We’ve long argued that an armed citizen in the right place at the right time can put an end to a mass shooting before it really gets started. We’ve seen evidence of that, too, perhaps most famously in White Settlement, TX.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen enough. It would have been nice if it happened in Uvalde, though, right?

Well, it seems that it could have if not for the Uvalde police, at least according to one man.

A Texas funeral worker who was one of the first people to come face-to-face with a gunman at Robb Elementary School last month said he immediately armed himself to stop the shooter but was stopped by police, leaving him feeling guilty that he couldn’t do more.

Cody Briseno said he was working at a funeral home near the Uvalde school when he saw shooting suspect [name redacted] crash his pickup truck in a nearby ditch and emerge from the vehicle with an “evil look” on his face, he told NBC News in an interview that aired Sunday.

“We locked eyes and he gave me this vibe. I told him, are you OK? Me thinking he was dazed out,” he said of that May 24 encounter.

Briseno said the 18-year-old then turned and went into his vehicle where he retrieved a rifle. As the teen started to load the firearm, Briseno yelled at a coworker who had joined him outside to run. Both of them safely escaped the spray of gunfire that was fired at them, he said, allowing Briseno to retrieve his own gun from his wife and charge after the shooter. That’s when a police officer stopped him.

“Hey, what are you going?” he recalled the officer asking him. He told the officer that he was going to stop the gunman and pointed out that the suspect was already inside the school. He was instead told to stay back and shut up.

Now, understand that this is Briseno’s word and we don’t have independent confirmation, but based on what we saw from the police that day, it certainly sounds exactly like what would have happened.

For me, it’s bad enough that the Uvalde police weren’t interested in entering the school. We don’t know how many lives they could have saved, but there’s little doubt that at least some of those children would still be alive right now if not for their decision to stay outside.

But hey, if they’re going to stay outside, then they’re going to stay outside.

Yet they apparently also stopped people who wanted to do something, who wanted to do more than just wait to see how many children were going to be slaughtered by a freaking maniac.

Further, it’s now led to more anti-gun rhetoric, of people scoffing at the idea of a good guy with a gun stopping such shootings from taking place, when we’ve got Briseno saying he was in the position to do something and the police would not let him.

How do you not get furious at stuff like this?

The truth of the matter is that the Uvalde police have a lot of questions to answer, and we know they’re not interested in answering them. Frankly, that suggests they know they screwed up by the numbers and I hope the inquiry talks to Briseno about his experiences.

It should be noted that at the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966, book store manager Alan Crum assisted police in trying to take down the shooter. Law enforcement welcomed the help.

It seems Austin police in the 1960s were far wiser than Uvalde police in 2022.