09-11-25 - *FULL SHOW* Benjamin Allbright Fills in for Ross

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Obviously, we had a lot of news yesterday, the assassination
of Charlie Kirk and closer to home, the Evergreen High
School shooting. The latest on that a student who opened
fire Wednesday at Evergreen High School, injuring two other students,
died last night of a self inflicted gunshot wound. For

(00:24):
the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, one student remains in critical
condition according to doctors, while another was actually discharged from
the hospital overnight to continue to recovery from injuries. The shooter,
a sixteen year old male, fired a revolver at students
at twelve twenty four yesterday, bringing scores the first responders

(00:45):
to the school. Three students, including the shooter, were treated
at a Common Spirit to Saint Anthony Hospital for gunshot wounds.
At a fourth student took themselves to the hospital with
injuries sustained while escaping and fleeing to a nearby elementary school.
Law enforcement for across the metro area offered services drove
up unasked to help with the scene. Parents obviously convened

(01:07):
over at the elementary school to reconnect with their students.
Hundreds of witnesses it's unclear whether the victims were targeted
or whether they were just happened to be the first
persons that the shooter came across. And obviously we'll get
more information on that as we go along, and we'll
keep you up the date here at KOA at the
news breaks at the top and bottom of the hour

(01:28):
as well. Yesterday Charlie Kirk shot at A. I don't
want to call it a rally because it's not exactly
what it was, but more of his Q and A.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
He's doing a tour.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
And for those who don't know who Charlie Kirk is,
you know, Charlie will sit down and basically say prove
me wrong, lay out a premise and say prove me wrong,
and we'll engage in debate, both with people who have
a common belief system as him and those who do not.
And I think most everybody has seen but or has
at least heard, that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed

(02:02):
there in Utah. His next stop on his tour was
here in Colorado at Colorado Springs. I believe on the
eighteenth of not one hundred percent on that, but I
think it was. The eighteenth was the date for that
news coming out on that this morning. Authorities have new
leads in their search for the person who shot and
killed him. A weapon they said was used in the shooting,

(02:25):
which is a bolt action thirty odd to six imprints
of a forearm, a shoe, video tracking the shooter's movements
as he climbed onto a roof to carry out the attack.
Robert Bowles, the Special Agent in charge of the FBI
Salt Lake City Office, setting a news conference that the
gun was recovered with a quote high powered bolt action rifle.
It had been found in a wooded area in a
neighborhood near the campus of Utah Valley University, where mister

(02:49):
Kirk had been speaking to a large crowd on Wednesday afternoon.
Investigators are said to have good footage of this individual,
and that's Perbo Mason, Utah's public safety chief, but he
added that officials will release the images only if they
cannot identify him. Officials refer to the shooter as a
man throughout the news conference, and this I mean, it

(03:09):
was just it was a tough day yesterday overall. I
was sitting in with some good friends of ours. It
would be Leland Conway doing a television show that the
three of us do, and well usually Christin Toto's on
air as well, but he was out that day, so
WILLI was sitting in and we usually it's meant to

(03:31):
be lighthearted and fun and kind of a guy's guy,
you know, version of the view, that kind of thing
on having some fun, and it just it was interesting
is we got that news right as we were getting
ready to record, and we wound up not recording all
three episodes, just one simply because the I think the

(03:51):
emotions were sort of riding high, and it was it
was sort of difficult to to rationalize doing humor in
a moment that that didn't feel like it. And the
Evergreen stuff broke right right after we went to air,
so it just it just didn't feel like it. And
as we as we were sitting through that and listening
to each other comment on that, Leland's, Willie and I

(04:15):
have a little bit different political views. I would suggest that,
you know, Willie's a pretty right wing guy. I would
say that Leland is a very conservative libertarian, and I
would say that I'm more of a socially permissive libertarian,
you know, listening to each other on that and realizing
that we can have respectful dialogue even with differing opinion

(04:38):
sort of crystallized like how polemic we've gotten in this country.
And I was saying something to Marty and Genai before
I came in for the cross talk, and the way
I wanted to talk about this, the way I want
to frame this before we start to get into these
kinds of things, is I think it is incredibly important
for us all to remember that our opponent is not

(05:01):
our enemy. You wouldn't go on the basketball court, lose
a game and then shoot your opponent.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
They're not your enemy.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
And your political opponent is not your enemy either. At
the end of the day, left wing, right wing, libertarian,
whatever you are, we all theoretically have the same underlying point,
or at least thought. We all want America or the
United States to be the best America or the United
States that it could possibly be.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
We all want life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
We all want to live the best quality of life
that we can and leave a better place for our
children behind us. Now, we may fundamentally disagree on how
to get there or what that is, but in the end,
our aims or our goals are all the same, and
so I sort of find this narrative that we've come to,

(06:04):
and I don't know when it started.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
I can't put my finger on that. I don't know when.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
The moment was that we that we got so angry
at each other that we started treating our opponents as
our enemies. I don't know if if you know, the
internet has helped that, as we're able to lob barbs
from behind screens without fear of repercussion, whereas we used

(06:30):
to have to do that face to face. I don't
know if that's contributed to the discourse. I don't know
if that's the reason the discourse has gotten so vile.
I will say that what Charlie Kirk brought to the
table was fundamentally with his show what we should aspire to,
the open dialogue and debate of with someone we disagree with.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
He says, prove me wrong, I say, change my mind.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
But fundamentally the idea that we can, through words, attempt
to resolve the differences between us. When I find that
I'm disagreeing with somebody and it's not getting through, it
doesn't drive me to thoughts of violence. It drives me
to thoughts of okay. I'm failing in this argument. Where

(07:15):
am I failing to Where am I failing to delineate
my point to this person that I'm speaking to? And
maybe they are so walled off they wouldn't be receptive
to it. But I choose not to believe that. I
choose to believe that wherever we are, we can, through

(07:37):
rational debate, convince each other or find common ground. Whether
or not we convince each other a point, we can
find the compromise somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
And that was what I thought.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Whether I agreed or disagreed with Charlie Kirk and what
was that he said, I at least admired his ability
to get out there, stand up, engage face to face,
and be willing to engage in the debate.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
And I think we need more of that.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Whatever you think of Charlie Kirk, he may have been
your opponent, but he was not your enemy. Your enemy
was the person that shot him. Your enemy was the
person that executed him. Your enemy was the person that
ended civil debate in murder and violated the law.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
And so at the end of the.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Day, I think that before we trek down any further
with we've got to find solutions for this. I think
at the at the core of the argument, we need
to understand fundamentally that our opponent is not our enemy.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Five six six nine zero is the text line for
those of you listening. Quite a lot of texts, uh
coming in. I can't get to to all of these,
some of you having signal with a difficulty with listening
with the signal crossing over with the country station. I've
already made our people aware of that, so we'll see
what the issue is with that. I would suggest if

(09:11):
you're listening on eight to fifty AM and you're having trouble,
if you're in the Denver metro area, ninety four one
FM also allows you to listen or you can stream
it on the iHeartRadio app as well, So you just
have to put in KOA there and you can find
it on the free iHeart Radio app. A lot of
great a lot of great texts coming in here, but
I think you know some of these. I can definitely

(09:33):
sense you, guys anger, and there's anger from all sides
on this. People who don't want to be blamed for
the action of a mentally ill person. You know, people
who are angry at somebody who was doing it the
right way in a sense, opening the dialogue, engaging in

(09:56):
the dialogue in an open forum. There are definitely it
is definitely a heated topic. And for me, I think
that's why it's important. I tried to make the point
in the last segment that just because somebody is your
opponent does not mean they're your enemy. And we've got
to find ways to exist and got to find common

(10:19):
ground because it feels like in a lot of ways,
and maybe it's me tell me if I'm wrong on this,
but it feels like to me that I'm living in
two different countries at the same time. It feels like
there are two countries that sort of exist side by.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Side in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
And you know, the United States of America was designed
as a bit of a melting pot country. The founding
fathers and the brilliance of what they put together in
the Constitution, I think, I think delineate that. But that's
a part of that. That's that's a feature and not
a bug. But it does lead us to scenarios where

(11:00):
we get heated each other. If you've ever read anything
of that era when they were coming up with that,
those debates on the Constitution were quite heated, but that said,
they found common ground and found a way that made
a good work. And I worry that we're careening towards
an era where that's no longer the case.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
And I wonder why. I wonder why we're not able to.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Is it simply because we weren't around in that era,
We didn't see how heated it got and how they
were able to recover and come back to center on that?

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Or is it just that now we are that different
the natural evolution of hundreds of years of this country
existing the way it has and differing ideologies going their
different paths.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
I don't know the answer to that, but I do
know that we have got to find a way to
be civil. We've got to find a way to find
common ground, because without that, we can't have solutions. You
can't bring forty percent of the people to the table
and suggest this is the way we're going to do

(12:07):
things and then expect everybody else to, you know, to
get there and adhere to said solutions. And so I
me and my mindset and the way that I've always operated,
I've always sort of prided myself on being a man
of action. I realize there's a certain irony in that
I am in the talk business, but I've always prided

(12:28):
myself behind the scenes so of being a man of
action and put my money where my mouth is as
far as that stuff goes. And in these particular situations,
I struggle to.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Envision the path toward that, because.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
I mean, even on the text line right now, as
I look on some of these people are.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
At each other's throats.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
I mean some of the texts that some of you
guys are sending in it hurts me to read that.
That's the level of anger that you are at right now.
And I don't know, I don't know exactly where to
go from there. What hurts me, or what what burns
me more than anything? Or these innocent kids out in Evergreen?

(13:12):
How do we get to this? How did we get
to the position where one child felt so lost that
they felt the need to shoot others? How do we
stop this before it starts? We're gonna get into a
lot more of this. We'll get into more of the
Charlie Kirk stuff. And I've got a nine to eleven

(13:35):
retrospective on this heavy handed day that I'll get to
at some point as well.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
We got to hit a break. This is the Roski
Miinski Show.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
I'm Ben all Bright, latest news and goings on, and
as much as I'm monologued, I think in the first
two segments, I think I'd like to open up the
phone lines.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
So I want to hear what you guys have to say.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
I've gotten to the point where I've gotten enough of
the own of my own voice in my own head,
and uh so I'm going to open up the phone
lines three oh three someone, three eighty five eighty five.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I want to hear what you guys have to say.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Let's let's try to keep the the the dialogue civil,
Let's try to keep it respectful. I understand that there
are and there is anger out there, but what I
don't want to turn this into is shouting, screaming and
flinging mud at each other to the point where I've
got to cut people off. So I'm going to open
up the phone lines three oh three someone, three eighty

(14:27):
five eighty five. I want to hear what you have
to say. What's what's your opinion on what's been going on?
What are your solutions? Where do you think it is
that we've we've gone wrong here in this country. And
how do we write the ship I am, I am
certainly curious as to what you guys have to say
about these things. Where where did the political discourse get

(14:48):
so vitriolic.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
That that this is in.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Someone's mind crazy or not mentally unstable or not the endgame?

