Tim Kennedy, a former Green Beret sniper, knows firsthand the weight of responsibility that comes with being trained to kill. He believes that the recent upsurge in mass shootings at schools and other places is a result of insufficient police training, such as those officers who didn’t arrive promptly to the Uvalde school shooting.
On Joe Rogan’s podcast, the 42-year-old former sniper spoke about how the recent Defund the Police movement has led to numerous police departments across America receiving less funding. According to Kennedy, the liberal catchphrase is responsible for the rise in mass shootings. He believes this is because police officers are failing to do their job due to being demoralized. Furthermore, he fears that contemporary police lack combat training and consequently would be unable to take down a mass shooter.
On June 16, Kennedy appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast to speak about his controversial view that police should be defunded. He said that he doesn’t agree with defunding the police and that instead more money should be given to preparing police departments for mass shooters, as these types of crimes are unfortunately becoming more frequent.
Kennedy stated: “We have been weakening them, and we have been making them ill-equipped to respond to that. And then I think Uvalde is a great example of not properly trained with broken systems that are not ready to do the right thing. We will have more of that unless we get them the right training and we get our schools to become hard targets. And then we go upstream to the origin, the Genesis of these problems, which is mental health with the individual.”
He continued: “Only then can we go upstream to the origin, the Genesis of these problems, which is mentally healthy with an individual.”
Kennedy stated during their conversation: “How does it make any sense that I’m going to provide this group that I want to protect us with less training and less funding, but then still want them to be a better product to be able to protect us?”
Although Kennedy says otherwise, Uvalde did not lower its police budget because of the Defund the Police movement. More than 40% of Uvalde’s yearly budget is spent on the police force, making it one of the city’s biggest investments. The police did not have the proper tools or were too afraid to face the mass shooter who killed nineteen children and two teachers.
In spite of spending over $500,000 on school security in 2020, Uvalde was unable to prevent the massacre that took place there, resulting in the deaths of several innocent children.
Kennedy resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and four kids. His Instagram account describes him as an “unapologetic American.”
Do you think that Defunding the Police is a leading cause of America’s mass shootings?
