive Response Group's founders are well-trained veteran SWAT team leaders with first-hand experience in hostage rescues and high-risk dignitary protection.

Speaker 1 And Joe Loris, retired police officer who is currently running for U.S. Congress in Tennessee to replace Mark Green.
Gentlemen, thank you both so much for being here.

Speaker 1 So let me start with you on it, Chad, because...

Speaker 1 I mean, this is a situation. We only wish it had turned into a hostage situation where there could have been negotiation before the killing took place.

Speaker 1 But in this instance, like so many others, the shooter showed up and just started firing on defenseless targets. And now it appears he did seem intent on targeting this type of group.
I mean, again,

Speaker 1 a target practice with a picture of Jesus, where is your God? I guess, like, trying to test, right,

Speaker 1 if God would be there. I don't know what the specific motivations were, but as I said at the top of our last hour, it does matter, but it's secondary.
You know,

Speaker 1 what appears to have driven this is a sick mind, a very sick mind. Your thoughts?

Speaker 22 I totally agree with you, Megan, and thanks for having me. Again, just, I want to second what you say.
My heart breaks for these families who are going through this today.

Speaker 22 Obviously, you know, this investigation is going to play out at Pro Response Group. This is what we do.

Speaker 22 I am sitting in a school right now, training a school on how do you handle active shooter events. We were at a church.

Speaker 22 I know that you're

Speaker 22 a lifelong devout Catholic, and I can't imagine sitting in that pew and this taking place. And all of a sudden, the worst case scenario happens.

Speaker 22 And so I'm not here today, obviously, to Monday morning quarterback these victims, but obviously it is time that we start evaluating. I was talking to Joe earlier, evaluating how we are training.

Speaker 22 Are we giving valuable, effective training on this type of situation? Because we cannot take a reactive approach.

Speaker 22 Megan, over the last month, you know, we have seen such an increase of events like this, active shooter events.

Speaker 22 And it's time we stop checking the box on this type of training and start providing valuable, effective training, especially for our most precious that are sitting there trying to have time to worship their God and pray and meditate, you know, in mass.

Speaker 22 And the worst case scenario happens.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 Joe, I mean, look. This guy, we're going to figure out exactly what was driving him.
I mean, we haven't seen one of these school shootings where the shooter wasn't on some sort of meds.

Speaker 1 Nine times out of 10, an SSRI meant to attack depression, but obviously not helping.

Speaker 1 I don't know what this guy's story is going to be, but I'm not surprised to see the

Speaker 1 trans ideology. We saw that in Nashville, Tennessee, too.
And the FBI kept that secret from us. Joe Biden's FBI kept that secret from us for a year, saying we couldn't handle it.
It was like, okay,

Speaker 1 we can handle it. We need to know what sort of medical cocktail was this person on, if if any, and the motivations that were like the tip, the tipping

Speaker 1 point.

Speaker 1 We'll look at that. But obviously, this guy had some sort of a break.
And unfortunately, the target today was Catholic children.

Speaker 1 So I don't even know where you begin other than to get a bunch of cops out there, retired cops with guns. Your thoughts on it.

Speaker 14 Megan, thanks for having me. I couldn't agree with you more.
They are, these delusional people are attacking our most vulnerable. Minneapolis, Minnesota as a whole, has universal background checks.

Speaker 14 They have to have permits to purchase weapons, you know, guns, shotguns, anything. Where was that? This is exactly why I'm running for Congress.

Speaker 14 This is exactly the problem that we have here in the United States. Desoft on crime, defund the police.
This is what happens.

Speaker 14 And I'm a father, and it scares me every day when I drop my daughter off at school because could this be the day? And this is not the America that we should live in.

Speaker 14 This is not the America that I fought and bled for and buried my friends. Now I'm with Chad.
We need to be more proactive and call it what it is. This is delusion.

Speaker 14 The left is catering to this and this is the outcome. And we see that in all of this politics as, you know, all this hate that's going on because our country is so divided.

Speaker 14 We need to come together as Americans and remember what's important and protect our most precious resources, which is our children.

Speaker 1 I don't know how many times we need to be reminded, Chad, that our children are sadly a favorite target of these madmen. I know I was ticking off the names of the schools before we went to break.

Speaker 1 There are too many to remember. And right now, yet another piece coming through to us from his YouTube feed.
One magazine literally has,

Speaker 1 I assume, his handwriting, for the children written on it. Ha ha ha ha at the bottom with an exclamation point.
This is a very sick person, a sick, deranged.

Speaker 1 I want to say evil. What he did was evil, but I will reserve saying he was evil because what we find out in case after case is this is someone who had a break, who others around him saw it.