Speaker 1 (14:58):
How do we do better.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
With the coming generations in fixing this for our children?
How do we with regard to Evergreen? How do we
how do we identify these problems as they emerge so
that a sixteen year old boy doesn't feel like that
the solution to whatever is happening in his life is

(15:22):
to shoot his classmates and then himself.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Help me with figuring out the solutions for that.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I I mean, everybody seems to think that they know
where to start. Everybody has an opinion on that. I
don't know where to start. You know, I've seen quite
a few people.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
It's the guns.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I will I will tell you in the interest of
full disclosure, I'm a gun owner, you know.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
I there is a.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
There is truth to people who say that statistically, you know,
murder happens here because we have the Second Amendment. There
is a truth to that stat that said that argument
was was fought two hundred and fifty years ago when
they put the Second Amendment in the Constitution. Our founding

(16:14):
fathers entrusted us with the right to be able to
bear arms, and in a lot of ways we've failed
them with the way that we've done that, we're certainly
failing our children. That doesn't mean that necessarily that they
were wrong in entrusting us with that. We've got to
do better with the right that they gave us, that
they that they put in that document. So three oh

(16:37):
three seven one, three eighty five eighty five. If you
want to you want to hop on, you want to
talk about things, I'm I'm ready to listen. I'm uh,
don't call me Fraser Crane, but I'm I'm ready to listen.
I'm ready to hear what you have to say. I'm
ready to prove me wrong, change my mind. As far
as that goes, there are a couple of questions coming
in on the text line, which is five six x nine,

(16:58):
ere if youn't feel comfortable jumping on the air, and
I do want to get to something somebody A lot
of you have been asking multiple of you, at least
have been asking about the lack of drone coverage in
the security detail for Charlie Kirk, and that's something I've
harped on privately. I've got friends who are in the

(17:18):
security industry, in the personal protection industry.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
That's something I've harped on with that.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Anyway, what do you do if you don't have an
aerial reconnaissance drone on your security detail?

Speaker 1 (17:30):
At this point, what are you even? How are you
claiming to provide security?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Because we've seen with the person who attempted the shot
at Donald Trump, President Trump in Pennsylvania. We've seen obviously
with the situation in Utaw, the shooters will use rooftop
in an effort to make that shot, and you know
line of sight on those rooftops is sketchy. Why not

(17:58):
have a drone in the air for those kinds of things?
I agree with you. Several people if texted that, and
I absolutely agree with.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
You on that. We go out to the phone lines down,
Welcome Kevin to the show. Kevin, how are you doing
this morning?

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I'm doing good?

Speaker 4 (18:13):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (18:14):
What'd you want to talk about?

Speaker 5 (18:15):
Kevin?

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well?

Speaker 6 (18:17):
I just want to.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Share with you that you know the difference between now
fifty years ago. I brought up in Kansas and farm
boys would driving trucks around, pick ups around, and they'd
have shotgun hanging in the back window, and we'd never
have this kind of problem. And if you had somebody
that was kind of mentally, they could talk to somebody

(18:37):
local or maybe call somebody on the phone. But now
if they have a problem, they could do something on
the media, on Facebook or whatever, and they get you know,
a dozen people around the countries that are triggering them
to do something different, and they don't know each other,
and so there's no relationship, and so the media sources

(18:59):
are what's see this hatred. I've been on pro life
marches and we're very peaceful, we're prayerful, and we have
people on outside the fence screaming and hollering at us.
We don't scream and holler back at him. And I
think that's what you're seeing today is is that the
sources of where these people are doing these things are

(19:20):
Suicide rates have gone up in the military. There's two
hundred people in the country a day that commit suicide.
Where do they look? And again, I'm a strong Christian,
and so our faith and our hope is where it's
a's So we're sit down and we try to work
with people. We talk about our faith and our hope
and that care for each other. And in the media

(19:42):
it doesn't go that way. The media is very negative.
It doesn't focus on faith. Charlie focused on his faith.
He talked about it, he talked to me. He'd have
discussions and how many times did he yeel back at
somebody's ever People would say okay, Charlie would go, hey,
I got to tell me your question, and then Charlie
would answer it and they might come back and yell

(20:03):
at him, but he never wants to yell at the
person that asked the questions. Yeah, I think that's what's happening.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Hey, Kevin, and I appreciate that call a lot more
than you. More than you know. I grew up in Arkansas.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
We had the same thing with the shotguns in the
back of the truck and those kinds of things. I'm
not and I'll in the interest of full disclosure, I'll
say this on the front end. I'm not a man
of faith. I envy people with that mechanism. I simply
don't possess it. But I find something wonderful in people
that find find comfort in that. As to your point
about having people to talk to, I think it's a
very valid point. I think people look for people to

(20:38):
talk to about these problems, and I think you may
have You may have hit the nail on the head
there in the sense that people looking for these things
now have a full Internet full of people telling them
or looking for them to come to them and telling
them things that they probably don't need to be told
in those situations. The opportunity to radicalize is a lot
easier with an interconnected society where those types of situations

(21:02):
are available. You know, you can stumble backdoor into some
radical website, whether it's right, whether it's left, whatever. You
can stumble into that much much easier than you used
to be able to before we had Internet and accessibility
and Twitter. There's a part of me that certainly hates
a lot of the troll culture today. There's a lot

(21:24):
of it I find, and I share this with our
producer Shannon Scott, who's a very funny man. You know,
there's a lot of stuff that I find very very
amusing and very funny about all that. And then there
are moments like these where I sit there and I'm like,
is this helping, you know in some of these situations?
And and so I think there is to what Kevin
just said on the call there, and I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Again.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
I think there is something to the idea that we
have an accessibility to and I'm going to use air
quotes here solutions that may or may not be solutions
in these cases. And I hope that, you know, I
hope that we can continue down that path and figure
out or suss ways to redirect troubled people from even
more troubling solutions. Three all three seven one, three eighty

(22:07):
five eighty five is the number if you guys want
to call uh five six six nine zero if your
bashful and you just want to use the the text line.
We had quite a few great texts coming in uh
the three one. Oh, thank you for having this conversation.
I was talking to my dad last night. We mostly
agree politically, and yet he seems so unhinged yesterday. I

(22:30):
wish he was listening right now, though I'm not sure
he would. Unfortunately, you know, I hope that we've just
are able to provide a bit of a forum here
where we can I understand, we're angry, I understand where upset.
I'm hoping that we can provide a forum here to
maybe have a bit of therapy for a second, you know,

(22:52):
and maybe find ways to calm down for a second,
and then find ways to solve problems.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I'm not I'm in no way a licensed therapist.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I'm hardly prepared to be, you know, the forefront of
the leadership of that sort of movement. But that is
my my genuine hope today in a day that for
a lot of us, is a remembrance of something that's
you know, something that was even more devastating in nine
to eleven. You know, I I remember when I was
what I was doing on nine to eleven. I was,

(23:25):
I was in military uniform giving a talk to to
a group of kids at an ROTC class at the
college there when you know, when that happened, and I
just remember that the the anger of that day, the
feeling of of of helplessness. And there's sort of a
an echo of that over the last couple of days,

(23:45):
as you watch political violence escalate to again an assassination,
and you watch again our kids, you know, having to
bear the brunt of not having these solutions in a
high school. Let's go back out to the to the hotline,
and I believe we've got on the lot.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Jeff, how you doing, find Matt? How are you you
know I'm doing, Man, I'm doing. What's on your mind?

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, I appreciate your show on what you're doing, but
that conversation back to these these shoots. I'm up for
age and I've had the opportunity to boy Scouts, coaching,
different opportunities. But the central family is one of the
key issues that I think of today. But it's back
to the telling me for about the media, and it's like,
why do our children at three or four years old

(24:29):
have to have a phone attached to the mighty, to
wear a belt, or they wear shoes and socks, so
they're getting the influence from the outside world. Sometimes maybe
it's because you mentioned with proper information or you know,
non correct or being redirected really shouldn't be doing. It
gets back to that centralized family. We're just so busy,
so many distractions. I believe that has a huge impact

(24:50):
on what's going on to do with our huses.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
You know, Jeff, I tend to agree with that point
as well.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
You know, one of the things about the phones and
the and the connectedness and everything else is that we do.
We substitute that family dynamic for and I'm gonna call
it an extended family dynamic here for lack of a
better term.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Through social media.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
One of the greatest points somebody made to me is
the this was a couple couple months ago, but the
difference between the perceived world through the internet and social
media and the real world. And to it, I'll explain
that if someone if you put out a post on
social media and that post only got twenty five likes,

(25:35):
you know, or hearts or whatever the little thing is
down there, you would say, well, this underperformed, and you
would be disappointed in that. And yet if twenty five
people came up to you over the course of the
day and they said, hey, brother, I love you, I
hope you're having a great day, you would be overwhelmed by.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
That outpouring of support for yourself.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
And so there's there's sort of this distortion between what
occurs in social media realms what occurs with the advent
of the internet, and this is this supposed ease of
information and this this this this tool that we have
that could be so powerful in connecting us and yet
finds ways to divide us, and there's this distorted sort
of sense of worth based off that that that really has.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
As I think. I think it's a great point, Jeff.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
I appreciate you.

Speaker 7 (26:24):
Ben.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Have a great day.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
No worries, Jeff, you have a you have a great day,
brothers day. Safe out there. We're gonna go back out
the hotline and uh and bring on dust.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
It doesn't know how you do it.

Speaker 7 (26:31):
This morning, I'm doing well. Thanks for taking my call.
I just have a couple of thoughts here and then
i'll you know, I'll hang up and listen to you guys.
But my first thought is, I don't think this is
going away anytime soon. I had a long conversation with
my two kids last night about it, and they're telling

(26:52):
me all these stats and it's just getting worse and worse.
So my first thought is, I just feel like there
needs to be much harsher penalties for this, for the
ones that are not taking their own lives when they
do something like this, the ones that survive, it needs
to be a much harsher penalty, and it needs to

(27:13):
be sooner, you know, meaning not put these people in
prison and have the taxpayer day to you keep them
in prison and feed them and take care of their health.
It just needs to end, you know, and the public
needs to know if they're going to do something like this,
the consequences are going to be just severe, like what

(27:35):
they would do in another country. My other thought is
I feel like social media is a big part of this.
I feel like a lot of the kids see this
instantly on their phone. It's just blasted everywhere, and it
just puts you know, this is maybe where some of
these kids get the idea to where maybe if it

(27:56):
wasn't just blasted on everybody's phone and on the instantly.
I don't know, I just feel like that's where a
lot of it comes from.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
So I'm very much with you on that, Dustin, and
I appreciate the call. I was talking with a good friend,
you know, Leland Cobway and Willie yesterday. We talked about
the lack of accountability out there these days, the lack
of consequence because what we have on the books isn't
deterrent enough to keep people from doing this.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
So there are there is that angle to it, and
I'm with you on that. I'm with you on the
fact that the.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Criminals and people like that thrive on the indulgence of
society and an attempt.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
To And I'm here for the rehab portion of it too.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
I'm here to try to make people better, but there
are people that repeat offenders.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
That get away with that.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
The other aspect of what you were talking about there,
perhaps there's an element to I'm not getting the attention
so I'll go viral this way.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
There may be an element to that as well.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
And with that, we have a special guest that has
just walked into the studio. And I'm not sure if
I'm pronouncing this correctly or not, is it Russ Kaminski. Yeah,
to turn your mic on there. Rough Shannon just hates
you right back, and he's like.

