Border Patrol Agents Are Now Both Heroes and Villains in the Texas Shooting

In the chaotic hours after an 18-year-old gunman went on a rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 young children and two teachers, a narrative emerged about a heroic Border Patrol agent who stopped the massacre before it got any worse.

The agent, initial reports said, was off-duty and hurried to the scene of the shooting, then charged in without waiting for backup and single-handedly took out the gunman, who’d barricaded himself inside a classroom. The purported act of selflessness and courage was a balm for an otherwise unthinkable tragedy—at...