Speaker 1 It either was reported or it wasn't, but no one did anything about it. No one did anything about it.
They just let him roam until he became someone else's else's problem.

Speaker 22 It absolutely pisses me off.

Speaker 22 It's upwards of 88% of these shooters, someone in their home, in the school, in their business, knew or suspected that they were going to do something like this and didn't report it.

Speaker 22 So we've got to do a better job of building a culture where I think there's whole snitch mentalities out there. Oh, I don't want to be a snitch.
It's not snitching. It's called survival.

Speaker 22 And we have dead children, you know, right now at a church.

Speaker 22 So if if we see these early warning signs, Joe said it, we have to do a better job as a community coming together, getting the help this person needs and preventing this before it even happens.

Speaker 22 You know, studies show, Megan, the majority of these events happen after some type of break. So we're coming off of summer break, school starting back.
After COVID, there was a break.

Speaker 22 After Christmas break, these events, for some reason, I can't pinpoint why, happen.

Speaker 22 But with that, it's time we start evaluating the way we are training our students and our faculty and staff on what to do with our kids in these types of events.

Speaker 22 Now, I am not, again, I want to second, I am not here Monday morning quarterbacking these poor innocent children.

Speaker 22 But we have got to get out of this victim mentality of there's an active shooter event. Let's shove 26 kids to the corner of a room.

Speaker 22 You know, if the gunman makes it in there, we just lay under our desk.

Speaker 22 I had a call last week with the city administrator from Uvalde, and I said, if the gunman comes into the classroom, where's all those targets at? They're in one spot.

Speaker 22 Why are we not giving our kids a chance to survive? If the gunman is inside the school, if the gunman is inside your house of worship, where's the gunman not at? He's not outside.

Speaker 22 We need to pop in doors, windows, and getting kids out.

Speaker 1 That's a very good point. Like run.
Yeah, you're right. We generally, the drill is stay there, hide.
That's really the drill. It's not really get out.

Speaker 1 It's not get out of the windows, which they probably could in most circumstances.

Speaker 22 And I can't stand the word hide. I'm not playing hide and go seek with a madman with a gun.
The quickest way to get terminated from proactive response group is to ever use the word hide in a class.

Speaker 22 At that point, really, you've given up all hope. If you can get away safely, get away.
If you can't, we want to shut, lock, barricade, but you always have to be ready to fight.

Speaker 22 You know, we need to empower our teachers and give them the options.

Speaker 22 And what option and where the gunfire is, let them determine what course of action is going to give them the best chance to survive.

Speaker 22 See, that run, hide, fight training model says it's a linear approach. People think you have to go in that order.

Speaker 22 No, fighting may be the first course of action you have to take to survive and go home to see your families at the end of the day.

Speaker 22 But just like the fourth-grade teacher at Rob Elementary School in Uvalde, he was instructed by

Speaker 22 his administration in an active shooter event that day, tell your fourth graders to get under their desk and pretend it's nap time. And he lost every student in his room that day.

Speaker 22 First of all, that's borderline criminal, if you ask me. We have to give our kids a better chance to survive.

Speaker 1 Wow, that is that is dark, but important. I mean, I just, and now you're inspiring me to discuss this this with my children.

Speaker 1 I want to play for you, Joe, the reaction from Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who, I mean, she, of course, she reacted with what we expected everyone on the left to react with.

Speaker 1 I'm seeing it all over Twitter right now, or X. Here she is.

Speaker 13 It, of course, makes me think about guns and all the work we've done to ban these automatic rifles and to do something when it comes comes to

Speaker 13 the background checks and everything. And we keep getting thwarted.
We were able to pass a limited measure on a bipartisan basis, but not enough to stop something like this.

Speaker 13 And it just makes you think about that as well without knowing the details about how we got that gun, if the gun was legal, what kind of gun it was.

Speaker 13 But it was clearly one of these automatic rifles to be able to shoot that many kids so fast.

Speaker 1 All right. I'm sorry.
That's just not.

Speaker 1 right. Chad wants to take it.
That's clearly not right. An automatic weapon.
That's a machine gun. Literally, nobody's saying the guy had a machine gun.
Go ahead, Chad.

Speaker 22 Sorry, Joe.

Speaker 22 I want to make sure you understand, guys.

Speaker 22 This is all I do as I study these events. I cannot find a single active shooter event that's ever been committed with a fully automatic rifle in the United States.
Ever. That's right.

Speaker 22 So, and these are people that are sitting up in D.C. And again, if they know nothing.

Speaker 1 That's right. And the worst school shooting of all time was Virginia Tech.
I was there covering it in the moments after it happened.