Speaker 8 (29:03):
No, all right, there are we on? Now, what's up, buddy.
I shouldn't be here showing a friend of mine the studio.
But yeah, you've said a lot. There's so many angles
to this. I want to respond to something you just
said a moment ago. I don't know if there is
any deterrence for people who want to do any of

(29:23):
these kinds of things. I think there may be prevention,
you know, there's the red flag. I don't know that
that works very well. I hope that people are more diligent.
I hope that parents are more careful with having their
kids having access to guns. I think prevention and deterrence
are different, right, And then there's punishment and also, and
I'm not saying that what happened yesterday and either of

(29:44):
the things yesterday falls into this category, but broadly speaking,
lots and lots and lots of our crimes are committed
by people who committed crime before.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Well, and that was what the conversation, that's what Leland
and Willie and I were having, stemmed from the incident
with the Ukrainy refugee.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, on the mass transit. That's where that came from.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
I mean, obviously what we're doing is not working in
terms of being a deterrent, uh, you know, and in
consequence so uh, but we do need preventive measures on
the front end for the for the mental ill, and
to figure out how to quantify and qualify that in
an in an appropriate manner so that we are able
to actually identify and get those people the help so
they can be contributing members to society. For some people,

(30:20):
it's never gonna work, but I want to catch the people.
I want to use the net that works and catch
the people that can. I started the show by saying,
it's important for us to remember that our opponent is
not our enemy. And I I can't hammer that home enough.
But when you were, when you were watching this yesterday
and we were seeing this yesterday, what was your initial
thought with regard to, you know, the situation with Charlie,

(30:42):
a guy who ostensibly was doing it correctly and engaging
in open debate.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
That that was my thought, right, this guy.

Speaker 8 (30:48):
And I don't agree with Charlie much of the time, right,
maybe not more than half.

Speaker 7 (30:54):
Right.

Speaker 8 (30:55):
The last time I talked about and the show was
actually to criticize him.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
I only met him once.

Speaker 8 (31:00):
But what he was doing was trying to change people's
minds using words. And he was the most effective communicator
of conservative principles to college students that's probably ever existed.
And all he was trying to do was talk to people.
And that's even what all these tours are about. Prove

(31:21):
me wrong, right, the name of his tour, Prove me wrong.
He didn't say, come, you know, let's have a throwdown,
or even let's arm wrestle for it, right, Prove me wrong,
and it's just.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
So, this is what I was thinking.

Speaker 8 (31:37):
We fought the American Revolution to get away from tyranny,
and then when we set up our nation, we had
the first Amendment, freedom of speech. And people forget about
this most of the time because there's all this conversation
about whether pornography gets free speech protections and so on.
But the purpose of that was political speech, because this
country was founded on debate and all these old scenes,

(32:00):
obviously we don't have video of them, but imagine Sam
Adams and these guys sitting around a pub with a
pint of beer, the federalists and the anti federalists debating,
and they were as intense about anything political as anybody
today is.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
And they never killed each other.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Because you can be passionate and be an opponent and
not be an enemy. There's a line that we need
to get a term.

Speaker 8 (32:22):
I think that would be good to keep in mind
more often, and that is the loyal opposition. And I
do understand though sometimes it doesn't feel like the other
side is loyal, and both sides feel that way. And
as long as both sides feel that way and feel
like the other side is not just trying to do
something different, but trying to do something that would transform

(32:45):
their lives in a way they think is wrong.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
They're gonna fight back.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
I feel like a lot of people feel like the
debate is in bad faith from both sides right now.
To your point, yeah, and I feel like that that's
something that we're going to have to overcome before we
find any common ground.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
We gotta hit a break. I think I just say
one cood thing.

Speaker 8 (33:01):
I think you're an absolutely tremendous voice on this.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
You're a fully independent thinker.

Speaker 8 (33:06):
You never think in terms of tribe, you know, a
political party. I think of you as as a principled moderate.
I'm I'm sure not every single like I have some
views that are all way over here and some views
are way over there. But I'm I'm glad that you're
that you're the one doing this today. I think you're

(33:27):
the right guy.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, I'm glad that you're my friend, and I appreciate
that we got to hit a break.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
We'll be back. Nice of Ross to be able to
drop ey there.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
He has this buddy with him as high school buddy
was doing the tour there, we got a chance to
have him come in and give his thoughts for a
few moments, and you know, one of the things that
I don't know if you all as listeners know, but
Ross and I do have a very good friendship behind
the scenes, and you know, really respect, I really respect
what Ross has to say. We're able to engage and

(33:53):
you know, in constructive debate. He and I have a
lot of overlap in our thinking. We have some things
that were different on and we're able to engage and
construct if uh, you know, thought on that.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
I always appreciated Ross as.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Being an independent thinker, and you know, for him to
say that back to me, you know, it's something that
I sort of treasure.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
You know, out of uh, out of it. So uh
five six six nine zero is the text line.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Three h three someone three eighty five eighty five is
the the call in if you guys want to talk.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
I appreciate the calls we had.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Last hour from uh uh, Dustin and Jeff and I
believe it was Kevin was who broke the seal there
and got us got us off. I appreciate what you
guys have to say. And I you know, I had
I had a text in here that was kind of
being being spirited to me about you know, calling me
a what was that? A faithless liberal? I'm a libertarian
first of all. Uh, and then you know, yeah, I'm

(34:50):
not a person of faith. I'm not I envy people
who who have that.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
I I don't. I just I don't have that mechanism.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
I hoping whatever it is, it has the belief in
what you can't see and what you can't hold in
your hand, which is is what faith is.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
I I don't have that, And and so I sort
of I'm not angry about people that do.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
I don't look down on people that do. I I
actually I want to envy that. I just I've never
I don't have that mechanism. I grew up in a
very what you would call religious upbringing, but I just
I don't know it never and maybe you know, as
those of you with faith would say, there's still hope
for me, But I just don't possess that. And I

(35:33):
would never look down on someone for for.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Having a different ideology.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
There as far as that kind of stuff goes, We're
gonna go right back out to the OK Hotline and
welcome Mike to the show.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Mike, how you doing this morning?

Speaker 9 (35:46):
Doing good?

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Ben? How are you?

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I'm doing pretty well, what's on your mind this morning?

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Good?

Speaker 4 (35:50):
Hey, I kind of go back to what Kevin said earlier.
You know, I grew up with easy access the firearms
in the home, but I had a healthy respect to
not touch those firearms. And you know, I think about these,
uh situations with my kids and if I stumbled in

(36:12):
life growing up, you know, I'm in my early fifties,
it was maybe a couple of friends. They knew about it,
and uh, you know, I got to remind my my
kids all the time that when you.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
First, Mike, we just lost you.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
There.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Let's let's go back and then try that sentence again.
I'm sorry we lost you.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Yeah, no, no, I don't know where you lost that.
You know, I have to remind my kids that when
your friends are stumbling in life, don't make it your
first thing to pick up your phone and record it
and blast it down there to the world to show everybody,
you know, be there first one to get clicks on

(36:55):
something they did wrong or something they messed up on.
And I think that's part of it, is just how
quick we are to try to find the flaws in
everybody and put it down there on social media and stuff.
So I find myself reminding my kids all the time,
just stick to your business, don't worry about everybody else's business,

(37:15):
and just try to try to be there for people
rather than be there to ridicule them and last them
all over social media.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, I think that's a I think that's a great point. Mike,
thank you for the call. Well, I will say, like,
you know, one of the things that I enjoy, I
enjoy the roast culture. I don't know if you guys
have ever seen this shows like Kill Tony or the
roast of some of these celebrities where.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
You may quite what and it dates back to that.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
I mean a Dean Martin used to do them, I
think if you guys remember, But there are what seemed like,
in a lot of ways, sort of mean spirited comments,
but ways to I enjoy that, Like I've always enjoyed
that sort of level of comedy, and as I take
a step back from myself and these types of situations
to the point Mike was just making about being there
for people who are hurting, rather than rushing to make

(38:04):
a quick joke about it or a quick barb And
there's certainly there is certainly something to that. I don't
think we do enough of, and especially as men, I
don't think we do enough of being there for each
other and checking in with each other. You know, it's tough.
It's tough as in the generation I was raised in.
I turned forty five this year. I think I was

(38:26):
probably the last of that generation that was raised in
that horde of that sort of you know, tough guy
mentality that it's tough to tell another man I love you,
you know that kind of stuff and check in as
my my normal. Co host on Brocos Country Tonight, Nick
Ferguson says, we've got to, you know, we've got to
smash through those barriers and be able to check in
with each other. And we need to teach our kids
that it's okay to check in with each other and

(38:48):
and make sure that we're okay.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I hear you on that.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
I don't know if that's the solution, but I know
that that's not part of the problem. Uh. Check it
in with each other is a you know, is a
good thing. I just I struggle with, you know, in
the end, figuring out what it is that we can
do to identify and.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Prevent these things.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Uh, like what happened in Evergreen on on the front
end and and to reset that for those of you
who are unaware of the shooting at Evergreen High School. UH,
the shooter UH passed away from a self and click
to gunshot.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Of the other UH. The others one is still in
the hospital.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
One thankfully has been released and so we're so we're
so happy for that.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
You know that that.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
One has UH has has pulled through and at least
at least it's going to be released, so.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
You know, looking forward to that.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
I just as I'm stumbling over words here because I'm
looking up at the the TV screen, it looks like
the FBI has released a photo and are asking for
help in identifying a person of interest in connection with
the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
And that is going on.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
I'll bring you more on that, obviously, the KOI News
team will bring you more on that, UH at the
bottom of the hour. But I want to continue to
the phone lines open because I want to hear what
you guys have to say in the in the in
the spirit of Charlie Kirk, I want to hear from
those of you who not only agree, but those of
you who disagree, those of you who have other things
that you want to say, I want to hear you.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
I want to hear you today. I want to make
sure that you're heard.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
So if you've never felt like that you've been heard,
feel free to call in three h three seven one,
three eighty five eighty five. We got to hit a break.
We'll be back if you guys want to call it.
I want to get your thoughts on this stuff real quick.
Off the text line. And I disagree with this texter here,
but I'll give him the opportunity to rebut and improve
it wrong. The nine seven zero is an issue I
see is the introduction of first person shooting video games
Call of Duty Fortnite has desasitized today's children are a

(40:39):
long way from Frogger. Young children are killing on these games,
rewriting the brain to see it as normal. You know,
I in full disclosure, I play Call of Duty. Yes,
I realize I'm an adult admitting to play video games,
but I do. And I would say that the counter
argument to that would be that South Korea by far
consumes the most violent video games in still older. Their

(41:01):
rates of these kinds of things are well well below
where ours are, so anecdotally that doesn't seem upfront to.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
To be the case.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
With that, We're gonna go right back out to uh
the hotline and bring on Jake.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Jake, how you doing this morning?

Speaker 10 (41:18):
Yeah, Benjamin, how you doing today?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
I'm doing, man, I'm doing it. So I think it's
a heavy day for all of us. What's on your
mind this morning?

Speaker 6 (41:24):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 10 (41:25):
You know, we always discuss how we can make our
school stafer, and ultimately it's I think it's pretty simple.
We need to spend our tax dollars to to hire
armed security guards and figure out a better, a better
security system for our schools. I mean, there's there should
only be so many ways in and so many ways out.

(41:46):
And if we provide the technology that we have today
to just install in all school buildings private you know,
church building, is any any public school. I mean, our
kids are our future. We need to protect them. And
no dollar in now to to deflect anybody's reasoning for
trying to you know, get that put into use, whether

(42:08):
we hire bodyguards, the security, all of that. It's just
we can't put a price on kids' lives. And then
to honor Kirk really quick, you know, I think as
Americans we need to uh just continue kid legacy with
allowing people to create platforms for for professional debate, you know,

(42:28):
different opinion. We need to continue that on and don't
let our First Amendment break down because of this event,
this tragic event.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
I tend to agree with you, Jake, thanks for the call.
I appreciate that I tend to agree with you. My
question is is what exactly.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Are we going to do.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
We already have metal detectors, We already have schools that
resemble fortresses or prisons rather than than the school that
I remember when I came up, and yet.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
We still have these issues.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I definitely agree with you that no amount is UH
is too high to protect the lives of our children.
I have one hundred percent lockstep with you on that.
My question really is more, how do we identify and
take these situations off the board ahead of time. I'm
all for security and all that, but we were already
doing that.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
I think that you know, for me, I wonder.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
What is it that is causing these children to turn
to the idea that shooting their classmates and or themselves
is the solution and how do we remove that from
the equation? And I don't have an answer for that.
I wish someone smarter than me did. But that that's
where I kind of come down on it. I'm totally
with you on the security thing. Yeah, we absolutely need
to do that, but I also want to treat the

(43:35):
cause and not just the symptom. Let's go back out
to the hotline and bring on Geen, Geene. How are
you doing this morning?

Speaker 5 (43:42):
Hey?

Speaker 11 (43:42):
Good Ben?

Speaker 4 (43:43):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
I'm doing all right, man, how are you doing good? Hey?

Speaker 9 (43:47):
So I'm kind of the opposite of you. I did
not grow up in a religious home and came to
faith in my twenties, late twenties, and so maybe this
will encourage you, maybe it won't. But what brought me
to faith was a search for hope because I was
lacking hope in my life and lacking direction and purpose

(44:10):
and the meeting of life, I guess. And and so
my relationship with with Jesus has has helped fill that
void and brought me hope. So, especially on a day
like today, Well, I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
I'm glad that faith has worked for you.

Speaker 11 (44:25):
Man.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
I I genuinely am.

Speaker 9 (44:28):
Good well, And I'm not critical of you. I just
wanted you to know that that you know, that's what's
brought me in and day like today when I'm trying
to explain this to my kids, and my daughter was
h it was a grand Candyan University. She she was
there for Charlie Kirk's event last year. A lot of
people on that campus were impacted in a positive way

(44:50):
by him, and now he's he's gone because of political disagreement,
and it's unbelievable. And this celebration a candidate for the
school board for the Puter school district, a firefighter, and
no or Leans. I mean, you just go on Twitter
and you see the disgusting, disgusting, inhumane reaction to his death.

(45:13):
And I've lived in Colorado since two thousand and two,
and when I moved here, it was a red state
and now it's become very blue, which is fine, But
I will tell you, if the people in Colorado that
are celebrating today want a person like me, who's like you,
I'm a libertarian, if they ever thought they wanted to

(45:33):
persuade me to support transgenderism or these other things, this
just pushes me further back towards the right not to
their cause, because it's vile, it's inhumane, it's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
On that, Geene, and I think that, and I don't
mean to cut you off. I apologizes, go hit a break
here in a second. But I'm with you on that,
and I'm with you on the fact that we've got
to find better rhetoric with which engage, and that's I
think that is part of the problem. I opened the
show talking about how we need to classify people who
have a different politically I ideology from our own as
our opponent and not our enemy. The enemy is the

(46:12):
person that shot Charlie Kirk. The enemy is the person
that broke the law. The enemy is the person that
has has has caused this situation by murdering someone simply
because they didn't agree with him.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Charlie Kirk may have been my opponent.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
There's a great quote here on the on the text
line that I wanted to open the show with that
I actually forgot about it, talking about the relationship between
a prominent eighties democrat Tip O'Neil and former President Ronald
Reagan talking about everybody as friends after five pm, and
how those guys used to knock back a little bit
of a glass of scotch and get things done, and
we just don't have that anymore. We're so polemic, we
just don't have that anymore. I didn't need to cut

(46:45):
you off, Gene, and I certainly appreciate your h You
mentioned of faith there and how they could apply for me.
You know, I guess, like I tell my friends with faith,
maybe there's hope for me yet out there.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
We got to hit a break when we come back.
More of your calls and text right here on the
Rosskiminski Show.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
A lot of you guys get the car bit that's
been going around for a while.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Several don't wrect the Ferrari then don't rerect the ninety
two Ford escort. I always love I always love getting
those texts on here, man. It means we've got some
you know, some kind of connection that we've got to share.
Bit And on days like today, it's it's fun to
get a little chuckle out of people who are still
playing into the bit that said, we're still still taking
calls on the Charlie Kirk situation, on the Evergreen situation.

(47:26):
One thing I did want to clarify, as my good
buddy Rocky mount Rejects on Twitter pointed out Jeff Coo
School District already pointed out that Evergreen High School did
not have an SR on campus, and the superintendent said
they didn't have metal detectors at the jeff Co schools.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
So when I was saying earlier.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
That we're already doing that to one of the callers,
what I meant by that was that in the broader concept,
we are doing that when we build newer schools. But
you know, obviously the Evergreen school did not have those
did not have those things. With that, let's run back
out to the hotline, and I believe we've got Rich
on the line.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Rich, how doing morting.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
I'm doing fine, Thank you, Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Oh thanks for calling in man, what's on your mind?

Speaker 10 (48:08):
You know?

Speaker 4 (48:08):
So I'll just kind of straightened to the point you
kind of touch base on it earlier, is that there
is not potentially a quick fix, or at least anything
we're aware of at this time to be a quick
fix for so much that's going out on there. So
this is just an opinion. It's just an opinion. And
I and I and this is just a personal thing
feel strongly about. Is that there is a relation between

(48:32):
mental health and some of what is attributing or going
around out there in the world today my opinion, and
it's going to take somebody much smarter than myself. But
is that potentially is that you know, when kids are born,
you know, they go through physical health. You know, they

(48:55):
go in for a physical once a year. To simply
incorporate rate a mental health along with a physical health
and start young with children and potentially identify ward off
take note, help you know along the way. It just

(49:16):
you know, it's a long term type deal. But there
is so much, in my opinion, mental health struggles that
are going on out there, and had they been identified
early in life, potentially we wouldn't have some of these situations. Rich,
I kind of it in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
I agree with you, and I appreciate the call. I
agree with you, and that let me ask you a
question real quick here. You know, if you're if you're
you're still there. And I'm not trying to push back.
I'm just I'm just spit bawling off the top of
my head though. But with kids, it seems so much
of what uh, so much of what they have is
bothers to me in the moment, right uh, that perhaps
periodic mental health assessments a great idea, although we would

(49:57):
need to figure out who's the arbiter.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Of mental healthy I guess.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
We'd all they have to agree on basically, But so
much of what they have is reactionary to in the
moment they have children have underdeveloped brains, and so much
of what they have it happens in the moment a
moment of bullying, and all of a sudden they want
to lash out a moment of rejection by a girl,
and you want to lash out those kinds of things,
and periodic early mental health assessments I don't believe are

(50:23):
going to pick up on those things.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Yeah, and not that I have a.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Solution for them, but I've just been as you were
saying that that occurred to me out of the blue.
Is that something that, uh, that would concern you as well?
And what ways could we identify those kinds of things?

Speaker 6 (50:37):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (50:37):
And absolutely, And I think you make some very valid points.
And obviously it's going to take somebody a hell of
a lot smarter than myself, But you know the I
just believe it is something worth discussion, you know, worthy
of looking into to see it perhaps it can be
incorporated into early in life to potentially and hopefully identify

(51:02):
help those people that are struggling, you know, because it's
not always it's not always their fault, you know, a
simple chemical imbalance, you know, can be brought back into
balance with the introduction of a drug perhaps, But you know,
it just seems like some of us could be warded
off if it was identified early. And it's not the

(51:26):
boilerplate that solves it all. But just an opinion, no.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
And I appreciate the call, Rich, thank you for taking
the time this morning. Yeah, I'm with you on that.
I think there is a component to that. I think
there's a large component to that. I think there's a
mental health with access to the wrong things, whether you
think that that's you know, guns, which again I'm a
gun owner and I don't want those those rights in
fringed on. I want to find ways that we are

(51:51):
better able to handle the rights that our founding fathers
entrusted us with, because right now we're in abuse of
those and whether or not that's a small sub whether
that subset is mentally mentally ill, Okay, all right, If
that's the case, then let's identify or figure out a
way how to identify these people that are experiencing these
challenges and provide them the hope and preventive care that

(52:14):
they need so that they things don't reach this point.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
And you know, I'm with you on that.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
I do believe that there's a mental health component to this,
a large mental health component to this.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
I'm just not.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Sure exactly who should be the arbiter of that how
to identify that. It would take someone with certainly more
expertise in the mental health field than myself to even
begin to qualify or quantify that. But I think there
is a sort of right track with that, with that

(52:45):
thought process right off the bat five six six nine zeros,
the text line three zero three seven one three eighty
five eighty five is the hotline. I want to hear
from you guys. What you have to say, what your
thoughts are, What we can do to what we can
do to come together, what we can do to prevent it,
what we can do to to work our way forward
from this. I started off this show by trying to

(53:06):
reiterate my opinion on this with the ratcheted up dynamic
and rhetoric that we have in this country, and I
would I would again stress that it is important to
remember that your political opponent is not your enemy.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Your opponent is not your enemy.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
And the sooner I think we get to that portion
of it and we quit just lobbing that having a
different ideology as a mental illness, that we quit that stuff,
that we can get back to good faith debate and
and finding common sense solutions to problems like this five.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Six six nine zero.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Guys, I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate the
uh that don't wreck the vehicle texts.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
I cannot stress enough how much my mental health needed
that this morning.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
When I when Ross originally asked me to fill in today,
which was about a week and a half ago, I
had planned an entire uh basically a nine to eleven
show I had I had kind of pre programmed a
line eleven shows canna be a retrospective on what people
were doing that day. I had everybody, including Ross uh,
you know, cut a little two minute sound bite for
for what they've been doing that day to a remembrance

(54:11):
of all that I had reached out to people I
used to work with and work for, you know, h R.
McMaster and Michael Morrell, you know a lot of a
lot of great uh. You know, people who have worked, uh,
you know, in service to this country, and uh we
ended up dumping all that because of you know, obviously
what's going on here. I think I think it was

(54:33):
the double whammy yesterday of having something hit so close
to home with the evergreen situation, and I I'm ashamed
of myself for the first words that came out of
my mouth after that, which was, oh, here we go again,
because I feel like that that shouldn't be the reaction.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
I feel like that I should never have that reaction.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
I feel like that when seeing a school shooting here locally,
I I shouldn't have become so jaded that there's sort
of an inn a cerbic or sodonic thought that, uh,
that we're back in the same routine. So, I, you know,
I'm I'm ashamed that that was like, oh, here we
go again. It's my first thought when I when I

(55:16):
when I saw that, and I think it was sort
of the double whammy of all that that is that's
kind of ways heavy on this country today.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Let's go back out to the hotline and welcome Barney. Barney,
how you doing this morning?