Speaker 1 And that was conducted with handguns, semi-automatic handguns, which number in the hundreds of millions in our country. They will never be gone, no matter what law is passed.

Speaker 1 They will never, ever go away. These assault weapons bans that speak to banning automatic weapons like that's okay.
That's not going to do anything like it didn't do anything in Minnesota.

Speaker 1 And you cannot effectively pass any sort of a ban on semi-automatic weapons. Banning the guns is not the answer, even if you hate guns.

Speaker 1 Even if you think everybody would comply and they'd go deposit their semi-automatic handgun in some like basket at the local fire department. Okay, they wouldn't.

Speaker 1 But even if you're in your imaginary world,

Speaker 1 they would, like some healthy portion would, there'd still be hundreds of millions running around. And the bad guys are the ones who get them.
You would just be disarming the law-abiding ones.

Speaker 1 Trust me, I am not some huge Second Amendment person. I'm a news person who's watched more of these events than I care to admit.
Banning the guns doesn't help.

Speaker 1 Putting red flags all over people who have serious mental health histories and trying to take their guns away. I'm with you.

Speaker 1 And I'm actually more to the left on that issue than a lot of my conservative friends who are worried that kind of a red flag exploitation will take guns away from, you know, guys who are in the middle of a acrimonious divorce and witchy wives who are trying to hurt them.

Speaker 1 And I get that, and that needs to be screened for, but I'm not as right-wing as some of my friends are in it.

Speaker 1 But I'm telling you, gun bans, Amy, are not actually going to work and therefore they're not going to protect the children. Go ahead, Joe.

Speaker 14 I can tell you as a retired undercover detective, I have bought guns on the street. Criminals are criminals.
They are not going to abide by the rules.

Speaker 14 Now, in Minnesota, they have very strict gun laws, but yet here we are, once again, we need to look at the culture. You're not going to ban, and it goes to your point, Virginia Tech, it was a handgun.

Speaker 14 Fort Hood, an American soldier, an officer used handguns. We need to understand that there is a culture problem and we need to be more protective of who we are.

Speaker 14 But what it is really is we need to empower the police. President Trump is doing that, restoring nobility to the police.
As a police officer, we are trained to run toward the danger.

Speaker 14 This is why I want to run for Congress. Like this is horrible on all ends, but to hear legislatures just say, oh, we just need to have more legislation.

Speaker 14 No, you need to enforce what you have and go after these cowards because that's what they are. They are cowards.
You are going to...

Speaker 1 They can pass another gun ban to make themselves feel better. It's not going to do anything.

Speaker 1 I want to bring in now to join us on the conversation, Gino Rofaro, co-founder and CEO of SaferWatch, technology experts. SaferWatch has helped nearly 4,000 schools across the U.S.

Speaker 1 improve their campus security with reporting apps and panic buttons and the like.

Speaker 1 And he's my guest now. Gino, thank you for joining the conversation.
Your thoughts on the immediate, I mean, like the pod save America, guys, same thing.

Speaker 1 Like we're not going to do anything about the guns. And therefore, you know, they're feeling the frustration that I think we're feeling, but their entire game is to blame the gun.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, thank you, Megan, for having me. And this is obviously another horrible tragedy that's taken place.
And I absolutely agree. And by another coward

Speaker 17 who shouldn't be anywhere near these types of weapons.

Speaker 17 But you're not going to be able to stop people from buying weapons or getting weapons. So you really have to focus on the threat, right? Stopping these threats.

Speaker 17 And that's really why we developed SaferWatch. We started the company after the Pulse nightclub shooting and really started focusing on schools after the Parkland shooting.

Speaker 17 And to date, we've helped to stop and prevent 13 planned school shootings and that's all about proactive reporting that chad mentioned other people we mentioned where those tips come into our platform we are connected with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country where those tips it's not just telling a teacher or telling a friend or telling someone these come into our platform they're documented they're recorded law enforcement's able to analyze and take action on these and it holds people accountable and that's really what we're focused on is preventing these incidents from happening.

Speaker 1 In the first place, I want to show you something, Chad, that we just found on his YouTube feed. First of all, there's a picture he drew of the church.
Well, what looks like a church, I should say.

Speaker 1 I don't know that it's the church, but it certainly looks like one. And it's, I mean, it's chilling to see this.
He's pointing for the listening audience.