Speaker 6 (55:27):
Yeah, so I want to talk about the last column
with the mental hell illness thing. But I want to
I want to question you. Sure, my first thing is
mental health. The problem is you get a fruitcake that says, oh,
Johnny just drew a picture of a soldier on his paper,
he must be crazy. Some of these metal health workers,

(55:48):
they kind of don't really there their Sigmund Freud like,
let's just go with that. So I would just absolutely
say that it's not gonna work. But and let me
say this about Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk never was mean,
never was nasty, like myself, he would always respectful. I
love the way he would talk about the Bible because

(56:11):
he didn't sound like one of these preachers that sound
born and idiotic. He was a true decent man, never
nasty me. And I'll tell you right now. He started out,
he had ninety eight percent of that campus disagreeing with him,
and in the last I don't know two years, ninety
eight percent of that campus agreed with him. The guy

(56:33):
was awesome at changing hearts and mind. He did it
better than anybody. But I want to say to you.
You say it's our opponent, Well, Chris Wall, what's he
a senator's name? That a day before this says we're
at war. It's like, wait a minute, I got news
for you, buddy. The Left is at war. Whether it's

(56:54):
a Trand issue or whatever, They're at war. That's all
there is to it. They're not mine. Well, sure you
don't say it all these.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Oops, do we just losen Crod. I wanted to address
we just lost them. I wanted to address. I wanted
to address several things that he had to say. I
appreciate the call, Barney. I disagree with a couple of
your points. So I wanted to do we have Barnie back?

Speaker 7 (57:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:20):
We lost there.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
We go okay, we yeah, we're having a connection issue
with you there, Barnie. I wanted to address a couple
of points real quick. I'll give you a chance to
rebut I yes, I I do believe that that that
the rhetoric is ratcheted up. It's not exclusively on the left,
although they have said that with the warst and they've
ramped up their rhetorically recently.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
I've seen it with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
I've seen it with what lives of TikTok there are
there are there's rhetoric that is ratcheted up from all sides.
I'm not assigning blame to one or the other here,
I'm simply saying that in the minute that we start
recognizing that we need to stop doing that, just laid
down on arms rather than point the finger and assigning blame.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
I think we get better on that. We we There
was a caller earlier.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Who said that specifically that he didn't feel like that
the language the left was using right now was going
to to be able to pull.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Him over to their side, because it walled him off.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
And there's there's an old saying, you know, you catch
more flies with honey, uh, that I believe applies across
the board with that kind of stuff. I do believe
that that there are people that feel passionately about the things,
but I believe our rhetoric has gotten out of control
on some of these things. I talked him to to
Marty Lenz from Colorado Morty News earlier, and I said,

(58:38):
it's it's no different than playing a game of basketball.
For instance, you and I are going to give our
all playing against each other at a game of basketball
because we're opponents. But after the game, we've got to
put that down and move on. We're not pulling out
a firearm and assassinating you because you beat us, and
and so that's that's that's where the problem with that lies.

Speaker 6 (58:56):
Oh, hang on you. Yes, Donald has rhetoric. Donald Trump
can be a butt hit. Go back. We're talking about
Charlie Kirk here, I'm comparing start contrast. A guy like
Charlie Kirk cannot speak his mind.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah, we're in total agreement.

Speaker 6 (59:16):
You can't, Marjorie Taylor Green. Yes, she says things in
our offenses. But we're talking about going beyond that.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
And I got this, Wait, I think we I think
we lost Barney. I agree with you, Barney. I you're
a you're an absolute You're absolutely correct.

Speaker 7 (59:40):
Era.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I'm sorry we lost you because I agree with your
point on that.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
There are a lot of politicians that say a lot
of stupid things, and we need them to stop doing that.
But I think that in this particular case, assassinating Charlie
Kirk is antithetical to to the point that and we're
assuming again we're assuming an ideology here of of who
shot him, but is antithetical to the point that some
would have in assassinating him.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
He was the guy going about and doing it right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
He was the guy going about having an open dialogue
in a debate. There was nothing violent about what Charlie
Kirk was doing, and so I think assassinating him is
sort of anathetical to the entire premise behind assassinating him.
You know, if you would, if you believe what is
currently out there from that kind of stuff. And I
don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole

(01:00:26):
on that, but at least not at this juncture. So yeah,
I'm with you, Barty in that point. I agree, And
that's that's sort of I think. I think for me,
that's the saddest part of all this is that Charlie
Kirk and I didn't agree on about, you know, sixty
seventy percent of issues. There was about a thirty percent
overlap there. We agreed. I didn't like the way he

(01:00:48):
phrased certain things sometimes or whatever. But I mean, that's
those are semantics, quibbles.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Who cares.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
But the reality is there's never there was never a
point in my life where I disagreed with Charlie curR
or whomever so vehemently that I was like, you know
what I need to do is I need to stalk
this guy while he's on a tour, having an open debate,
allowing the opportunity for you to change his mind and
delete him from the human race like that. That's the

(01:01:14):
wrong that's the wrong answer. And that's sort of the
point that we're trying to make here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Again, we don't know enough about the shooter to make
that sort of coid. Well, there's there's sort of a
speculation or a conjecture that this was someone left leaning,
because you know, that seems sort of common sense goal.
We don't know that yet. It may be and if
that's the case, then we go down that road. I
think on on that. But the the the assassination of
him in particular is is sort of odd because it's

(01:01:42):
anithetical to what somebody who would be shooting him would
be would be standing for. Anyway, we want respectful discourse,
we want open debate and dialogue, and he was the
guy that was bringing that to college campuses.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Whether you liked him, whether you agreed with.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Him, whatever, Charlie Kirk wasn't a guy that was sitting
out out there, you know, not giving you the opportunity
to rebut his points. He wasn't the guy who was
hamming it up on these YouTube shows or whatever and
then just you know, and then just walking off into
the night. He was a guy to put his money
where his mouth is and I will always respect him
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
It's similar to uh, who was say the Superman actor?
His name is is Dean Kane.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Dean Kane and I agree on about twenty percent of
the time, but I will always have respect for Dean
Kane for putting his money where his mouth is and
joining Ice.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Whether you agree with what Ice is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Doing or not, Dean Kane lived up to and practice
what he preached or practice says what he preached.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I guess I should say, shouldn't talk about Dean Kain
in the past, Tenser. So that was the thing, Charlie.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Charlie Kirk lived up to what it was that he
was talking about with open dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
And I'm hoping it's my hope.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
I'm not holding my breath, but it is my hope
that his assassination will encourage more people to have open
dialogue rather than shutting off these kinds of avenues, because
I think what he did was valuable. I think having
that platform and having that opportunity and having it on campuses,
exposing people to different ideas and getting the debate.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Points back and forth off that even if a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Of it was for engagement bait, for social or whatever,
all those kinds of things, you did get people in
front of each other that got the opportunity to hear
other points.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
I think that's valuable. I think that's the I think
that's the problem. I don't think you have.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
To sit there and and condone everything that Charlie said.
I don't think you have to paint him, you know,
as a hero, but I do think you have to
listen him as a martyr. He died for what he
believed in. So you know, at the end of the day,
where I sit on this is we lost somebody who

(01:03:51):
was maybe not somebody I agreed with on everything, but
certainly somebody that I in principle agreed with how he
was doing it in bringing the First Amendment and bringing
open debate and bringing open dialogue to the public.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
And now he leaves behind.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
A widow, a wife who I believe was thirty I
can't remember her age off the top of my head,
two daughters that never get to see their father again.
I was you know, this is the same sort of
things that I hoped in a different way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
After the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Democratic senators up there in Minnesota were assassinated.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Was it two months ago?

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
I was hoping that that was the point where political
ideology and hatred had ratcheted up to the level that
it had gotten so heated that we weren't allow it
to go that far anymore. And no it didn't. Here
we are two months later. Now Kirk wasn't a politician,
but he'd worked in the politic sphere.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
So at the end of the day, I.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
I just sit here and I struggle with how do
we how.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Do we cool this down?

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
And I you know, I was talking to somebody off
the air yesterday and I was like, you know, it's
so much easier to see why we can't get peace
in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Arabs
because neither side will will drop their guns for a second.
Everybody's got something that they can point to, Well this

(01:05:22):
guy did this, Well they did this, will they did this,
will they did this? And it goes back forever and
it creates a recursive cycle that never ends. And that's
what we're seeing now in the United States and the
political front.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Well they did this, yeah, but they did this, Yeah,
but they did that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
You're right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
It takes somebody being the bigger man to lay down
arms and say, okay, we've got to stop this and
find the middle ground. More of your calls and text
will we come back? Roskaminski show. Kay wait, appreciate you
guys all the calls and text. You guys want to
call in, share your thoughts. Three zero three semone three
eighty five eighty five is the number.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Five six six nine zero, of course is the text line.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
A lot of great texts coming in seven to Ben
great show, heavy topics. Thanks for filling careful of Ross's vega.
And for those of you who don't get the car
bit that was. I told Ross the first time I
ever filled in for him that that I would try
not direct the Ferrari, and Ross suggested that perhaps I
was being a bit ambitious with this show.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
We turned that over to the listeners on the quote.
And you guys have.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Continued to text in every time that I fill in
here with various different automobiles of ill repute over the years.
And I got to tell you, man on a daylight today,
which is which is heavy? It's today is so heavy
that we are sitting here in the third hour of
this show, and I haven't even touched on it being
the anniversary of nine to eleven, But in passing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
The text like that really do renew my faith in
the human spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
We can share bits like this, share a chuckle, ory
smile at that kind of stuff, and I, you know,
I just I appreciate that more.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Than you guys know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
The seven to two seven news outlets are fueling the
level of hate that drives the shootings, stabbings, and other
atrocities playing to some of our human tribal responses. Turn
off the Fox News and CNN and put down the
phone with the constant biased alerts. Talk to your kids,
your neighbors, your friends, and you'll realize we are much
more aligned than the news outlets make us feel. I
love your analogy of twenty five likes versus twenty five

(01:07:20):
positive human interactions. For those of you who don't know that,
are missed that, or just tuning in. I talked about earlier.
One of the things that I think fuels the mental
portion of this that young kids had today is sort
of the false dichotomy, the false realities of the online

(01:07:42):
world versus real life, and that is to say that
if you posted something on Instagram or Facebook and it
only got twenty five likes, you would say, what a
disappointment this post underperformed. Whereas if twenty five people came
up to you over the course of the day and
told you, hey, man, you do it great, you would
be overwhelmed by the outpouring of support that people have.