Speaker 1 You see at the top of the page, this is all hand-drawn, what looks like an altar with a cross on top of it, and then like line depicting that it would be the altar's edge then you see um sort of the edge of it and you see four long rows of pews he's pointing to something forgive me it's too far away for me to see what exactly he's written above where he's pointing but this looks very much like a church chad and he appears to have had his plan really clear between that and the where is your god and the target practice with jesus's picture in the middle

Speaker 22 yeah so obviously megan the people that commit these attacks there's this idea um that it's just some person that wakes up this morning pours a cup of coffee and says i'm gonna go shoot it up no they plan they want to outdo the previous shooter and so they're going to do their research we have seen how you know these manifestos are written and and they study look there was a girl that was arrested last year um that was planning an attack on her school on the 25th anniversary of columbine all right She wasn't even alive in 1996, or I think it was 96 when Columbine happened.

Speaker 22 She wasn't even alive, but her grandmother discovered these writings in her journal and

Speaker 22 she stopped it before it even happened. So, yes, they do their research.

Speaker 22 People who commit these attacks, it's going to be interesting throughout this investigation in the coming couple hours.

Speaker 22 Was there an association? Did he grow up going to this church? Did he go to school there growing up?

Speaker 22 A lot of times there is some type of association.

Speaker 22 But having systems in place like Gino

Speaker 22 was talking about, having layers of protection are great.

Speaker 22 Keycard access, reporting systems, panic bars, security guards, having layers of protection is great, but we still have to be trained and we still have to have a plan.

Speaker 22 The most secured home in America, someone still tries to jump the fence once a week.

Speaker 22 It doesn't end up well for them, but having layers of protection is great, but we also need to make sure we are being situationally aware, you know, staying off of our cell phones, being aware of our surroundings.

Speaker 22 and it's almost like the old like we said earlier the old if you see something say something um but to go back earlier megan what you said about the whole banning guns here's the thing guys still handguns are still the number one gun used in active shooter events and guess what you can ban all the guns if someone wants to commit a mass act of violence they're going to do it we saw it in new orleans we'll use a vehicle and run over a bunch of people we'll use knives but you know people talk about oh we don't have these events in europe yeah i get it no that's because you don't have guns over there but you have an increase of knife attacks over there.

Speaker 1 So if someone wants to commit violence, look what the Boston marathon bombers did with the homemade bombs.

Speaker 22 Exactly. They're going to do it.

Speaker 1 The other drawing that we have just pulled from his YouTube feed, he appears to have used some sort of a

Speaker 1 it looks like some sort of a code language because the letters are recognizable, but they make no sense when strung together.

Speaker 1 I don't understand. For example, there's, and actually some of the letters are, look foreign to me, like it's not a real letter, like it's more of a symbol.

Speaker 1 For example, there's something that reads K-O-R-A-3,

Speaker 1 then a backward three,

Speaker 1 then T0, then three three K O H for backward N. I'm just pointing out to you, it's gibberish to the rest of us.
I don't know what this person's code was.

Speaker 1 But underneath these writings is a hand-drawn picture of what appears to be him. It's got the long hair, and he had long hair.

Speaker 1 And he's got one of he's got a rifle, like an AR-15 looking gun on his back slung across his back and he's looking at himself in the mirror and the reflection is a devil the reflection is a demon with multiple horns coming out of his head four horns two on each side and he looks evil he looks he looks truly demonic

Speaker 1 it's a self-portrait obviously and it's not a huge shock Gino I mean

Speaker 1 that's how he saw himself and the celebration of killing kids you know he was excited to write down how

Speaker 1 he was going to get these kids, looking forward to targeting them for the win. That's one of the marks on his ammo, WFTW.

Speaker 1 We showed the ammo where he was specifically saying for the kids, he's, you know, humanity's overrated.

Speaker 1 This all could have been written by, we don't say the names of the shooters on the show, but it could have been written by the Sandy Hook shooter in particular, who is completely depressed, saw himself as a demon.

Speaker 1 And I mean, to way oversimplify it, is they are in the throes of a deep depression and madness, and they want others to hurt as well. They want others, other lives are absolutely meaningless to them.

Speaker 1 So they can't be persuaded. They can't actually be therapized.
They need to be locked up.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and Megan, about 90% of these cases, there are known warning signs that do exist. And really comes down to what was reported, who was reported to, what actions were taken, right?

Speaker 17 Because these tragedies, they can be prevented.

Speaker 17 And if you go back to all the way back to the Pulse nightclub shooting, the co-worker who worked with that individual knew that he was buying ammunition, knew that he was buying weapons, knew that he had a plan for something, and never reported it to anyone.

Speaker 17 And again, that's why these systems are in place to be able to easily report something, right?

Speaker 17 You know, if you hear kind of after these tragedies, you're going to hear chiefs of police or sheriffs go on television and say, it's so important if you hear something, say something, report suspicious activity, call 911.

Speaker 17 No one's going to call 911 about a potential concern that they have about someone.