(01:08:04):
And that's that's the in a nutshell, the difference between
the real world and online, the real world and social media,
where we lived through the veneer of everything is positive
from post to post, and you don't ever see the
daily struggle that people have.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
I you know, one of the things that I harp
on is when to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
In this in this connected world, when to give kids
the access to those kinds of things. I think it's damaging.
And I say that as somebody who only has this
career because of social media. I had no experience in
radio whatsoever. When I started six years ago. I I
was a social media guy who had a ton of
social media following, and that is what has has gotten

(01:08:55):
me to this point. I built a social media following
in that open doors for me. So I say that
living fully in the irony that social media has placed
me where I am. But that said, I find it
to be inherently dangerous. It's easier to radicalize because there
is access, easy access to more radicalization components. And I

(01:09:20):
think that's a part of why we are so radicalized now,
why we're so polemic now versus where we were thirty
years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
When these didn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
I think that it is the ease of access to information,
whether that information is true or not. I often joke
with friends in private saying that we live in the
post truth era. People don't care necessarily if something is
true as long as it confirms their priors. I see

(01:09:53):
that spread on social.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Media all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
I try not to use Facebook anymore because it's so
oh inundated with it AI generated slop, fake posts, absolute
nonsense that gets passed off as things that happened. One
of the more popular things out there is this fan
fiction stuff. You see these Reddit stories. I had such

(01:10:17):
and such happened to me, I caught my wife doing this,
and this happened whatever, and none of these st like,
of all the things that happened, this didn't happen the most.
Like you read these things and you're like, this is
none of this happened. It's just somebody writing something out
and it gets shared together. The point of it is
to get shared to go viral.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
And I wonder if that plays into what happens with
our kids these days.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
They don't feel like that they're not getting enough, you know,
they feel like they're not getting enough attention.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
And so what's the quickest way for a high school
kid to go viral? Right now? And I don't even
have to say it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Every one of you knows the first thought that just
went through your head when I asked that quest. Every
one of you knows what's the quickest way for a
kid to go viral these days? And so I wonder
if there's not an element of that that plays into
some of this, that we've lost our grounding with the

(01:11:16):
real world and we're so hyper online, and that that
that dopamine hit, that narcissism that I need this attention.
The kids out there are seeing like I can't break through,
I can't get the attention that I want.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
I'm already feeling sad.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
I've been bullied, I've been rejected by girls, you know,
or guys or whatever. That these kinds of things add
up and into the formula that you have, you find
that I can't get the attention. I'm feeling out about myself,
but I've got a way that i can get some attention.
I maybe it's just me in the spirit of Charlie

(01:11:54):
Kirk proved me wrong. Three zero three, seven, one, three eight,
five eighty five five, six, six nine zeros. The text
line a Texter coming in saying that there might be
some something going on at Fairview. They's gotten alert. I
will keep you updated that KOWE News and the news
team here who did a phenomenal job yesterday. I cannot
commend Rob Dawson, who's carrying on the legacy of Kathy Walker,

(01:12:18):
who I just saw a few moments ago actually coming
off the elevator, and the job that they did yesterday
and carrying multiple breaking news stories at the same time.
You know how difficulty he is to just getting and
coordinating and getting all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
The details on one story.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
This breaking and the news team did a great job
yesterday of handling both both breaking news stories as they
were happening, bringing the latest, and we pride ourselves on
that here on KAE. It truly is news, talk and sports,
and so you know, I wanted to shout them out.
I don't want those guys who I see the hard
work that they're doing behind the scenes. I see what

(01:12:56):
they're going through to make sure that they've got every
detail and every fact squared away and correct.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
In bringing that to you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Rather than just being first, Well we come back, I
want to get into a little bit of our recollections
on nine to eleven, what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
And how we got here. Guys, listen to Roskaminski show.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
You're on Kawa the situation that is developing at Fairview
High School. With that, we bring in Kathy Walker from
the KAWA News team. Kathy, what can you tell us
about the latest over at Fairview High School?

Speaker 12 (01:13:27):
Boulder Police being very transparent, saying that they are investigating
a report of a man with a gun near Fairview.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
High in Boulder.

Speaker 12 (01:13:35):
The high school and the nearby middle school are on lockdown.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
You're asked to avoid the area.

Speaker 12 (01:13:40):
They have closed the road right in front of Boulder
Fairview from Greenbrier and Broadway, Broadway to Greenbrier and Gillespie Man.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Thank you, Kathy, and we'll stay tuned for more information
on that as it develops. Obviously, bottom of the hour
will get an update as well, but appreciate you, Kathy.
As always we sit yous like this, we want to
approach out of a extreme amount of caution we always
have with situations like this. The next day, maybe I
don't want to say an overreaction because I don't want

(01:14:11):
to term it that way, but we do have an
abundance of vigilance on these types of days, and so
with situations like that, we want to make sure that
we have all the facts as as we continue to
report them.

Speaker 12 (01:14:22):
Yeah, and Ben, I do think you're right to say that,
Like on a day like today, it's nine to eleven,
there are nine to eleven observances going on everywhere. Right
here outside of the radio station, I saw everyone flying
the flags on the Monaco Bridge. You know, there's just
a lot of concern on a day like today, because
of the nine to eleven anniversary, because of it being
the day after a shooting in our community. Out of school,

(01:14:45):
everybody's going to be super vigilant.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
And I would rather error on the side of vigilance
than to make the mistake of ignoring something and something
to have happened.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
So you know, I've good on the police.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
The buld of police out there, and as more details
are relayed to you, obviously we'll have you back in Kathy.
Thanks you very much. Guys, it's been it's been a
heavy day. It has been a heavy day. Here we
are two and a half hours into this show and
I haven't even touched on the fact that it's the
twenty fourth anniversary of nine to eleven. I mean, that's

(01:15:16):
that's the kind of day that that it has been.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
And so.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
You know, I I appreciate, uh, I appreciate you guys
being along for the ride.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
I appreciate the texts. I appreciate the calls.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
I'm not going to get into a whole lot of
the self aggrandizing stuff, but uh, seven to two, Oh,
you're you're my favorite fill and host. I love hearing
your perspectives and politics and sports. Thank you on a
daylight today where uh and and I am in no
way a victim or any of anything that's going on though,
it's just it's just weighed heavily on me, and I
appreciate those words of of encouragement.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Uh, Seve toue.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Where can I find archived on air breaking news segments
brought by k Away? For instance, I would find it
very interesting to go back and listen to breaking coverage
the morning of nine to eleven on the columnne tragedy.
I don't know the answer to that, but let me
find out, because I honestly that's something I would be
interested in doing and going back and listening on a
day like today. And so that's you know, that's one
of those things that that's one of those things I

(01:16:14):
would I would do. I'll try to find out during
the break where we have that if we have those
archives uploaded for ease of UH, for.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Ease of listening.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
We did have a couple of texts coming in UH
from people on the on the left, and they were
they were a bit let's say, critical of of of
Charlie Kirk and some of the things that he said.
And I will say this because people on the left
may not realize that Charlie Kirk got it, UH, got

(01:16:43):
quite a bit of vilification from people on the right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
As well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
He never joined what you would call the uh, the
post liberal right, and and he would certainly he caught
hell from him for it. You know, the people that
the Nick Fuentest crowd, for instance, hated Charlie Kirk. You know,
he he denounced that that anti semitic sewer that was
over there certain influencers that that infiltrated the right and

(01:17:08):
rejected that. Uh, that sort of post liberal scheming to
purge economic libertarians like myself, uh, from from potentially the
broader conservative umbrellas. So I would suggest that that you know,
if you have criticisms of him, and there are criticisms
to have of anyone, remember that he wasn't like this
guy with some one dimensional being when it came to

(01:17:30):
those kinds of things. Uh, you were listening to the
Roskiminski Show.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
We got to hit a break. We'll be back right
for this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
They're having a press conference now about the Evergreen shooting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Let's join that live.

Speaker 5 (01:17:42):
We have security at both of the hospitals where our
victims are still in critical condition. No one has been released.
There was information yesterday that one of the two victims
was released from children's and that's not true. Bear with me,
lots of notes.

Speaker 11 (01:18:00):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:18:01):
We have a great deal of support from so many jurisdictions.
But FBI's role here has been tremendous there E r T.
We also have lab work being done the scene processing
from Arvada.

Speaker 11 (01:18:18):
God I'm sorry. It's somewhere in my.

Speaker 5 (01:18:19):
Notes Arvada and n c I S which was a
new one for me and multiple multiple other agencies because
there's so many crime scenes within the school and outside
the school. Yesterday, I think I stated that it stayed
on school property. It did not. It actually spilled out
into the street behind the school, so we have an

(01:18:39):
additional crime scene. I think the street is called Olive
where one of the students was running to. We are
allowing kids and u teachers and parents who are in
the West Lot to come and get their cars. You
have to go to the location that we've already given,
which is Meadows Elementary. You have to have a key,

(01:19:03):
So if you're a student who ran out of the
school and you don't have the keys to your car,
we can't let you into the school to get your keys.
But if you have a key in hand, please go there.
We'll bust you down here because we have a lot
of cars you can see them behind me that we
need to get moved out. The rec Center parking lot
also was locked down, and we're allowing people who had
vehicles in the rec Center parking lot need to get

(01:19:24):
their vehicles as well. The other lot at the school
east side is not available for release yet. Let's see here.
We know that the both victim families plan to release
a photo of their child today and a statement from
the families. I'm not sure when that's coming. I think shortly,

(01:19:47):
so you'll have a photo in a statement from families.
And I know at this point they're asking to just
be to let them grieve, let them deal with what
they're dealing with the fact that their student or their
loved one was shot. So we want to protect them
as much as possible. The warrants that we have are
for the home, the suspect's phone obviously locker. He did

(01:20:11):
not bring a vehicle here. He rode the bus yesterday morning.
But what we're learning is that based on some of
the information that we're seeing about this suspect, is that
there's some he was radicalized by some extreme extremist network. Sorry,
I wanted to get those rights some extremist network, and

(01:20:32):
the details of that will be down the road, but
we want to at least give you that much about
maybe mindset for him. The suspect's autopsy was this morning
as well, so that has been done and I've already
indicated that this suspect brought quite a bit of ammunition

(01:20:52):
with him and he continued to reload. I think we're
very very grateful that more there were not more injuries,
but saden that there were any. And I think that
is what I have in.

Speaker 11 (01:21:05):
The way of notes, So please cook Red ask questions.

Speaker 13 (01:21:09):
You mentioned there was a crime scene behind the school
that's spilled out onto the area behind school.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Yes, is that one of the students.

Speaker 14 (01:21:16):
That were perfect were shot?

Speaker 5 (01:21:19):
Yes, yes, so there is a crime scene. Do you
have lots of crime scenes save that there's multiple crime
scenes I indicated yesterday, some inside and some outside, but
all on school property. And we now know that there's
at least one crime scene that is spilled over into

(01:21:40):
the roadway behind the school, and that.