Speaker 17 So the more tools that we have available for people to easily share and report information, the better, and the more likely we are to actually get ahead of this and prevent and stop these cowards and these mentally ill individuals from committing these acts of mass violence.

Speaker 1 You know, can we spend a minute on on the trans thing, Chad?

Speaker 1 Because, you know, I've, look, I don't mean to, not all people who have gender dysphoria are violent or are going to commit violence, but now we've seen it in a couple of cases.

Speaker 1 You know, we saw it in Nashville, Tennessee, where it was a young girl who identified as male. And now we see it here with this biological

Speaker 1 man

Speaker 1 who we are told now there's more reporting coming in that he identified as a woman.

Speaker 1 Some reporting out there that he began identifying as trans, as a minor.

Speaker 1 And the name was changed. Again, we don't do names here, but from a male-sounding name to a female-sounding name, the hair is very long and feminine-looking.

Speaker 1 This is, I'm sorry, but this is going to happen more and more. It's, there's a medical cocktail that these people get.
There's a system that affirms a delusional set of beliefs.

Speaker 1 And there's an unwillingness within the mental health community to look at underlying mental health issues for these kids who are suffering.

Speaker 1 I'm not calling this guy a kid, but I'm speaking generally now. They just want to say affirm, affirm, affirm without addressing possible mental illness.

Speaker 22 And here's the thing, Megan. There's no doubt everyone that commits one of these attacks is in some type of mental crisis.

Speaker 14 Everyone.

Speaker 22 And so what you just said, the word I love, why are we coddling these people? Why are we saying, you know, affirming them?

Speaker 22 At the end of the day, you're, you're born male or you were born female, and that's what you're going to be the rest of your life. So why is it? I don't know where those balloons came from.

Speaker 1 These are beautiful computers.

Speaker 22 But

Speaker 22 sorry, I got thrown off. But again, it's time that we stop.
you know, coddling this and affirming and, oh, no, we can't talk to them about their mental health because this is just who they are.

Speaker 22 No, that's not true. They need help.
We need to get the help immediately. And honestly,

Speaker 22 the education system is backing these people. They're throwing it down our kids' throat and affirming.

Speaker 22 You know, you can be in elementary school now and you walk in, you're not seeing the American flag and saying your prayer or having your moment of silence.

Speaker 22 You're walking into classrooms that have pride flags and everything else in there. Again, identify with whatever you want.

Speaker 22 Don't start throwing it down my kids' face and don't start saying it's okay, this is normal because it's not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Joe, I mean, it's like that'll be the last thing the left will willingly take on about this case. Like I said, Joe Biden's FBI kept it a secret in the case of the Nashville shooter for a year.

Speaker 1 I mean, we were among the first to reveal large portions of what the FBI found. We got that exclusively and brought it to the audience.
Stephen Crowder did great reporting on it.

Speaker 1 He had some exclusives early on.

Speaker 1 But there have been multiple cases now. Here, my team is just sending me

Speaker 1 a couple here. All right, Colorado Springs shooter was non-binary in November 2022.
It was a gay nightclub. Five people were killed.

Speaker 1 The Nashville school shooter, I mentioned, a trans, a so-called declared trans person, where they shot multiple individuals, multiple children.

Speaker 1 Aberdeen, there was a shooter who was trans.

Speaker 1 2018 went into right aid and shot six co-workers.

Speaker 1 There are more. Denver school shooter was trans.
2019,

Speaker 1 they killed at least one person, one person in 2019 in the school and in the Denver area charter school. There was one in Iowa where we believe it was the case.

Speaker 1 Trans or gender fluid shooter went in and shot a sixth grader and a principal who were killed. Like, I could keep going.
And I will tell you,

Speaker 1 the left and their entire capture of the medical system does not allow any inquiry into the mental illness that these people are suffering. you're considered a bigot if you say it's mental illness joe

Speaker 14 yeah you need to really call it what it is it is a mental illness the easiest way that is being preached to us from our governments is if you see something say something like chat said if we don't know is law enforcement we can't look at it there are telltale signs when we go through these investigations that there were um hints and dossiers and writings and pictures and all of these things.

Speaker 14 But what's important is how did they get the gun? When we start looking at all of that stuff, there are checks and balances in place that we already have. We don't need to be focused on that.

Speaker 14 We need to be focused on the people. What is going on? And you're right.
I'm called a bigot if I tell you that you're mentally ill. I just need to say what needs to be done.

Speaker 1 You could even say that and keep your video up on YouTube up until recently.

Speaker 1 If you said a trans person has a mental illness, they would demonetize you and possibly strike the entire video up until only very recently. We're not allowed.

Speaker 1 We haven't been allowed to have that conversation.

Speaker 14 And that's given them power to do what they want to do. They want to hurt us.
And this is how they do it. They have a mental illness, and no pill is going to fix that.

Speaker 14 And when they just start shoving pills and they pound on each other, this is what happens. So we need to look at what the underlying cause is, like Chad said.

Speaker 14 This is an illness. This is

Speaker 14 an epidemic. And it's not about the gun.
It's about the illness and somebody wanting to kill our most precious resource, which is our children.

Speaker 14 Because you notice they didn't walk into a police station and do that.

Speaker 1 I've never heard

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 14 a military base, generally speaking, to do that because there are people there that can defend themselves. So what do I do?

Speaker 14 If I want to make a name for myself and be remembered, like Butler, Pennsylvania, I'm going to go and I'm going to cause like this thing.

Speaker 14 And then the media is going to to report it and everybody will know my name. I commend you, Megan, for not releasing the name because that just gives the next one more power.

Speaker 1 They don't need to be remembered.

Speaker 1 Who cares? Who cares what his name is? It's irrelevant. Who gives

Speaker 1 this person's name is. We are not going to make this person famous or infamous at all.

Speaker 1 This is a motivation. We've seen Gavin DeBecker, his entire firm is devoted to trying to stop people from getting stalked and hurt.
And they're very against news organizations naming these shooters.

Speaker 1 It doesn't take much not to do it. Really, you're not losing anything by not hearing it.
I'm telling you what you need to know. It was a male name.

Speaker 1 Apparently, according to Nick Sorter, who tweeted out the paperwork on X, there's legal paperwork showing that he changed it from that male name to like a very similar sounding female name.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he was obviously suffering with this ideology like so many of these others were. I'm going to show you something else that we've pulled from the YouTube

Speaker 1 page. It does not show him, so I wouldn't be breaking my rule.

Speaker 1 But it does show this guy scrolling through his notebook, which we've been showing you pictures of.

Speaker 1 And for the listening audience, you are going to see these church pew images, and then he knives the book. Watch

Speaker 4 catches y'all up to

Speaker 9 anything else he reads.

Speaker 1 I think a picture of himself as a demon.

Speaker 9 Oh, you stupid ass bitch, you corny motherfucker.

Speaker 9 Haha, nice.

Speaker 1 This is the church pews pointing.

Speaker 1 Oh god.

Speaker 1 It's a knife.

Speaker 1 You can hear him saying, kill myself, which he also did. The fact that this guy was roaming roaming around, Chad, among us,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 You can't catch them all. It's a big country, but you and I both know there's going to be people who knew.

Speaker 22 There's no doubt.

Speaker 1 Go ahead, Chad.

Speaker 22 Yeah,

Speaker 22 there's no doubt at all. Do you have any Megan?

Speaker 1 I've got just your name, but I can hear you, so keep going.

Speaker 22 Something's going on. So, you know, someone's going to come out within the next 30 minutes.

Speaker 22 And look we saw this at the san bernardino shooting remember the apple iphone case where the husband and wife pair went to their company christmas party and shot it up and they interviewed neighbors after the event and what they said was this i knew something was up with them they had um

Speaker 22 U-Haul trucks backing up. They were working on things in the middle of the night in their garage.
Their actions were not the same as everyone else's in the neighborhoods.

Speaker 22 And the news anchor said, did you say anything? Why didn't you report this? And you know what they said?

Speaker 22 The people who committed this attack were from a different country, spoke a different language, had a different skin tone. And I did not want to be labeled as a racist.

Speaker 22 It wasn't their religion or where they were from that was concerning. It was their actions.
It was, that's what was concerning. So again, we've got to get away from that and realize.

Speaker 22 um you know where we are as a society you know when we started this company my goal was to be out of business one day and i'm sure gino and and joe would say the same thing thing.

Speaker 22 I'm a very select few of people that want to be out of business because these events stop happening. That's not the case.

Speaker 22 Again, we have to stop coddling to these people and stop cradling and being so sensitive. Call it what it is.
This is a maniac and we have to do a better job as a society.

Speaker 22 Thank you, Megan, for stepping up.

Speaker 1 We can't get through to them, Gino.

Speaker 1 I am not

Speaker 1 assuming bad faith from the people on the left. I'm actually really not.
I think on this issue, as Americans, we really are united. We all want it to stop.

Speaker 1 I think the left very much wants it to stop, and I think the right very much wants it to stop. We're just diametrically opposed in what we think the solution is.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like Gavin Newsom just tweeted out, we cannot even make it through the first week of school without mass shootings. Everyone believes that.

Speaker 1 Everyone is also disgusted and exasperated at that. We share in his frustration and lament.
And then he says, and the GOP will continue to do absolutely nothing while our kids are being gunned down.