Speaker 14 (01:21:41):
Is because you're saying one of the students that was
shot went to that area.

Speaker 11 (01:21:44):
Yes, that right.

Speaker 5 (01:21:45):
Yeah, absolutely, you have any information about how the student
got a fur of this weapon, where it belongs to,
how they came into possession of this great question about
ownership of the gun, we're working at angle today. I
don't have that to this press conference, but we'd sure
like to share that when we have it.

Speaker 11 (01:22:00):
And do you have any more information of type of gun.

Speaker 10 (01:22:02):
It was a.

Speaker 5 (01:22:02):
Revolver, revolver or hanggun. I don't know what caliber, Jackie, how.

Speaker 11 (01:22:06):
Do you know that the student was broad applied by
our steers.

Speaker 5 (01:22:09):
It's just information that we're learning, probably through what we're
finding in the home, maybe what we're finding on his phone.
But there's some level of confirmation that that there's there's
something we really need to take a deeper look at.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21):
Katy.

Speaker 15 (01:22:21):
We've heard something yesterday about a posentral War victim keeper
by that process.

Speaker 5 (01:22:25):
Yeah, the great question. Yesterday we indicated that there were
three people shot, are suspect and two victims, and that
there was a fourth that was transported from somewhere.

Speaker 11 (01:22:34):
We don't think that that's true anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:22:36):
I apologize for the misinformation, but we think it's just
the three.

Speaker 11 (01:22:39):
Do you mean you have how many times the gun
was fired? Is the suspects comes fired?

Speaker 5 (01:22:44):
The suspect's gun was fired a lot there. The reason
we have so many crime scene areas inside is because
we have windows shot out, we have blockers that were
shot at, We're finding spent rounds, unspent rounds, so.

Speaker 11 (01:22:56):
It's a it's a huge area in the school.

Speaker 5 (01:22:59):
I was told to three levels, so lots of work
to be done, but he fired multiple multiple times.

Speaker 13 (01:23:05):
Jackie, how many revolvers did you say? It was more
than one weapon one revolver? And how many rounds of
ammunition wizards?

Speaker 5 (01:23:11):
I don't know. I don't know how many.

Speaker 13 (01:23:13):
Rounds were there surveys characters at the school, yes, and
didn't record the entire incident.

Speaker 5 (01:23:18):
It did. There are cameras inside of the school, which
is very powerful and important for us in our investigations.
We're able to track his movement throughout the school.

Speaker 11 (01:23:28):
Jackie's a school resource Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:23:31):
Evergreen High School used to have a full time SRO.
That SRO is on medical leave right now, so it's
a shared duty. Horrible timing, of course, but share duty.
So we have a couple of part time SROs that
share this school right now. There was no one at
from the SORO unit at the school when the shooting started.

(01:23:51):
He was there until about ten thirty ten forty five,
and then he was dispatched out here for an accident
pretty close by. Those check co officers that they are
tint with the district. Those are Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
deputies who are our SROs.

Speaker 11 (01:24:05):
I've been in lieu of the first cong League. It
was a shared They rotate between tunnels, but normally there
would be someone's staff full time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Yes, what a time is?

Speaker 11 (01:24:12):
Yes, I was the shooting parting that anyone wasn't raining with.

Speaker 5 (01:24:15):
Another great question. We can't say yet whether this feels
more targeted or more random, but based on what I'm
telling you about firing and reloading and firing and reloading,
it seems like it could be a bit of both.

Speaker 14 (01:24:28):
We had heard that there might have been a notebook
that had serviced in the past with this particular student
in years previous.

Speaker 16 (01:24:36):
Do you have any.

Speaker 13 (01:24:37):
Information that there may have been a notebook to certain
studious names that the school district may have known about
and that students past.

Speaker 11 (01:24:45):
That's all new information to me.

Speaker 5 (01:24:47):
What you're saying about a notebook that might contain like
a hit list, as that you're speaking to be true.
I don't haven't heard anything anything along those lines, not yet.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
I would it look good to be any charges on
the paris for.

Speaker 6 (01:24:58):
The access to the gun.

Speaker 11 (01:25:00):
It's certainly something that we're going to look at.

Speaker 12 (01:25:03):
Can you talk about how.

Speaker 11 (01:25:04):
Being at lunch at the time of dis situation, complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Things or what that looked like.

Speaker 11 (01:25:09):
I think there's a lot of chaos yesterday.

Speaker 5 (01:25:14):
We know that some some kids are on lunch, which
gave them more more freedom and access to hallways and outdoors,
and we know that there were a lot of kids
who ran on a lot of kids who locked down.
So it's just timing. It was just chaos, and I
don't I hope that's avoidable when you have something like this. Ever,

(01:25:34):
you believe the student waited until the sro old left,
there's no reason to believe that. I wouldn't know, and uh,
we may not know that error.

Speaker 11 (01:25:45):
So you happen to know how the student concealed his
weapon until lunch time.

Speaker 5 (01:25:50):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 11 (01:25:51):
That's no idea.

Speaker 15 (01:25:52):
You speak to resources and our students and families.

Speaker 11 (01:25:55):
Ter say, right.

Speaker 5 (01:25:56):
So we have the Urgan Meta Elementary School, which is
no longer in use. That's just a facility that we're
using very close by here. This is for students, it's
for staff, it's for anyone who lives in this area.
It's for anyone who's feeling the pain of this. We
have a lot of resources there, people to talk to,

(01:26:17):
just resources in case you want to reach out privately.
We also have investigators there in case someone walks in
and they end up being somebody.

Speaker 11 (01:26:23):
Who witnessed something that we haven't talked to yet.

Speaker 5 (01:26:26):
So there's a lot of staff over there and we're
just trying to do the very best that we can
to take care of this community and they're suffering right now.

Speaker 14 (01:26:33):
You talked about the lockdown working it's a shooter or
was a shooter trapped in an area so to speak,
where they could not go in as laws.

Speaker 5 (01:26:43):
I can't tell you that because it simply don't. I
don't know the shooter's movements, but I do know that
he tried to gain access to areas that were locked down,
and those teachers and those students did their job and took.

Speaker 11 (01:26:55):
Into account what they've learned and it kept them safe.
For sure, we're students.

Speaker 14 (01:27:00):
Did they encounter him, did they see him aiming the
gun at them and perhaps not shooting at them.

Speaker 5 (01:27:07):
I don't know the answer to that. We have so
many students that have been interviewed because they saw something,
they heard something, they believed they were shot at. And
that's a lot of kids. We've done a lot of interviews.
We have more to do. I can't speak to what
any one of those students actually witnessed, but we believe
we have witnesses to the shootings.

Speaker 11 (01:27:28):
You talk about what's been found at the suspects house.

Speaker 5 (01:27:32):
I can't talk about what's been found at the suspects
house because I don't know, but I think that they
found valuable information.

Speaker 11 (01:27:39):
For our case.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):
There seems to be an issue with the reunification plans
that were happening.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
At what point is that one area then went to another.

Speaker 11 (01:27:46):
Was there a reason in particular for the confusion.

Speaker 5 (01:27:49):
I can tell you that we always said it was
going to be Ergen Meadows. Elementary kids self deployed in
all kinds of places, so it was hard to round
them up. And we're not being critical of those kids
who ran the neighborhoods, who ran to the rec center,
ran down the street, went to the library, so they
were everywhere. So unifying all of that was a bit

(01:28:09):
of a challenge yesterday, and that's just.

Speaker 11 (01:28:11):
Going to happen. It's just chaos, and it took a.

Speaker 5 (01:28:15):
While to get our arms around that, get buses to
the right places, and get parents back to their kids.
Is there a merency system in place for quses in
case of something like this happens.

Speaker 11 (01:28:23):
On the opposite yesterday, is they have a mercy system
in place here just a case.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
Where we would be able to beat up somewhere.

Speaker 5 (01:28:30):
I don't know that that's a hard, hard and fast
written rule on what that emergency plan looks like. They
have to be fluid because every situation is different and
what might work today may not work next time. So
it's just probably the framework is there, but we have
to adjust to the kids and parents who ran jack
and I'm sorry not the parents' steps.

Speaker 15 (01:28:51):
Have investigators made contact and smoking with the suspects family
and areas guard us, Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:28:57):
Our investigators have been in touch with suspects family, close contact.

Speaker 11 (01:29:02):
The route to investigators, yes they have.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
What was the route that this young man took aside
the school?

Speaker 5 (01:29:09):
Great question again, the PIO, do not know that our
investigators have a really good understanding of how he moved
about inside the school because we have great surveillance video.
But I don't know that I'll have a question to that.

Speaker 17 (01:29:23):
The amount of time that passed, I know yesterday you
guys were saying it was really a matter of minutes.

Speaker 5 (01:29:26):
Since you've learned about it to get here.

Speaker 11 (01:29:28):
Do you have an idea now about how long he.

Speaker 5 (01:29:30):
Was in the building doing this? Oh, another great question,
that's anot question. I'm really sorry. I don't know how
long he was in there. Okay, we got those calls
so quickly, starting at twelve twenty four. It became very
very serious as the nine to one calls flooded in,
And that's all we need to know that this isn't
a swatting call. This is more than that, and that's

(01:29:52):
why the resources that came up here came up here
as fast as they could safely, and we were in
that school very quick.

Speaker 17 (01:29:59):
And occasion about inside outside. There are two victims who
were in the hospital. One was shot outside, one was
shot inside.

Speaker 5 (01:30:05):
As a correct, that is correct, one victim shot inside,
one victim shot outside.

Speaker 11 (01:30:08):
And I know you're not a doctor.

Speaker 17 (01:30:09):
Can you speak at all about what kind of injuries
like location of gunshots? Can you speak at all to
the number of shots these kids took?

Speaker 11 (01:30:15):
I don't know that.

Speaker 5 (01:30:17):
I'm hoping we need to let these families, just the
victim families, just to just to what they're dealing with today.
So we're really trying to be protective of our victims
right now by not giving out too much information. So
maybe in the maybe tomorrow, in the days that come,
a home to.

Speaker 14 (01:30:34):
The SRO question and forgive me if you've already answered this,
but SULD the should have an SRO been there. I
know you said they left to do something.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
It sounds like it was okay for them to do that.

Speaker 14 (01:30:45):
Sure, was that SRO following department policy school halls when
they left the campus.

Speaker 5 (01:30:51):
Yes, the SRO that was sharing responsibility of Evergreen High
School is allowed to come and go. He can go
to lunch. They might have to handle something in the
parking lot, and he might be covering something that's happening
in the neighborhood or up in the Evergreen area, a
cover car for that.

Speaker 11 (01:31:07):
So, no, he did not do anything wrong. Thank you
for you're welcome.

Speaker 6 (01:31:10):
What happened when law enforcement did to make.

Speaker 10 (01:31:12):
Contact with the shooter, he said it bake go to
him in about five ten minutes.

Speaker 5 (01:31:17):
What happened could have even been less than that. That's
just kind of an estimate. I'd like to tell you
more about that, but I need to get commissioned to
do that. It's a lot, but I'd love to be
able to tell you that story, and maybe I can.