Speaker 1 This is sick. And I believe, I share that exact sentiment if you replace GOP with Demps.
I mean, I feel exactly as he does, except I see his party

Speaker 1 at the core of the problem because they won't, his side will only deal with guns. They will only talk about guns in the wake of this.

Speaker 1 They won't talk about the trans ideology and what the medical profession will and won't do when they encounter somebody who says they're suffering from gender ideology problems.

Speaker 1 They won't deal with mental illness. They won't deal with institutionalization.
They won't look at Trump's order, executive order, trying to make it easier to

Speaker 1 institutionalize someone who's having a serious mental health problem without having to go through 25 different steps to get them there. They'll just say he's an authoritarian fascist.

Speaker 1 Whereas there are people who do need to be locked up. And this one's for you, Gino, because I've interviewed, I played this for our audience not long ago.

Speaker 1 I've interviewed moms who say, I know I'm raising the next sociopath. I know my son or daughter, they'll say, is a sociopath.
They killed the family cat. They tortured the family

Speaker 1 hamster, like terrible stuff. And what they all said to me, Gino, was, there's no place for me to go.

Speaker 1 Unless they break a law and I put them in the criminal justice system where they get arrested, which no loving parent wants, there's no place that will take them.

Speaker 1 Most therapists will say, I can't therapize your child out of sociopathy. Most facilities won't take them because they realize that this is a lost cause too.

Speaker 1 And my own solution for whatever it's worth for all these years has been we need a facility to which a loving parent or neighbor or even caring judge would willingly send the next school shooter who hasn't yet committed the crime.

Speaker 1 So we're a little in the minority report field where you're, you know, in advance of the crime, there's a sort of a punishment, if you will.

Speaker 1 But it's to protect other people's civil liberties based on evidence, based on evidence of a mental break.

Speaker 1 So far, the only facility that we have in the United States that anybody has pointed out to me is in Michigan. It's called Nemor's.
And that's the only one.

Speaker 1 And with all due respect to that institution, it's said not to be all that great.

Speaker 1 We need money to build a new facility that would be half prison, yes, I'm just going to say it, and half mental health institution.

Speaker 1 But the point is, the person would not have their freedom, and the rest of our children could live.

Speaker 1 It's not a solve all, but we need more of these and less of these knee-jerk, ban-the-guns, meaningless, senseless, waste-of-time convos.

Speaker 17 Yeah, Megan, we do need more resources focused on prevention, right? We know these, we know these threats are out there.

Speaker 17 Um, as you just mentioned, we the even the own parents know these warning signs, right? And that's really why we developed SaferWatch to give people a way to easily report information directly.

Speaker 17 And that information goes to law enforcement, it goes to mental health support as well, because a lot of a lot of times we need to take additional steps prior to the crisis, right?

Speaker 17 They talk about this left of bang, right? Situations.

Speaker 17 When you are able to report something easily and you're able to report something sometimes anonymously, that information ultimately ends up resulting in an investigation.

Speaker 17 And then the great work that law enforcement does behind the scenes that are, they're doing this 24-7.

Speaker 17 We get tips and threats that come into our platform every single day from just like that video you showed on YouTube that highlights different threats and different concerns.

Speaker 17 This content is out there. People are sharing these threats.
People are sharing their sick views. And more needs to be done to get ahead of this.
More resources need to be spent on prevention.

Speaker 17 Obviously, the hardening of the schools, the training, the technology to be in place when these active assailants happen is also critical because you're not going to be able to stop them all.

Speaker 17 So we clearly have to be prepared for these situations. But at the same time, how many more shootings do we need? We know this is taking place.

Speaker 17 We need more attention and more resources focused on prevention. And that's really.

Speaker 1 What's the number one thing you would need? Like, Gino, if President Trump said to you, Gino, I want you to solve this problem. What was the number one thing you would tell him you need?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 17 there's systems that are in place today where when there is a threat that's reported, essentially what we do is we start tracking the behavior, right?

Speaker 17 Like the behavioral threat threat assessments that are being taken place.

Speaker 17 So when those early warning signs are coming in, what you do is you ultimately have to track those behaviors and you have to track those individuals and you have to track not just in that moment, but over time.

Speaker 17 And it's a combination between parents. It's a combination between SROs,

Speaker 17 mental health professionals, people in the community. And all of that goes into a database and they're able to track the behaviors of this individual.

Speaker 17 Not everyone's a bad person, but when they do start sharing these obvious signs, these obvious warning signs,

Speaker 1 let me tell you something.

Speaker 1 I, as a public figure, who do come under threat from time to time, it's part of the job, sadly, I have a security team and they monitor all my social media and mailings that we receive, etc.

Speaker 1 And they do what you're doing right now for me without even telling me about it.

Speaker 1 They only elevate it to my level if it, if it, if it's necessary, you know, if I actually do need to know there's a specific individual.

Speaker 1 But there are, unfortunately, a bunch of people they track because they've saber rattled they've gotten a little odd they've gotten disturbingly odd and they do exactly what you're saying and i pay for that service right and it's a very worthwhile service for me but what you're saying is your organization does this for everyone for kids for schools as so long as people call in the the threat like someone's got you know, I have people proactively monitoring my stuff for these threats, but you need to be told someone's got to call your organization.

Speaker 1 And then you take it on the same way my security team takes it on.

Speaker 17 Exactly. And we also provide the software and the tools for the professionals to actually track and provide additional information into these systems.

Speaker 17 So it's not just a matter of a one-time reporting. It's actually

Speaker 17 following the behavior, following if the person has. you know, not shown up to school, their grades have failed, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 17 There's a whole long list of different things that go into potential threats and potential change in behavior that the FBI teach and Secret Service teach in terms of certain threat prevention methods.

Speaker 17 But yes, when people show these early warning signs and say threatening things,

Speaker 17 make drawings of churches and have knives that are stabbing the pages, these things need to be paid attention to and not just paid attention to, but they need to be followed over time.

Speaker 17 And these incidents can be prevented.

Speaker 14 We've actually helped.

Speaker 1 How do they, can you give me the way people can contact your organization? Because I guarantee you there are people listening right now who have somebody in mind potentially.

Speaker 17 So if you go to our website, saferwatchapp.com, or you can download the safer watch app, you can actually report anywhere in the United States. You can report for free, download our application.

Speaker 17 You can report.

Speaker 1 Safer, did you say saferwatchout.com?

Speaker 17 SaferWatchApp.

Speaker 1 SaferWatchApp.com.

Speaker 17 Or you can download it on iOS or Android. You can download it for free.

Speaker 17 And there's different categories where you can go in. It's everything from a school shooting threat to concerning behavior to mental health concerns.
And you can report that information on there.

Speaker 17 And ultimately, ultimately, that does get to the local law enforcement agencies and gets routed to the correct professionals.

Speaker 1 And it's also- Can you do it anonymously if you, if you don't want to put your name? Okay, that's great because a lot of people don't want to put their name with it.

Speaker 1 I saw you shaking your head yes in response to a lot of what he said, Chad.

Speaker 22 Oh, I totally agree. You know, and with that, as we're looking at the training for schools, we've got to get out of this like check the box training, right?

Speaker 22 And saying, yeah, our teachers get a seven-minute video at the beginning of the year. They're good to go.

Speaker 22 Seven minutes does not prepare you. A seven-minute, minute, 25 minute video does not prepare you for the worst case scenario.
And Gino and Joe have both said this.

Speaker 22 We've got to start by training our teachers and

Speaker 22 students. How do we recognize the early warning signs? What are our response options? And then how do we stop massive bleeding?

Speaker 22 Upwards of 60% of the fatalities in active shooter events would be alive today if someone in the school or the workplace knew how to stop their bleeding.

Speaker 22 So having your teachers trained, having bleeding control kits on site is huge. But it's time we start investing into the lives of our teachers and not just saying,

Speaker 22 you know, you know, listen, Megan, they do fire drills once a month in schools. You want to know the last time a kid was killed in a school fire? It was 1956, I believe.

Speaker 22 So, you know, it's time we start investing into the lives of our, you know, our faculty and our most precious, those students.

Speaker 1 Guys, thank you. Chad, Joe, Gino, really appreciate you guys joining us on this afternoon.
What a day. All the best to you.

Speaker 14 Thank you. Thank you for having me, Megan.

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Speaker 1 We don't have the problem solved, but we have a lot of potential solutions sitting right there, sitting right there asking us to choose them.

Speaker 1 I got to be honest, I don't have a ton of hope that there's going to be some bipartisan effort to do any of the stuff we've discussed today. We have to forge on without them.

Speaker 1 We have to keep, we have to just do these things without them. And they can continue trying to get gun bans passed, and that'll make them feel better.
And I guess that's fine for them.

Speaker 1 But we have to make these changes

Speaker 1 on team sanity, or we're going to see a lot more just like these, especially like what Brandon Tatum was saying with the cops and the former military protecting the schools.

Speaker 1 Call your school, find out who's protecting it this week and next, and for the foreseeable future. God bless all of you, and our children, too.
Our children, too, and our country. God bless America.

Speaker 1 We'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show: No BS, No Agenda, and No Fear.

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