Speaker 11 (01:31:31):
Do that later. Okay, the idea ever long this school
will be close.

Speaker 5 (01:31:36):
I'm not going to read the Evergreen High School will
not be opened this week. It's a guestimate maybe next week.
We have a lot of work to do and probably
a few things that they'd like to do esthetically to
make that a just a more healthy environment for the
kids and the teachers.

Speaker 13 (01:31:52):
So I just don't know he was there body morton
camera video that will show at some point the officers
encounter a shooter.

Speaker 5 (01:32:00):
Yes, I don't know that it will be released right now.
I know that it won't be released right now, how
about that? But I do think that there's absolutely, absolutely
there's body cam footage. It's just showing more specific detail
about the encounter.

Speaker 13 (01:32:17):
And I know that you said that you can't say
much about that encounter, but can you tell us if
there were commands or was there a conversation of.

Speaker 4 (01:32:24):
Some kind that took place?

Speaker 11 (01:32:25):
You can be that officer and the shooter.

Speaker 5 (01:32:27):
I've got to get some better clearance and permission to
do that. I understand that that's something you'd really like
to have, So I'll see if I can get clearance
for it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
What's you have for curification?

Speaker 7 (01:32:35):
For you?

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
If anybody else spoke up the carder, you bea Burgan Meadows.

Speaker 5 (01:32:38):
Bergen Medos Elementary. You gotta have a key. If the
key that you need for your cars in your locker,
we're not letting anyone in. But if you have a
key and we want one person, the driver will bust
them to the school because that area is completely cleared.
Now you say there are things to mebe do with
the school aesthetically to make books, to you fortn to
you describe what that is. That would be broken windows,

(01:33:00):
lockers that have sustained gunshots. I think that we have
fluids that need to be cleaned up, some of that
kind of thing.

Speaker 14 (01:33:10):
So it sounds like there were students and teachers riding
and locked areas and no.

Speaker 5 (01:33:13):
Question was going through, no questions that I can't praise
the staff and the students enough for doing what they
learned to do, whether it was ten years ago, fifteen
years ago, or it was something they learned at their
first day of class. Here, they did the right thing.
They locked down, and I'm not judging anyone who fled,
but lots and lots of kids and teachers locked down.

Speaker 11 (01:33:37):
In those rooms, did what they were supposed to do,
and we know that it saved lives.

Speaker 5 (01:33:41):
They're heroes, our teachers looking at a motive, but we
don't have one yet.

Speaker 11 (01:33:47):
Have you heard the stories about papers who took in kids?
What do you make of that?

Speaker 5 (01:33:50):
I opening doors? Yeah, that to me sounds like Evergreen.
Evergreen is still a smaller community. They're a tight community.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Men.

Speaker 5 (01:33:58):
They are going to take care of their kids. If
they're home, they're taking them in. Yeah, Jackie, do you
believe the.

Speaker 15 (01:34:04):
Shooter was trying to carry out of mass shooting of
all the ammunition rot?

Speaker 5 (01:34:11):
I have to believe when you bring downe to school
and you continue to fire and reload and fire in reload,
that you are on a mission. And we are grateful
that he was less successful, but we're devastated that he
was successful at all.

Speaker 4 (01:34:26):
Did you mention how many rounds of ammunition he has sent?

Speaker 11 (01:34:30):
No? I don't know the amount of ammunition quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
When school opens's going to be the plan for SROs?
Is there going to be a full time when they
will be hired immediately? Or what is the plan?

Speaker 7 (01:34:40):
Is?

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Is there going to be cartik?

Speaker 5 (01:34:41):
Another great question I have to believe that we're going
to have additional resources here for the kids as long
as we need to. There may be a plan for
us to put somebody more permanently up there. We'll talk
about it before.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
Surrounding schools, do they have SROs.

Speaker 5 (01:34:58):
Yeah, it's shared, it's still a shared responsibility. Not every
school has a full time SR. I guess it's for
those who are what are at home that you've seen
something like this happen.

Speaker 4 (01:35:08):
Why is it not full time?

Speaker 1 (01:35:10):
Is there an issue with funding?

Speaker 7 (01:35:11):
What is the issue?

Speaker 5 (01:35:12):
And there is a full time Well, the only reason
there wasn't a full time here is because she's on
light duty, So we were sharing sharing responsibility at that school.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
What you say light doing, what do you mean by night?

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Things?

Speaker 5 (01:35:22):
About as far as I can go with that, can
you talk about what kind of radicalisation you need the city?
I don't know that it was.

Speaker 11 (01:35:30):
It was stated to us specifically that.

Speaker 5 (01:35:36):
Was radicalized through an extremist network, and clearly we take
that very seriously.

Speaker 11 (01:35:43):
There's obviously a lot of work that has to go.

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
Into looking at his phone, looking aheat his social media
pa pages, searching his room, searching his backpack. There's just
a searching his locker. There's a lot of places to
look that we hope will just give us better information
is to what he was attempting to do and maybe
the why. Sometimes we never find out why.

Speaker 11 (01:36:05):
I mean the past we've talked. We're talking about safety
and cell phones and cell phone policies. We've talked a
lot about you know, it's every parent's worst and I
may or not to be able to get a hold.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
Of their kid.

Speaker 5 (01:36:17):
And if ye have been her first name, yeah, one
of the reasons that we heard like comes up Parsland
and something was her resource office.

Speaker 11 (01:36:23):
That you don't want kids a home their cell phones
look something like this happens to jam up the networks. Sure,
what is the learning from that? Where was there any
problem with students and cell phones and family reuniting.

Speaker 5 (01:36:36):
Not that I know of. You know, if you look
way back into Columbine, a lot of kids didn't have
phones back then, and that the chaos that that creates
when you can't connect with your child. And we know
that today you're hard pressed to find a child who
doesn't have a phone. And I know a lot of
kids reached out to their parents. So there's immediate relief,
but hearing your kid is okay isn't enough. You need

(01:36:58):
to hold your child. So still working really hard to
get them connected, Jackie.

Speaker 15 (01:37:03):
Any words of encouragement or I guess for those families
who were there yesterday, we saw so many of them.

Speaker 11 (01:37:08):
Who were correctly so to born kids shaken as wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:37:14):
We will do what we can as a community to
heal from this. It really sucks that we're here again.
We've had our fair share of high school shootings in Jaffa,
but we are going to do everything everything that we
can help these kids heal, to help the teachers and
the parents get back to life, and that's a lot

(01:37:34):
of that is just going to take time. But the
resources are available and we are encouraging everyone to use them.

Speaker 17 (01:37:40):
Clarification point again, how would you characterize so we're very
clear on the parents involvement in this family's involvement this investigation.

Speaker 5 (01:37:46):
Are they under investigation themselves?

Speaker 11 (01:37:48):
Are they cooperatively? You use your where are they been
in and a story?

Speaker 5 (01:37:54):
We are in contact.

Speaker 17 (01:37:55):
You're talking about the aspect of parent family parents, I
assume is the right work.

Speaker 11 (01:37:58):
You have been cooperative? They are they under investigation pretty recently?

Speaker 5 (01:38:02):
I think everything is on the table when it comes
to looking at this investigation and where it leads us.
And I think that they're aware of that as well.
But we have not run into a roadblock with this family.
Were irrestrating along the way.

Speaker 14 (01:38:14):
Liked any that you're aware of the district metive I
heard from other students concerned about the shooter's behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
That's been the latest details in the Evergreen shooting thanks
to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. Benmin All Bry filling
in for Ross Kaminski as we wrap up what has
been a heavy show today, welcoming in Mandy Connell, who
will be taking over yesterday. And I want to commend
Mandy for handling as I did with the Kawai News team,
handling two breaking stories at the same time yesterday. It's

(01:38:44):
been a heavy day for all of us. I barely
even touched on the fact that it's a twenty fourth
anniversary of nine to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
How first of all, many, how you doing today? You
know what I'm not gonna lie. I got in my
car yesterday in the parking lot.

Speaker 16 (01:38:54):
I cried for like four minutes, and then I pulled
up my big girl panties and I went and got
them aside that had previously been scheduled. Thank you God
for that little scheduling miracle. And I spent a lot
of time. I sat down, I wrote some stuff last night.
I put it on the blog, put it on social media.
I'm not gonna lie. I have tremendous concerns for the

(01:39:17):
future of the country based on both things that happened yesterday.
For the I mean, same reasons, different reasons, whatever. I
feel like this was extremely significant and we don't even
know yet how significant this is in the grand scheme
of things.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
Like which way is it gonna go? Yeah, I think
I'm sitting here sort of.

Speaker 2 (01:39:38):
Doggy paddling, treading water, as it were, in the sea
of hopelessness because on two different fronts. Number one, we
failed our children again. We failed our kids again. And
then number two with the Charlie Kirk situation. And it's
something I opened the show with, is that Charlie was
a guy who was doing it right. He was having
an open forum debate and doing it right. And we

(01:40:00):
we've gotten political rhetoric so ratcheted up in this country
that we've mistaken our opponents for our enemies in the end,
the enemy is the shooter you and we send it at.

Speaker 16 (01:40:09):
The end of the show. You know who I blame
for these shootings, the people who pull the trigger. Now,
can we have a bigger conversation about, well, you know
what our political discourse has become. I make an argument
today on my blog that I'd really like to know
from the Democrats who listen to my show, And there
are Democrats who listen to the show, like, are you
okay with the kind of culture of death that seems

(01:40:29):
to be infesting your side of the aisle? And I
realize that there are people on the right who are
horrible people, And we've had right wing violence in the past,
but right now, at this moment in time, we are
talking almost exclusively about left wing violence directed at right
wing people. And I think that we have to have
that conversation, and it doesn't need to be an angry, nasty,

(01:40:50):
finger pointing conversation that you cannot manage what you do
not measure, and we have to start having conversations about
what is happening to these people that radicalizes them to
the point where they believe.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
Murder is the answer, right, And I think that's I
think that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
We can go back, and this is the problem is
you see, it's going to take a good faith conversation
from everybody and laying down your arms to do it,
your metaphorical arms to do it, knowing full well that
we can all point to while they did this, while
they did that, will they did this on every side.
We can go back to Minnesota just a couple of
a couple of weeks was eight weeks ago. We can
go back to you know, on the other side of that,

(01:41:25):
we can go back. We can just keep going back
and forth and saying but day, but day, but theay, okay,
all right, fine, now let's start to let's get solutions
then to that point.

Speaker 16 (01:41:33):
And I understand what you're saying, and I think it's
very even handed. But when the right wing political violence
was occurring, it was all we frickin talked about.

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
Okay, right now, the shoe is on the other foot.
The guy in.

Speaker 16 (01:41:42):
Minnesota believed that Tim Waltz had told him to murder other.

Speaker 1 (01:41:46):
People, which goes back to health fortunately exactly.

Speaker 16 (01:41:49):
So, I mean that's kind of a weird outlier. It's political,
but not in the traditional way that we would think. Okay,
a Riy's yelling at us to wrap up the show.
Obviously more of this on the other side. You did
a great job today, got thrown into the deep end
and you swam. We'll be back right after this